I did something today that I haven’t done in some time. I took a friend, a co-worker, to an AA meeting. The man who shared his story with us was someone that I doubt I’d ever seen before, but our paths had undoubtedly crossed in a foggy and frozen past. His story was not unusual, but it was, of course, different … after all, it was his story. He has spent most of his life in Cheyenne, Wyoming and that is where I believe our paths had crossed.

Like so many of the people who find themselves stating how grateful they are to be “grateful” recovering alcoholics, he shared things about his life that leaves one wondering, “how many different ways can there possibly be to find one’s way to the ultimate solution to a common problem?” What can I say, what can I do, that will make a difference in my life and thus make a difference in the life of another?

For me, the answer is to continue to share the chunks of my life that seem to beg to be shared. But, why do I feel that way? Why should any of the bits and pieces that make up the incomplete puzzle of my existence, make a bit of difference in the lives of people who take the time of their lives to listen to, or read, anything I have to say?

When I was just learning to read, and discovered the amazing children’s library in First Methodist Church, in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, I became fascinated with the lives of people our society held in high esteem, as having contributed something meaningful to the history of our nation, and thus the history of the world. I used to wonder what it would be like to have someone else think that my life was that important. Did they realize that someday someone might feel that they had contributed greatly to the society they helped to create? Was the sole reason for doing what they did, to see their names listed as important to history, or did they function from a pure motive of contributing to the greater good and let history be the judge of their contribution? And, what then of my motive(s), for the acts of my life?

A case in point: I recently had the privilege of speaking at Crafton Hills College in Southern California. It’s the third time I’ve been there and each time I’ve been gratified by the response, but this time was different. In the past, my time has always been limited to what I had to say with no time for people in the audience to question me afterwards. This visit ample time was allowed for questions, and there were plenty of questions; enough so that it had to be brought to an end after nearly an hour of questions, by the professor who’d arranged for the visit. But, one question elevated my pulse to point I’d not experience in several years.

“How do you know that what you’re expressing is not an addiction?”

That was the accusation leveled at me by the pastor of the church I’d been baptized in the first time. My answer now is the same as it was then; “I have an addition. I’m an alcoholic. I think I know the difference better than someone who is neither.” We don’t experience an addiction, we suffer an addiction.

An addiction, the way I understand it and have experienced it, is a compulsion, the surrender to which leads ultimately to dismal and debilitating dysfunction in one’s life. Surrender to the life I live now has not led to dismal and debilitating dysfunction. On the contrary, it has led to a sense of joy and purpose which I never came close to experiencing in my past, including the past which included a sober “George”. Was that answer to her, something which helped her, or anyone else who was listening? I like to think so, but will most likely never know.

What can I say, what can I do, to make my life as important to others as the lives of all those people I read about and was inspired by all those years ago? Can answering absurd questions like the one I just shared be enough, or can continuing to share “my experience strength and hope” be enough for my life to be considered by history as an important contribution? Or is it my purpose in this life, to affect the life of only one other person, whose life has all the ingredients necessary to matter, to the point that they, become more than I aspired to be? What can I say, what can I do? History alone will be the judge of that.

In the meantime I will continue to share my “history” here.

Indulge me if I wander over to the slightly political side of things this time, but something has been bothering me for a while.

In many views of our world there is white, off white, shades of gray, from one end of that spectrum to the other, and there is pitch black. I’m certainly not an artist, nor have I had the slightest bit of education in art since my first grade teacher, Mrs. Baldwin, handed us a sheet of paper with a circle divided into three equal sections and told us to color those pie shapes red, yellow and blue. They are the basic elements of all colors, natural and manmade. I’ve been told that black is not a color, that it’s an absence of light. So, okay that would lead me to assume that shades of gray could be considered varying degrees of a lack of light. Stay with me here.

In politics, there seems to be a similar variation in beliefs and those beliefs all involve degrees of control; how much control are we willing to give up. Within Christianity there are similar variations in the level of control we are willing to give up. It could be argued that the more of our lives we submit to Christ the closer we get to pure light … a one hundred eighty degree difference from black.

If we follow that line of thought far enough, we discover that virtually every facet of our lives is affected by the degree of control (freedom) we’re willing to give up in order to experience a sense of security. The degree of security is basically a measure of how much or how little we worry. How much freedom, for instance, we are willing to give up in our daily lives, determines to a degree, the job we hold. Likewise, our personal relationships with our spouses in particular, are affected by the amount of control and/or freedom we are willing to surrender to the other person.

