“Green how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches.” –Federico García Lorca, Spanish Poet and Playwright, 1898-1936, “Romance Sonámbulo”
MARCH MADNESS
The sun was shining and it was mild. Then it rained hard for 13 seconds before pounding our house with hail for 37 seconds, after which, snow lightly fell for almost 3 minutes. Then the sun re-emerged and the house is hot. Doors and windows opened for fresh air. One direction, gray skies. The other? Blue.
Beware the Ides of March. And the weather, too.
“SUGAR SNAP PEAS.” THE STILL-LIFE.
But in related happy news, I picked up my Sugar Snap Pea seeds (the gardener’s candy) a couple of days ago. I also threw caution to the wind and grabbed some purple stock and yellow pansies to inhale deeply). I was thinking, as I got my breakfast the next morning, how much I LOVE that new-plant green color! And in 23.02 seconds flat, I had assembled this “ode to spring-green” still-life from things within my reach. Even the lowly head of grocery-store iceberg lettuce has its merits, I guess.
This is the green of new life, hope and the end of a long winter. After every winter, spring will eventually come to stay. This much I know is true.
“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.” –Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Spanish Poet and Playwright, 1600-1681
Come along, lovely spring. Be sweet and don’t make me wait. I want you, green, badly!
The still life: my jacket from Stef, a green journal, a green plate, giant green grapes, lettuce, lime salt, sugar snap pea seeds, Wasabi sauce, lime juice, Squirt, a mug, stock, pansies and my computer—which is actually waaaaay more spring-green than it looks here!
“It’s spring fever…You don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so.” -Mark Twain
Big sister Averi loves her new baby; Poppa with the tiny bundle.
A little after 3 pm, Amelie Belle was born to Rocky and Jovan Rhoades (and big sister, Averi) weighing in at 8 pounds, 13 ounces, 20 1/2 inches long. She is absolutely gorgeous! Gorgeous! And her name is the French version of Emily, pronounced ah’-ma-lee, as in awwww….so cute!
Amelie is about an hour old in this photo. Cute family, yes?
I now have 6 grandbebes! I am blessed!
Baby and mommy are doing well. Daddy is tired, but happy and Averi seems unfazed by everything, just happy for the huge party going on at the hospital because between the Rhoades-Powers-Kelleys and the DiPerna-Carter-Roberson clans: Platte Valley Hospital thinks the Osmonds have descended! Amelie was greatly anticipated and is loved by bunches of people. With as many flashes going off as there were all afternoon, you’d have thought Brad and Angelina just showed up on the red carpet. Good times!
See? Lots of us! I am mesmerized!
A little fun and frolic in the waiting room that we sort of took over. Tea parties, bingo, Legos, video and computer games and snacks!
I was wrong. We are so close, but no grandbebe, yet.
Labor started,
then ceased. Pooey.
¶
IN OTHER FAMILY NEWS: Last night at Chilis, where the Adams County Coroners were apparently convening, and I hope no one was “hanging around” in those shiny vans…if you know what I mean, as we were waiting to be seated, Dave was “recognized” by a group of about 6 or 7 young kids who all started smiling at him and waving, giggling and taking his picture. He is famous in Brighton. (Tredessa and Stormie had just taken him jeans shopping because he doesn’t know how to highlight his assets, so to speak).
¶
And MayDae did 2 posts on the fundraiser decor they did for the WWM/Heaven Fest dinners the past couple of weeks. Go look! www.maydae.com (www.heavenfest.com)
We had the craziest, zaniest dump of snow yesterday. Blue skies and warm temps turned into one of those howling Little-House-on-the-Prairie snow blizzards, following a fierce rainstorm. Weird day. But closing lots of offices and all the schools down, this will be a great day to focus on our new little grandbebe: #6! Yeah! We are excited. To the hospital, soon, we hope…with our brownies and M & Ms and cameras and joyousness!
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes…
IN OTHER BABY NEWS: Wrex and Stef just found out this morning that they are having a GIRL! What a wondrous day! Stef’s FB says “Big bows, animal prints and lots of pink, here we come!” They are due on 8-9-10, which is a pretty cool date, yes? Their first! Happy, happy!
Maybe far away
Or maybe real nearby
He may be pouring her coffee
She may be straighting his tie!
