when you're an aged {and cracked} frame

 
 
 

 

 

 Years are faded. And all this reflecting reveals how unhinged it's become, completely disconnected from a frame that once securely held.

 

Little veins trace deep into what was once golden. So much so, age has cracked here, like withering bodies do in time. And the red velvet lining more pink, white, and mottled, like our spotted, freckled, mole-y skin that also takes up residence from time to time.

 

'Though some may say "There sits some ol' decrepit piece!", I see the young at heart. The tree, still living with enough gumption to grow a root or two. A place to pop a squat for some shade when you're wearied and hot.

 

Life is still living because there are leaves to make, limbs to stretch, squirrels and birds to provide a home. In fact, this oak is in it's prime.

 

Decrepits, 'though leaning a little against the hard metal of it all, are still capable of holding a candle of beauty their own. Gnarly routes of a limb seem to point to the cracked up and shriveled ways in which character has bore holes right into the frame.

 

We don't escape the living without a few scars to show for it, but oh the beauty it makes of us!

 

~~tammy

 

 

 Shared this at Concrete Words....join me and others over there.

 

 

 

 



when a gypsy's caravan is tarrying {on staying put}

  This is not a manifesto on how to live, life. Because, hello? I'm not you and you are not me, and aren't you happy about that? I've been talking to my Sis about change and moving. "Hi, my name is Tammy and I am a moving-addict." Make no mistake, there are times for change and rightly so.

 

There are times when we must be willing to give it all up and take a risk for each other. Even if the move never happens, just the idea that somebody is willing step out on a limb, matters most. But this is not about that.

 

This is about my struggle with the stay-put-ness of this farm from a long-lived gypsy's heart.

 

Lines ready with their bobber-thingy's and you'd think he is a pro already. He throws out his lure in hopes some fish will nibble. And oh, how they have.

 

He was up before me this morning, today, up on the banks, a sentinel of water and fish.

 

They've only recently discovered this past time. Perhaps because the banks were surrounded by too 

much yuk for a fragile thread with a hook to climb up from without snapping.

 

I think to myself "I need some pictures because memories are happening right before my very eyes. And I want to capture this man-child who's growing faster by the day."  Before long, he'll be soaring past my 5'3" height that I reached around 9th grade.

 

But off camera you don't see how he told me to not take his picture while adjusting his lines by the back patio where I was lounging under May skies. I ask the picture-lover (who's normally ready for any camera to snap'im), "Why not now?"

 

"Because I'm busy, Mom." And there it is. Growing up right before my very eyes.

 

So I wait for permission because there's this thing about respecting boundaries and all.

 

When the time was right and ready, I snapped. In my wee-little viewfinder, I'm struck by how the water is a painting.

 

Yellow and greens with their gray trunks seem to be leaning over for a look-see in the mirror for a glimpse how their leaves might be blowing. Perhaps a chance to see if their tops are frazzled by all the movement. If not for a ripple from fisher-boy, the mirror would be so undisturbed as to be disorienting.  

 

Some days are the hard grind of the same ol', same ol' where monotony has replaced adventure. Moving every single year growing up was always about adventure. I became a junky even after I could make those decisions for myself.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes moving is necessary if not vital for new beginnings. But I was more along the lines of: just hook me up to an I.V. of boxes and U-hauls and pop my little mobile pill of, "Next, puh-leeease!" Besides, my marriage is quite content in this place so why ruffle those feathers, really?

I marvel at beauty, at the brush strokes so smooth, at greens and gray and sunshine stretching across this hydrogen and oxygen mixture of H2O. Creation is a reflection of Who created it and always needing a viewfinder to see it. 

For me, this farm, right here and now is more about get-the-suitcases-honey-we're-going on-a-grand-family-venture, adventures.

So I stay and let my fickle roots go down for this oak tree called family. I stand under arching bark, flimsy branches, and a green canopy making an ever-widening circle of shade while we watch these two little man-seeds sprout and take off. 

And there are days like yesterday, where I'm grasping these slippery moments in my hand. I don't want too miss the reflections of these becoming men. The future will soon arrive and these are the days we'll remember. I don't wait for tomorrows too appreciate them.

This gypsy is learning to dance even as the caravan tarries on the backwoods of some ol' chicken farm, quite hidden from all of mankind. Who knows, maybe this very ground will be where we meet our forever, after's? I don't know. But what I do know: family is happening here.

~~tammy


Over at Laura's, Heather's, Jennifer Lee's, and Ann's.

Mother Day hangover and how I want a different Father's Day

I want to let'im off the hook. You know, for his day.

Nobody is perfect and yet, these special days all about celebrating you, feels like squeezing a tart ol' lemon. And in your quest for yummy lemonade, you just get a stinging squirt in the eye. Because, I'm a mother. Wholly human with a Holy living inside cleaning up this big mess of who I am.