In jobs, marriages, in virtually all other relationships, we are capable of reclaiming whatever control we have willingly given up. We can walk away from our spouse, from our job, from our faith, from family, from friendships. We can even walk away from a relationship with God, but there is one relationship we cannot walk away from; the relationship we have with our government.

My reading of the original intent of our founders is that their newly won freedom was, beyond a doubt, the most precious thing in their lives, and they wanted it protected in perpetuity. I’ve never read anything that specifically speaks to my realization of what has happened since, but then I’ve never read anything that would contradict it either.

The founders understood the basic nature of a portion of mankind that would never be satisfied with that degree of freedom because it would mean they would have no control over others. That desire to control others is basic to entirely too many people. To aid and abet them in their aims are a significant number of people who are willing to give up a large degree of their freedoms to the people who claim be acting in the peoples best interest.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, am I? Of course not. So, why am I off on this seemingly wild train of thought? I’m usually talking about gender topics or topics of faith. This is leading to an issue of faith and that issue is the different ways, we as Christians view the role of our government.

I realize that many, well-meaning Christians will vote for socialistic candidates and programs under the premise that sharing the wealth is the Christian thing to do. But, is it? I’m nearing the end of my sixth complete read through of the bible, and the closest I can come to an endorsement of socialism is the communal sharing of wealth and assets, engaged in by the earliest Christians in Jerusalem, and a few other enclaves of The Way. The thing that’s misinterpreted here, in my opinion, is the voluntary nature of the sharing. Nowhere do I read that it was a specific requirement. It’s simply reported as a voluntary participation.

The one instance of someone being punished for withholding a portion of their assets is the one involving Ananias and Sapphira recorded in the fifth chapter of Acts. The issue wasn’t that they withheld a portion of their assets; it was that they lied about it. Sounds a bit like the results of lying to the IRS doesn’t it. They don’t care how much you make; just don’t lie to them about.

If one wants to refer to Christ’s statement in Matthew 22:21 “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesars … “ as proof that whatever exorbitant taxes are levied by the government are justified and proper, they are ignoring the fact that it was the only time He said anything like that. It has occurred to me that it would be nice if I could go fishing every April 15th and hook a fish with check for the IRS in its mouth. If one attempts to justify the exorbitant taxes we pay today by referring to Christ’s repeated instructions to the wealthy to sell what they owned and give it to the poor they are missing the point entirely. Christ only encouraged voluntary sharing. The voluntary nature of Christian sharing is what makes it the Christian thing to do. It magnifies the Christian heart and soul.

When a vote is cast today for a candidate who says he’s going to level the playing field by taking from those who have, and give to those who don’t, that vote, however well intentioned, flies in the face of everything Christ and all the prophets taught. There is nothing in the bible which says that if one chooses not to share his wealth then “Caesar” should step in and force a Christian act by taking from those who have and giving to those who don’t.

If we let the government do all the giving, all the sharing, making all the decisions about who gives how much to who and when, that robs us of our responsibility to honor the commandments. I’ve come to believe that there is a sense of personal absolution for many, from responsibility to care for the less fortunate since the government is assuming that responsibility. There’s that sticky little issue of how much the “tax collectors” siphon off before the remainder is doled out and who is actually deserving. But then, maybe a lot of people want absolution from a responsibility to make decisions about what causes or people are deserving. And that responsibility is all too eagerly accepted by today’s “temple guards”, “high priests”, “Pharisees” and “Roman masters;” all in the name of moral economic justice, which of course has never existed in the history of mankind … and never will … regardless of the shade of gray.
Just askin’ … Where is it written?

I’ve inherited quite a few tendencies from various predecessors and among those is a tendency to collect … anything and everything that falls into my hands. I like to think of it in either one of two veins. I like to think that it’s my thrifty Scottish blood that smacks of “waste not, want not” and that bleeds over into this; it seems that every time I’ve thrown something away or willingly parted company with it, within a short time frame, oh, say two weeks at the most, I will need whatever it was that I discarded.

There is another train of thought which I credit my love of history to, in particular my own history. Dear Mom and Dad could have never been written without that penchant for appreciating the past and how it leads us all, inexorably to our present and ultimately to our future.

In Dear Mom and Dad, I make numerous references to notes in Day Timers and letters received, as well as mental and emotional images extracted from the thousands of photographs which were usually taken by Dad or Marilyn. I also wrote about the children’s library in the First Methodist Church in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. That’s where I learned to appreciate the history of individuals, and without specifically being told, I realized that without someone writing down the events, or in some way keeping track of the events, in the lives of the people I was reading about, there would be no memory of them or their lives at all. They would have been just part of the vast portion of humanity whose contributions to same would have passed away into oblivion.