Maybe in a house
All hidden by a hill
She’s sitting playing piano,
He’s sitting paying a bill!*
He was born “Baby boy Bigham” on March 23rd, fifty-one years ago to a young girl in rural Kansas who would leave the hospital without him. When he was 5 days old, the Rhoades family signed adoption papers and picked him up there, where he’d been left to himself those first important days. That precarious beginning is probably why little David Allen Rhoades, a gentle-hearted, deeply-dimpled boy grew up to be such a family man, so devoted to creating a large, loving, caring and loyal family. And why his motto is, and the kids still laugh about it, “Never go against the family,” from The Godfather.
*Betcha they’re young
Betcha they’re smart
Bet they collect things
Like ashtrays, and art!
Betcha they’re good —
(Why shouldn’t they be?)
Their one mistake
Was giving up me!
So maybe now it’s time,
And maybe when I wake
They’ll be there calling me “Baby”…
Maybe.
Foresight.
When Dave married me and took Tara as his own daughter on July 23, 1981, he alleviated my parents’ fears for her future by telling them he now understood why he’d been given in adoption. He found purpose, believing he could become her daddy and they’d have that special *chosen* bond in common, something they would understand about each other.
And when he proposed, he looked into our future and told me, “I want you to be the mother of my children.” I could not have comprehended the depth of the honor of that request in that moment, lovesick and swept away by emotion as I was. But in saying yes! I do! I have reaped the benefit of being married to a man who has been committed to building a lasting heritage, a legacy that will live on for a very long time.
*Betcha he reads
Betcha she sews
Maybe she’s made me
A closet of clothes!
Maybe they’re strict
As straight as a line…
Don’t really care
As long as they’re mine!
He is…
He is an extraordinary “poppa,” loving those grandbabies zealously. As for his passionate love for his children? His pride and pleasure in the people his children have become and the spouses they have chosen? It’s evident in his beam when he speaks of them to his students or friends.
He teaches. He preaches. He stretches his own canvases and paints in color. He sings and dances and acts – on stage! He writes books and has story after story inside him – just waiting to be told!
He is honoring to my mom and respects my dad so much. He is a pal to my siblings and loves the nieces and nephews. He reminds me to call my mom and anytime I mention going to visit my parents he says: Do it, honey. You shouldgo.They’ll like that.
Dave is a thoughtful man, making sure the toilet ring is never up to surprise me, and he never forgets to take the trash out on the right day. He’s man enough to buy *woman-stuff* for me and just seems to divine when I must have a Cheetos night 2 or 3 times a year – as if he just knew that nothing else on that night would suffice.
He does dishes and laundry (not big on folding, but he hangs anything and everything that can be hung and seems to enjoy it – which is why I will keep letting him do it). He cooks for me if I need him to and tucks cash in to my wallet just because. He charges my phone, fills the gas tank and carries heavy stuff for me.
Dave is a nice guy and a good husband. And I am mostly thankful that even though I kinda think I am, he tells me I am not crazy. And he sees my drive and tendency to jump into the deep end of life (he has called it, going at everything in life “like a house on fire“) as me being passionate, alive and lively. And he likes that about me.
Loving and loved.
So today, I celebrate Dave’s life. Even though 51 years ago he was alone, today he is surrounded by hundreds of students and family and friends and even fans (he was a spectacular Daddy Warbucks) who know his worth and his value and how lucky they are to know him. I know I am.
And I am happy that he spent the last 6 months getting that A1c level down from 13-14% to 6% and has taken huge strides in reversing his Type 2 Diabetes! He is healthier now than he has been for 5+ years. I have always loved those Perry Mason-broad shoulders and I am so proud of him, he is looking good! So glad that we’ll be celebrating his birth and the life he lives for many years to come!
Happy birthday, my husband. I love you. I am loving all the changes.
And so glad the hair will be growing back now, too!