Mother's Day wasn't a total wash. I relaxed. Took my bare feet out and laid under a warm May sky. I read. I enjoyed. I texted friends. I read some more.

And I tried to be a good mother. This time wasn't so bad. I wasn't so bad.

This time.

So today? I'm a little hungover from expectation. Every day is mother's day and every day is a father's day 'round here. We have a family to raise, after all.

Why can't it be: Mother's Ten Minute Day? Because that's more realistic. I can fit all my goodly mother-ness in ten minutes, right?

For Father's Day, I'm not expecting him to alter his whole personality to make it special for us too. There'll be no pressure to perform a Daddy postcard moment. Just live and let live.

Who needs a stage, a whole day, where you are the main character? We live in real worlds, in cracked clay pots, in process.

Snapshots only tip our hands to all the living we do between, behind, beyond our Kodak moments.

So, Hubs, you're off the hook.

I'll give you your Ten Minutes, then we can move on with life, normal-like.

~~tammy

when human trafficking and spiritual poverty are not exclusive to 3rd world's

I know there are children who live far off, poverty and violence invading their everyday existence. And I know there are people called, truly deep-down drawn, to the least of those.

Yet we are not all called to one geographical space. We're called as individuals, as uniquely vast as the sands that make up a shore.

I look around at neighbors with their tractors pulling "honey" trucks {better known has liquid poo}. I see faces blurred with a shoosh of rushing wind while they dash to grab a shampoo in the local Wal-Mart. I hear children calling "Mama? Mama? Maaaammaa?" in the clothing department and wonder if someone is lost, playing hide and seek, or kidnapped.

Because these are the days we live in.

When they find Amanda Berry and Gina Dejesus and another victim right here in our 1st world, neighborly address, we are witnesses to how poverty visits even the wealthiest because it's not about money or materialism.

Despite what country we live, spiritual poverty is not rated as 1st or 3rd. There are no national borders for the spiritually bereft. Spiritual poverty just is.

We can be poor in Spirit even as we are surrounded by stuff. We can feel mighty guilty about it too. We can be so focused on things, too much or too less, that we forget the abundance (or lack) is not the issue.

There are so many ways materialism can possess a person, either by attaining more or by spurning any. We can focus on what we don't have, even in poverty, for seeds of covetousness to find fertile ground.  We can be in bondage to the stuff, despite our material wealth or poverty.

"And He {Jesus} said to them,  'Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.'” Luke 12:15

So when a predator comforts a victim's mother, when a community is blind-sided by deception, I'm reminded of how spiritual poverty thrives and evil takes up residence, time and again. And this happens under our noses, 1st world and all.

We don't have to travel away from neighbors to make a difference. Human trafficking isn't for such- n-such country. It's right here. Human bondage is so proximate we can not even believe it.

I don't go 'round feeling guilty for my stuff, anymore. I did at one time. I still think it can be snare, most definitely. But that snare goes both ways, thinking excessively or obsessively, covetously, about what we have or don't have, no matter the reason.

I want to be able to focus on Kingdom business without wallower-ing 'round in ways that can down right distract me.

For me, it's here locally. Perhaps, it's far off countries, for you. We are all called to go, in the Spirit. But that's a huge difference between "go"ing in the physical sense. My heart is right here in this whatever world country of "wealth" because I see spiritual depravity corroding like the evil rust it is.

And no matter how much worldly possessions I may have, I am not a curator of an earthly museum. I will not obsess over what I have or don't have. I see crimes committed, atrocities of Sodom and Gomorrah proportions. Who can see and not know the days are evil. 

   We don't build barns to store stuff so we can go our merry way, a rich fool. "So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” Luke 12:20,21

All the more I want to live with eyes wide open and be rich toward God. For me, it's about looking in these local 1st world surroundings, because God knows, we are needed here too.


~~tammy

Ps. God bless those who are called to "go" to other countries. I have some dear friends who are called to it and I'm blessed to hear of how God is working through those as well. You know who you are and I love what you do. ;)



Over at Jennifer Lee's  #TellHisStory....

deceiver, liar, and such {peom}

Weaving down the pipe, a weasel,
of slithering slime and snake-y some
with holes furrowed deep in ground
while others may shallow upon grass they come.
How many ancient years will take
for blinded eyes to see
a doctrine here or hypocrite there,
perhaps even all I'd be,
if not for a scale Remover,
though only in part, for my little two
to rend this curtain of hearts.
Deception, oh how wicked slant,
you come with shadowy hue
all dark and cast
pitching your form like light and lamp
inking 'round 'cause you know
He came at last.
Time is told in seasons well
for change speaks of what shall be
where truth is poured on friend or foe
where dreams, visions, and prophesies tell.
And you old Deceiver, ancient serpent you are
will face One greater than he
to remove an instant all the lies
I once believed.

~~tammy