One would think that would have led to me keeping a detailed journal or diary, but it didn’t. I tried. Many times I began to keep track of my adventures and misadventures on a weekly if not daily basis. The efforts never lasted more than a month and generally not more than a week. I did, however, maintain an appreciation for the value of recording in some fashion, the details of my life, our life. Thus, box after box after box of stuff accumulated as time passed, always with the thought that someday the details of my life would be of value to society. An over inflated ego? Not really; at least not for me. I just wanted to be prepared in case my life, and the details of it, actually came to be of value to society.

So, back to the junk part of my life. I know that so much of what I kept is just plain junk, but it’s my junk and I get great satisfaction from virtually every piece of it. True there are pieces that bring sorrow and pain because they serve up heaping portions of “what might have been.” That’s the nature of history … any history. There is, in any history, a lot of junk. My experience with it is that “self-history” always has a different filter than “other-history.”

Over time I realized that the self-histories, memoirs and autobiographies, tended to filter out the bad stuff that we are all guilty of. None of us wants to be remembered in less than glowing terms do we? Of course we don’t. So, we write about ourselves in terms we would like to be remembered in.

Other-history on the other hand is generally far more realistic, in terms of full disclosure, than self-history. After all, when one is writing about another, full disclosure is not so painful to the biographer as it is to the autobiographer. I didn’t fully understand that until I began to write about my/our own life and discovered how much more willing I, Georgia, was to be critical of George than George was to be critical of himself. It makes me wonder if just to be fair and truly accurate, that George shouldn’t write a memoir about me. That is truly frightening because the thought of crawling back into that mind is something I don’t know if I can do. But, I do need to consider it.

And by the way, in case you’re wondering … my stuff may be junk to others, but to me it’s important memorabilia. So don’t ever, ever ask me to get rid of any of it. Well, maybe those material tubes I used to have on the top of my truck and are still adorning my patio.

Okay … Yes, I’ve been silent for some time now. There are a couple of good reasons and at least one miserable excuse for my silence. Let’s start with the miserable excuse first. It’s an old excuse which attempts to pass itself off as reason. “I was too busy!” While I was certainly busy getting used to being a full-time working girl again, the truth of the matter was that I was just plain lazy. There … the truth is out. Now I can get to the reasons.

The first good reason is that I tend to imagine myself as something of a perfectionist. I don’t want to look back at something I’ve posted and experience a sense of embarrassment for what I’ve considered at the time of the posting “pure genius insight” into the human condition. I want to look back at what I’ve written and posted and be pleased with what I shared. So reason #1 for no new postings is that I didn’t feel I had anything worthwhile to take up your time.

The second good reason for my silence is that although I eventually felt a need to share something, which has been in the thought hopper of my mind, I didn’t know how or where to begin without sounding presumptuous. I’m still not certain of that outcome but I feel it’s time to press on.

There is an old phrase that goes something like this: “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” It’s one of those tidbits that I was slow to catch on to and refers to the anguish of an interloper who’s been in the wrong bed with the wrong woman when they hear the front door open and close. The interloper grabs his stuff and gets safely hidden under the bed where he watches as the husband sits down on the bed and takes off first one shoe and drops in on the floor next to the bed. Then … nothing! Why has he stopped? Did the interloper leave something in plain sight? Get the picture?

I had what I thought was a great idea for this blog a couple of weeks ago but it hadn’t quite jelled when suddenly I was caught with no excuse, no brilliant finish to the thought. I was stuck … “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Fortunately for me it finally dropped.

For the last year and a half I’ve experienced a number of discouraging events and circumstances. Not totally unlike the guy under the wrong bed I was scared to death. Unlike him however I felt as though there was no reason for me to be under the bed. It was MY bed, but someone else was going to be cuddling my baby. At least that’s the way I felt much of last year.

The dilemma is this: My “baby” is my belief system, my faith, my understanding of and relationship to my Maker and I seem totally inept at sharing that “baby” with anyone else in a way that is real and acceptable to them. It’s like trying to explain color to a blind man. I can see it just as plain as day. Just open your eyes and see what I see. Being blind is no excuse, just use your imagination. Stupid effort isn’t it. Of course it is but that doesn’t keep me from trying or at the least wanting to try.