*So maybe now this prayer’s
The last one of it’s kind…
Won’t you please come get your “Baby”
Maybe…
Pictured: Top, Dave at age 1, then at age 4 or 5 with his mom and in April 1981 speaking at chapel at Northwest Bible College just before he graduated. Next, Dave and the original 4 daughters at Stonebrook Manor last week. Then, watching a video of his Annie performance with some of the grandbebes one Sunday night (Gavin, Guini, Gemma, and Averi); Next, Dave with some of the grandkids the night he was going to be getting his hair shaved off (Hunter, Averi, Guini and Gemma). Then, Dave at Stonebrook Manor for one of the fundraising dinners, Dave backstage with some “orphans” from Annie. Finally, Dave and I at Stonebrook Manor last week and on our way to a Heaven Fest potluck a couple of weeks ago.
*Lyrics: “Maybe” from Annie, the song that made Dave tear up at almost every performance over the past couple of months…because he understood…
Akismet has saved this blog from getting 74,000+ spam comments which run the gamut from vile to ridiculous. Most are either perverted or hawking pharmeceuticals.
But this new tactic, for these crawling-robot spam-leavers, is to write very sweet words, very encouraging messages about some post or another. You are supposed to believe that a person has actually read and commented and is not just trying to drop their sales-link in to my blog comments where some unsuspecting reader can be roped in. Cannot be very effective marketing, can it?
But I wasn’t born yesterday. I don’t believe for a second that hearing, “Your opinion on this topic was the best I have ever heard” was really meant for me and my blog when it came in the post “Cake Buns,”which was just about the baby shower cake and had lots of pictures. No, that didn’t seem quite real.
One “crawler actually said: “We was actually happy with your website. We only submitted this internet site to Digg. You write good, but need more pictures.” Ha! More pictures? Good googa-moogas. WHERE would I put them???
Or when I get one for the post, “Heaven Fest 2010 is on Longmont, Colorado ” which is talking about, yes, Heaven Fest (www.heavenfest.com), and the “commenter” says, “Well said! If I could write like this I would be well pleased. The more I see articles of such quality as this (which is rare), the more I think there might be a future for the Net. Keep it up, as it were,” frankly I have to be suspicious. That was not good writing. Just relief. on my part about permitting Also, his website, attached to the comment, was a vile one…so I doubt he is rejoicing with us over this victory. Although I did appreciate that my talent alone might mean there is a future for the “‘net!” Ha!
But today actually made me laugh. Out loud.
“Are you a professional journalist? You write very well. I read countering arguments and I was on their side and now I read your opinion article and I am leaning your way, but am going to do some study and make my decision. But I will bookmark your sight for your writing and leaning.”
That spam-comment was for the post “You may quote me on this.” Left by a Viagra-hawker. I don’t think he really read that “article” and if he has to think about how to choose “sides” on it, he is not thinking with his brain. At all. May wanna back it up on those drugs, buddy.
Averi is sprouted ponytails and bananas and cream oatmeal with blueberries on the side. She’s “I’ll do it myself” in her big girl panties and scrunchy-faced smiles. Averi is red-flannel pajamas and cheeks that won’t quit. She’s “Rocky? Rocky!” when calling for her beloved daddy’s attention and she is 2 going on 32. Already a pro at being a bit of a sassy, independant and directive firstborn, new baby Rhoades (due any second now) will already have her life’s itinerary planned out for her…by Averi.
But oh when she stops to have a little conversation and thens melts into you with a committed hug, {sigh} Averi…what a surprise!
G is for Gavin
G is for Gavin who is growing up fast. He is all boy and football and friendship and freckles. He has loose teeth and thick hair and he’s white, but that kid can jump! He is responsible and organized and such a wonderful big brother. He is 6 and he’s 1st grade and he holds my heart and my confidence like no other. He is the firstborn, the firstfruit, the heir to it all. Zealous and hard-working, he is always ready to tear into whatever project I have wondered about starting with his “let’s get to it” attitude. And he said to me last Sunday, “Nonna, I sure wish we had some garden tomatoes. Maybe this week we should start gardening?”
The boy is a genius, I tell ya! He knows the best of everything and loves tomatoes like me!
G is for Guinivere
I love the flower girl. And that is my Guini. She tip-toes through the tulips and petunias and orange daylilies right into my heart. We play school and she ever-so-meticulously colors hers papers until there is not a naked spot left or until the washable Crayola marker she is using has run completely out of ink! And while she works on her masterpiece, she peppers me with the important things in her life. “Hey, Nonna, can I watch some Sprout when I’m done with this?” “Hey, Nonna, can I have some popcorn? Oh wait – do you have crackers? I LOVE crackers!” “Hey, Nonna, we got a trampoline and I can jump really high.”