So I ask myself, what was so frightening to me for so many years about turning the very essence of who and what I was, over to a power that was so much greater than I was, or ever would be, to be shaped and molded into something other than that self created image? It was much more than just fearing that I might be sent to live in a mud hut in Africa. That was just the cover story for the fear of losing control over my life; having the steering wheel just come right off in my hands and the brakes go out at the same time the accelerator sticks to the floor. And then I heard this quiet voice in the back of my mind ask, “could it be any worse than turning your life, your future, your happiness over to a lover thinking they would make you happy, fulfilled?”

The answer to that question, though obvious as the nose on my face, was not what I wanted to hear. Simply loving someone and having them love you in equal measure, is not all there is. You must both have your own reason, purpose if you will, for placing one foot in front of the other. They don’t have to be the same purpose, as long as the two are compatible as the rest of your lives. Therein lies the problem.

The purpose for my own life can only be discovered by honest and fearless examination of my innermost likes, dislikes, abilities and talents. That’s difficult enough for me, but how am I going to know all those details about another person? I can’t. And that is why trusting God, not E-Harmony or Matchmaker.com, to hook me up with someone of like mind and purpose is so critical to my life. In the meantime, I am enjoying life immensely because, so far, the promise of Proverbs 3:5-6 has proven to be correct.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do and He will show you which path to take.”

Works for me Howdy! Who’d have thought that being a full time kitchen designer for Home Depot at the age of 69 would be so enjoyable? Not me, that’s for sure.

I hate, absolutely hate to have to admit that some things about me never seem to change, no matter how much effort I put into the attempt. Anyone who’s been reading my blog for very long knows that I have a penchant for wanting to know what the future holds. Why? Why do I continually let my mind wander off over the hill to see what’s on the other side instead of just appreciating the view on this side? It’s not like I’ve ever been able to control the future now is it? Even so, it’s a big issue with me. In the last year I’ve posted four previous offerings here on the subject of the future.
In one of those posts I asked if maybe my name had been changed to “Job-alina.” Then last Sunday I was reminded in the sermon that the term “patience of Job” was really off the mark. Job wasn’t patient at all. He was an unhappy camper. Like all unhappy campers he complained loudly and bitterly about his circumstance. So, yes my name could be appropriately changed to “Job-alina.” I’ve spent a great deal of my life complaining about my circumstances; complaining in the sense that I’ve frequently been unhappy with my circumstances and generally always felt that it was God’s fault. Of course it wasn’t His fault, but why should I be held responsible?
The question is, would Job have been as successful as he had been up to that fateful day when, through no fault of his own, his world fell into ruin, chaos and pain, if he’d been able to see into the future? And the next question is, how far into the future would he have needed to see in order to take the steps that made him successful again? What if he’d been able to see only as far as the disasters? Would that vision of the future have dampened his zeal to succeed at all?
What if he’d known what the final outcome was? Would he have worked as hard, loved as much? It’s possible that he would have worked even harder knowing that all would be returned two-fold. If he was happy with his life as it was, would he have worked only half as hard knowing that he would end up with what made him happy in the first place? Would he have held his children as close and loved them as deeply, knowing that he would lose them? Or, would he have maintained an aloof distance in the hope that he wouldn’t suffer as much when he lost them eventually?
For myself, would I have done anything differently in the past, either distant or near, if I’d been able to see to the end of November 2013 and known that at age 69 I’d be working a 40 hour week, with a battered and broken heart which was sooo slow to mend. Would I have loved less deeply, worked less diligently, because after all, it was going to be for nothing?
Would I have devoted 4 years of my life to writing down the details of that life, another year to editing and yet another to getting it published if I’d known the result was going to be so much less than I hoped for? If I’d known the intense satisfaction that would come from knowing that I’d done it, and that in spite of the financial disappointment I would be very, very glad that I’d done it … Yes, in that case knowing the future would not have deterred me from my goal.
The motion picture industry has produced more than a few movies about people who go back in time and attempt to affect the future they were in. The result is generally the same. Messing with, and changing the events of the past never works out well. It’s a domino result and the fact for my life is this; I would only change one thing. If you have to ask what that is you haven’t been paying attention to what I write. With that exception I’m exuberantly pleased with where life has led me. Yeah, so what if I had to go back to work full-time? I enjoy what I do and for the most part I enjoy the people I work with. And … I’ve learned at last a lesson I’d like to say that I wish I’d learned a long time ago. But then, that would be messing with the future thing wouldn’t it. So let’s just say, I’m glad that I know it now.
It’s taken years but I’ve learned that patience is indeed a virtue finally appreciated and for me it has paid off in spades, as they say. If I could just learn to glance up at the framed copy of Proverbs 3:5-6 hanging above my desk more often …
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take.”
The key word there is of course “trust” and is interchangeable with “faith”; “have faith.” Live in today, not the past nor the future. That is the hardest lesson to learn and apply, because we all tend to want to be somewhere else, in time as well as place.

When I take the time to actually think about ideas that have surfaced in my mind from time to time, some amazing conclusions are frequently the result. For example, I awoke the other morning with the knowledge that I had to be ready, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, dressed of course, and at Mesa Community College to speak to a class on Human Sexuality at 10:30. I’ve spoken there dozens of times in the last ten years and my presentation has become refined to what I consider a rather exceptional level.

The sense of being prepared led to a rather relaxed time as I dressed and put on my face that morning. Being relaxed and engaged in a somewhat rote exercise allowed my mind to wander, which isn’t all that unusual and occasionally some interesting ideas and/or memories surface. That morning my thoughts wandered back to the early ‘60s and college.

What I found myself thinking about was the misery and suffering I had freely and enthusiastically subjected myself to, in order to be a part of a group of young men with nothing more in common than their field of study, which was agriculture. In order to be accepted into the “fraternal order” I willingly scrubbed floors, toilets, swept, dusted and attended to the whims of “active” brothers who took great delight in the various forms of abuse they inflicted on the “pledges,” which led up to “hell week” when it all reached a crescendo of suffering and no sleep for six miserable days.

Then, as if that wasn’t enough voluntary subjugation, I willingly submitted myself to another round of misery and pain in order to be accepted into the Army Special Forces branch of ROTC. That was so that on each Wednesday, when all the other young men had to wear their army dress uniforms, I could sport fatigues and the famous green beret.

Although I never regretted a moment of it then, and still don’t today, I find myself wondering what the benefit was beyond those four years. Is it a part of the human experience that we continually and willingly put ourselves in similar situations just so we can feel a part of something; so we can feel as though we “belong” to something in a way that will cause us to be missed when we are no longer a part of that group? A goal of belonging does not necessarily produce a purpose for belonging. Those weren’t the only times I willingly agreed to suffer for a benefit that often was fleeting and frequently never materialized.

I have subjected myself and those around me, to untold levels of disappointment and emotional misery for various forms of financial and social gain in an effort to be a part of that fraternal group of the well-to-do who live in big houses and drive expensive luxurious cars. Those efforts make that 3 months of fraternity hazing seem like a walk in the park. At least there I had a realistic expectation of an end to the misery. The rest of life, however, was a series of unrealistic expectations. The expectations were unrealistic for one basic reason. Unlike the college experiences, I wasn’t willing to endure the necessities of accomplishment in order to achieve the end result. The question then is … why not?

Dad was right about one thing … I didn’t want it bad enough. The next question then is, again … why not? Oddly enough the ultimate answer to those questions lay in the benefits embodied in the perceived end result. Peggy Lee said it best for me, “Is that all there is, If that’s all there is my friend then let’s keep dancing … let’s break out the booze and have a ball.” This is the essence to me, of a purposeless life … my life.

Or maybe Sisyphus and his endless effort to get that huge orb to the top of a hill which had no top would be an apt description of what I felt. Whatever it was, the end result didn’t contain enough satisfaction to justify the effort. It just meant that another meaningless goal would appear, and I would feel compelled to pursue it, but the compulsion was never enough, or enduring enough, to give me a sense of purpose beyond the goal itself. In other words, I would never, ever have a sense of having arrived. I wanted a sense of having arrived even though I had no idea of what that would mean or how it would be achieved. And then one day it finally occurred to me that that if I arrived it wouldn’t be enough because having arrived would mean the journey was over … and I didn’t want the journey to be over.

I realized that the journey itself was what made life worthwhile. A journey requires a point A and a point B, a beginning and an end, and the enjoyment is not in A or B. It’s in between A and B. All the things we put ourselves through in order to get from A to B get in the way of enjoying what’s in between. As long as I didn’t have a purpose for making the trip I missed all the enjoyment of the trip and that meant the trip would be for nothing.

I don’t want the trip to be for nothing and I don’t care if I ever get to B. Do you?

Years ago, and I do mean “Years ago”, I remember a fable about a dog that had a prize bone, or a morsel of some sort, in his mouth crossing a stream of water. The dog looked down and saw his reflection in the water. Being a dog and not capable of reason and greedy as well, he drops the morsel in his mouth to grab the one in the reflection, thus losing what he had in an effort to gain something he didn’t have. This past week has been a reminder exercise of that moral.