And a couple of weeks ago when I asked her if she got to eat some of the Oreo/chocolate-chip/milk-chocolate mousse I had sent to her house (leftover filling from Jovanie’s cake). She clarified, “The cookies in pudding?” An oversimplification, if I do say so, yet she warmed my heart withher enthusiastic review, “Oh, it was TASTEEEEE!!”
G is for Gemma
For Gem-Gem, not only is everyone she meets her newest and bestsest friend in the world, everyone she meets is also an audience for her interpretive dancing, for she lives to make people smile with her art. But not “Miss Hannigan.” “I don’t like Miss ‘Cannigan’, Poppa. Miss ‘Cannigan’ is a bad person,” her little voice quivers in fright as she speaks of the orphange-woman in the Annie play. Gemma is spunky and two, a little lamb and a tiny dancer. She is cuddly and independant and will smile for any reason she can find. She performs and she sings “Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow,” with arm flailing exuberance.
She is our own Annie, our very own Fancy Nancy with maybe a smidge of Pippi Longstocking mixed in! She makes my heart giggle!
H is for Hunter
Hunter’s a thinker, a little guy who reasons big. He’ll argue his point until you give in by sheer exhaustion. He is right when he’s right and right even if he is not. He is as smart as a whip and smarter than most adults. He will call you on every inconsistency, hypocrisy and duplicity. The kid is cute and loves his cousins, his mama and the world. He has already planned his life’s path to fly mission supplies around the world where he will be able to speak all languages fluently and touch the world for Jesus. He is currently in love with theater due to his poppa being in Annie and enjoys theatrically answering “yes” questions with a big, long, loud, “You’re daaaaaarn tootin’!”
When I said I needed to snap some photos for a blog post I’d written about them all, Hunter turned to Gavin with the wary look and said, “That’s what she always says.” Hunter is the Little Prince, wise beyond his years, fit to rule the kingdom.
Soon? Our alphabet will be turned upside-down with a brand-new bebe! Any second now…
Sometime in to the “meltdown of ’06”, God decided to make me aware that not only were my circumstances and brokenness not unusual/out-of-the-ordinary nor “special,” but that those nice little Elijah-Sunday-School-stories I had heard so many times held more insight into my own turmoil and God’s plan for my deliverance than I’d ever realized. I wrote about it months later as part of a series of things God taught me during that time (you can readabout it here). I remember feeling sheepish to say that as I read about the mighty prophet, Elijah, I truly believe he was depressed. Clinically depressed. What? A mighty man of God depressed? A man who could be God’s instrument to bring the miracle of oil to a widow who thought all was lost and then cry out to God over her dead son’s body and see life return, yet he, himself, scraping bottom, being unable to “pull himself up by his bootstraps”, unable to pray enough, fast enough, read enough Word to just “snap out of it?”
For me, even thinking that about Elijah seemed almost sacriligious. I kinda grew up around a bunch of people who didn’t think true Christians could get depressed – unless they were doing something to deserve it. Or maybe NOT doing something religious they should be doing. (Brennan Manning has wisely advised we’d be better off if we quit “shoulding all over ourselves.)