Sometime in the early ‘70’s Playboy magazine published an article by Harvard theologian Harvey Cox. The cover picture for the article was a portrait of Jesus … laughing. I have no memory of the details of the article other than the picture and the notion that, contrary to the image of Jesus that I’d been raised with, was inaccurate at best.

I hadn’t thought much about that article or Harvey Cox for years until this past week. Furthermore, I don’t know why I suddenly remembered it then, but there it was, front and center in my thoughts. I felt compelled to find the article and picture and began searching with the help of three separate search engines. My very first effort yielded an article about the article with that same picture, but like the dog in the parable, I thought I could find a bigger one and continued my search without saving what I had. Like the dog, I ended up losing what I had and have been unable to locate the article anywhere else since. So why was that particular picture so important?

The impact that picture had on me at that time was significant. I had already given up any attachment or association with church, in large part because I felt an estrangement from what I saw as an impossible and not-human expectation of perfection for me. The thought that Jesus was capable of laughing was totally foreign. Not only had I never seen a minister, pastor or other church official express anything resembling humor, I had never considered for a moment that Jesus was human enough to laugh at a good joke. After all, He was the Son of God and God never laughed … well maybe when he created the Platypus.

Bottom line … I never thought of God or Jesus having a sense of humor and the thought was earth shaking for me. What part of “created in His image” did I not get? Apparently a very significant part I’d say. Maybe that’s because another memory tended to get in the way. That other memory was of someone whom I have no memory of, once saying that everything that we find humorous and causes us to laugh, involves someone’s pain; either physical pain or emotional pain, i.e. “embarrassment”. I have, as of this point in time, found no circumstance which I find humorous that does not involve one of the two, and often both.

It seems somehow incongruous for the Creator of the universe to chuckle at either … but He did invent humor did He not? Were we not created in His image? So what conceivable purpose could finding humor in pain or embarrassment serve? I have to look as the effect that laughter has had on my own occasional pain. When I do I’m reminded of a particular circumstance from thirty years ago.

The carport of the home we were living in was open-beamed and from that central beam, I’d been instructed to hang a single rope swing manufactured by Fisher-Price for our children. At the bottom of the rope was a square piece of plywood about 12 to 15 inches square with the rope passing through a hole in the center and knotted on the underside to keep the board in place. One afternoon we adults were fooling around with the swing and it was my turn on the swing. My sister-in-law began pushing me higher and higher until suddenly at the very apex of the swing’s arc, the rope broke. I landed, on my tail bone on the concrete. I’ve seldom experienced such pain. I couldn’t get up. All I could do was crawl … and cry. The wife and sister-in-law on the other hand were doubled up in laughter. I was furious. How could they find my extreme pain so funny that they couldn’t even offer to help me to my feet or inquire as to my well-being?

As the pain slowly began to subside, my own sense of humor began to show itself and soon I was laughing as hard as they were in spite of the residual pain which eventually kept me from sitting normally for several months. Today, many years later, I find myself still laughing at the memory. The laughter helped me forget the pain. Eventually I came to realize that humor can be recalled, but pain, once it’s gone cannot be recalled.

God invented pain, and He invented laughter, I believe as an antidote to pain. When I couple that fact with the memory of the picture of Jesus laughing, I find Him, God in person, so much easier to relate to. It makes my prayers seem somehow more important to Him. It makes the condition of my life seem more important to Him. It makes the occasional pain I feel seem more important to Him. It draws me closer to Him … and closer to Him is where I want to be.

Ever since I was 5 years old I’ve been in love, or what I thought was love, with one girl or another. But was what I felt love or lust? I really want … no, I really need to know. Love is the greatest mystery of my life. I have never used the word profusely, and when I have it’s generally been in a romantic sense. Love songs I can relate to. They tug at my heart strings. Romantic love is identifiable; it’s palpable; it makes my heart beat fast and my eyes close as I revel in the feelings it engenders. I did eventually learn to differentiate that from lust. And then there’s the love discussed in the Bible; Song of Songs excepted.

The love discussed in the Bible is not the same emotion. The feelings I have for family, children and friends are nothing like the feelings I have for the fairer sex. Are there really different emotions and is what I feel for those close to me feelings of love which are different from what I’ve always identified as love in a romantic sense? Based on the emotion I feel for different persons I can basically identify four categories.

The aforementioned, easily identifiable “romantic, passionate, physical and emotional love” which I felt for Marilyn is the first. The emotions I feel for family, for my children, siblings and their offspring is the second category, albeit not all of them are in that category.

There are the emotions evoked when I think of people in my circle; church family members, friends outside of church, Facebook friends. Last are the relatively neutral emotions I feel for anyone else in the world who doesn’t express a dislike or hatred of me. I have to put those who do express hatred for me and everything I hold dear in their own category. For them I feel easily identifiable emotions of disgust, detest and dread.

When I take the time to really consider my feelings for people in my life it all boils down to this. If I awoke in the morning to the realization that I would never again see them, hear their voice, feel their touch or sense their presence, would I began to sob uncontrollably like I did on the morning of November 19, 2000, with the realization that my bride was gone forever from this world?

Or, would I feel a sense of loss but not despair at the realization that they were gone forever? Would I feel sad but not distraught at the realization that I would never hear their voice, see their face or hug them ever again? Would I most likely regret that I didn’t get to know them better but feel no real sense of loss in the knowledge that they too were gone forever from this life?

Is love a thing of shades? Are there shades in the in between of those categories which make it difficult to place an emotional attachment to a person in a specific category? I realize that when I break it down this way and then begin a review of the people in my life I am surprised at the emotions that arise. Some of the people I would have thought belonged in the third category evoke second category emotions. Some of the people whom, it would seem belong in category two drop to category three or even four. But no one fits in category one. As much as I would like to feel that category one emotion once again I don’t. The thought alone makes me realize how attached to the person of Marilyn that emotion is, which makes me realize how personalized love becomes.

I’ve stated on a number of occasions, and written in “Dear Mom and Dad,” that I miss that emotion terribly, as painful as the loss of the person who evokes the emotion can be, I’d risk it again if the opportunity arose. I know it would be a separately personalized emotion, and maybe not as powerful, but it would be a category one love emotion nonetheless.

No, I’m not ignoring the love expressed so profusely in the Bible … just saving the best, albeit the most difficult for me to comprehend, for last. Seems absurd for someone who grew up on the fifth pew back to find it difficult to comprehend Abba’s love doesn’t it. But there it is. People in church cannot say goodbye to another without saying, “Love you!” (not “I love you!” Just, “Love you.) And it is said to everyone including the people you only see and/or communicate with for a few moments on Sunday morning.

I’ve heard about it all my life, but it was just a word unrelated to anything I identified with as love. After all he was God, my Heavenly Father and absolutely nothing in my relationship, if that’s what you could call it , with him came remotely close to what I felt when I thought about the little blonde in the short dress in the second grade. It was a word which was sprinkled generously throughout the scriptures. Early in my life it seemed to be always used something like this: “I, God, love you and therefore since I love you I expect you to behave like I want you to. You owe me that. And don’t argue with me about it.”

On a certain level, I could understand loving a real live touchable seeable person, but an unseen, untouchable and particularly un-understandable entity called God, that was simply beyond my grasp. Even after my return to his fold, admittedly in gradual and slow steps after I sobered up, and then more so after my reluctant baptism before Marilyn died, I felt nothing I could identify as love; not for God, not for anyone but Marilyn. It’s hard to love an unseen, untouchable entity whom it appears is ignoring your pleas for healing.

I can’t remember crying much at all as an adult, with the exception of moments like that one in the snow on the hill overlooking my home on the Pine River. But, upon Marilyn’s death a continual flood of tears erupted like a desert storm flash flood. Maybe it was God’s way of flushing all the resistance in my soul and heart out of me. If that’s what it was, it eventually worked.

I will never forget the moment I lost all composure for the first time on hearing a song of praise and thanksgiving in church. It moved me immensely. And, it prompted me to at last began praying sincerely for that other kind of love I never understood, much less felt. Have I arrived yet? No, I’m not sure exactly what that other love feels like, but it’s like that sense you get when, after a long absence from your home when you realize it’s just around the corner.

So … after putting all this down I have one ultimate test of my emotions of love for another person. Would I offer my life as ransom for the life of the person in question? Would you? Didn’t someone do that for me already?

(Written on October 9, 2013)
Today is October 9, 2013. One hundred years ago today, in Panhandle Texas, Floyda Margaret Hickox-Bishop, wife of George Frederick Lee Bishop, gave birth to George Francis Lester Bishop, a.k.a. George F. L. Bishop II. To me he would be “Dad”. Like nearly all births in the world, this one went unnoticed by the world with the exception of family and close friends. To them he would certainly be noticed.