“I know from experience you can be doing the work of God at a pace that destroys the work of God in you.” Mark Buchanan in The Wild Goose Chase – Reclaim the Adventure of Pursuing God
I was afraid to ponder the fact that you can be working for God and hearing from Him and being used by Him, but get so physically depleted you become a danger to yourself, others and Kingdom work. Yet, God, the God of the universe, actually seemed to have revealed it to me, for me, this Elijah-may-have-been-clinically-depressed thing. He seemed to want me to know it happens. As part of the human experience, there is sorrow and heartbreak and loss. These are the risks we take for living, for entering relationships with vulnerability, for being alive. There is, in living and loving, the good, the bad and the ugly. There is receiving love and losing it, too. There is joy, but there is pain. There is acceptance and rejection. It rains on the just and the unjust…
The Volcanic Eruption
The meltdown-of-’06 was a tumulteous time, a place of obvious disruption, a clashing cymbal’s worth of huge loss and pain coupled with bitterness and anger that would have made anyone say, “Well, no wonder you’re freaked out and totally empty.” My skin had been melted by the molten lava of an ugliness that affected so many and the resulting ash permeated every gulp of air I tried to breathe. Catastrophic to my heart, I could see no way out. Until God…
The Slow Leak
But hopelessness and heartbreak, despair and loneliness, or a blackness of the soul does not always happen during some volcanic eruption. Sometimes there is a slow drain, a leak in the lifeline, an open door in your storehouse where bandits and thieves walk right in and begin emptying you of your resources and life. It is quieter. No one seems to notice. You ignore the signs yourself. Then one day, you are in the darkness of your own soul and suddenly you hurt everywhere, inside and out, and your pain is hurting everyone around you. The accusations and taunts of the enemy echoes throughout the hollow hallways of your heart. You feel condemned. Depressed.
How did a nice person like me end up in a place like this?
It can’t always be explained. It just is what it is. Sometimes there is no big upset to point back to, no huge event that would make people say “No wonder.” Yet, there you are in the black void trying to act normal. Attempting to “get on with it.” Trying to fill it with something, anything. Usually the wrong thing.
So maybe you know how you got here, to this place of bewilderedness because it was a monumetal event or extreme loss or ripping of your heart. Or, you may not know how you got here bcause everything was fine, good actually and you were smack dab in the middle of God’s will when you woke up to find you’d crossed the border into a painfully lonely place, heavy and hurting, empty and parched. The point is: it happend. You are here.
And just like Elijah, after going through the desert, through discouragement and fear, you are in need of refreshment. Stop for a minute, maybe longer. Just stay put and get some rest, healing.
After his time of refreshment, the prophet Elijah was instructed by God to go back the way he came to finish the task of anointing the next king and get help (in the form of a young prophet) in the process. It can be a long way back, but God’s call on us isn’t finished yet. There is something to be completed by the Author and Finisher of your faith story. There are things you’ve yet seen unleashed for you and through you. A surprise from God awaits you right in the very place you were once drained of life, the dry, and deserted path. What was once barrenness will be different this time – water will gush forth and barren places will bloom. Don’t miss it. All is not lost. God is not through with you. His love will not let you go. He is at work, even now. Turn back. The wilderness will rejoice and blossom…
THIS VIDEO: From about minutes 2:30 to 5:00, you see an African desert become flooded by a mountain rainfall from over 100 miles away and the desert gets soaked and begins to bloom and is fruitful. It happens there 2 or 3 times a year. It’s what I see in my mind reading the words below. And you can see how if it is true in that natural desert, that a place barren and dry and seemingly dead can come back to lush life unexpectedly and quickly, you can see it is true for you, too. The desert and parched land will be glad…
Point me in the direction of restoration and recovery~
(adapted from a sermon from Grace Church in the UK and from the Book of Isaiah, chapter 35)
Go back the way you came…
The desert and the parched land will be glad
Go back the way you came…
Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert
Go back the way you came…
The burning sand will become a pool and thirsty ground bubbling springs.
Go back the way you came…
You’re not the only one
Go back the way you came…
Build in time for rest, food and drink
Go back the way you came…
What are you doing here?
Go back the way you came…
The wilderness will rejoice and blossom, like the crocus it will burst into bloom
Go back the way you came…
Be strong. Do not fear. Your God will come.
Go back the way you came…
May gladness and joy overtake you and sorrow and sighing flee away
Go back the way you came…
Build in time for rest, food and drink. This is probably a Sabbath-season for you, a time holy to the Lord, for you ~ from Him.
ARISE [from the depression and prostration in which circumstances have kept you–rise to a new life]! Shine (be radiant with the glory of the Lord), for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you! Isaiah 60.1, Amplified
Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.
The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.
And the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. Isaiah 35.6, 7, 10 NIV
I prefer to think of it as jumping ahead, or springing forward rather than “I’m losing an hour.” I actually like to get where I am going as early as possible, so this works for me.
But as for “saving daylight?” Like manna, you get what you get in a 24-hour period. You can’t really save daylight. You just get what you can use today. Tomorrow there’ll be more.