He was the third child of the couple and the first and only son and he was to become what many men of his day became, a self-made product of the great depression and a dry-land farm in the Texas Panhandle. He was doted on by his older sisters his entire life. He was the baby; 5 years younger than Zoe and 8 years younger than Helen, and to them he was always their baby brother. In spite of that he became their defender and protector like a big brother would.

When he was about 4 years old the family purchased that dry-land farm 2 miles east of Canyon, Texas and it was there he would spend the remainder of his youth. He started school there and finished college there, in practically the same building. His dream was to follow in the footsteps of many of his Prussian predecessors and make his career in the military. His father, the first George F. L. had wanted the same thing for himself, but for reasons that died with him and others who knew him, he became a farmer and rancher instead. He wanted his son to make that choice of a military career for himself which he did, and was at first overjoyed when George F. L. 2nd received an appointment to West Point to replace his older cousin Harry who was 4 years older.

However, God apparently had other plans. At that time cadets weren’t given a physical examination until after they received their appointment, so upon receiving his appointment Dad reported for his physical. When it was completed he was told he wouldn’t be able to continue his dream. His feet were flatter than a pancake and he was allergic to too many things to be acceptable as an officer in the U.S. Army. He was bitterly disappointed, and his father was devastated. It meant that two generations of his portion of the family would not serve in the military.

Nearly seventy years later Dad would have the opportunity to attend the West Point graduation of his step-grandson Peter and while there he found a picture of Harry, hanging alongside the rest of his graduating class. Dad’s comment to me at the time was indicative of his basic nature, which was to always look on the bright side of any situation. He said, “You know, if I hadn’t had flat feet and allergies, I wouldn’t have met your mom and you wouldn’t have been born. So, I guess I’ve been pretty fortunate after all.” Yep, Dad … at any rate I consider it fortunate for my own sake if nothing else.

His basic optimistic nature, and always being on the lookout for opportunity, led him to gather up furniture to give to the two new teachers in town when he was a chemist for Phillips Petroleum at Phillips, Texas. What better opportunity to size up the new “single” female teachers than to show up on their doorstep bearing gifts. I have no idea what he said or how exactly he managed it, but after one date, Mom told her roommate that, “If that George Bishop doesn’t ask me to marry him I’m going to die an old maid.” At least that’s the way Mom tells the story.

Dad would go on to climb the corporate ladder and provide well for his family, but that’s not what made him unique. What made him unique was the nature of his character and at the core of that character was his love and respect for all people. Unlike many people who achieve the success of rising from the bottom to very pinnacle of the corporate world, Dad never looked down on any man whose financial achievements in life were less than his own. He took as much, if not more, pleasure in having a beer with a section gang foreman from Mexico, in the shade of a fruit tree in the man’s backyard as he did in having cocktails and dinner with a former president of the United States.

Likewise, he was just as at home on his knees in the flower beds of his and Mom’s back yard as he was addressing the National Petroleum Institute. He loved to garden and work on their home.

He had one trait that used to drive me crazy and one I never understood until I was much older. The reason I finally understood that trait was that I ultimately came to terms with the same trait in myself. Dad couldn’t just sit. As long as I was at home I never knew him to sit and watch television. He had to be doing something from the moment his eyes opened in the morning until they closed again that night.

The activity that gave him the most pleasure in life was doing something for his family; especially his grandchildren. In his opinion, his grandchildren were there for one purpose only. Their purpose was to be recipients of their grandfather’s love and devotion.

Dad, you weren’t perfect, but the few flaws you had pale in comparison to your qualities of love and devotion to family and friends. Recent visits to Oklahoma and Texas reminded me of the qualities of grace and respect in the people there, which you represented so well throughout your life. When I think of you now I realize how easily the good things in live can be lost but also, like you, never forgotten.

Sometimes a discussion is interrupted and then never starts again. Why is that? The reason I ask that question, is that about a year ago, in the heat of political campaign rhetoric, I left a comment on Facebook in response to something posted by someone who’s very dear to me and the reaction I received was immediate and fierce.

I was responding to a post which involved placing one’s perceived personal desires ahead of the common good. My post simply said that while one particular candidate might very well implement measures which would most likely benefit me personally, that when our country was safe from terrorists, that everyone who wanted a job had one, and thousands were free from fear of losing their homes, then and only then could I, with a clear conscience, vote my own personal desires.

It’s a wonder my phone didn’t melt down within minutes of posting that comment. After an hour or so I returned the calls and a somewhat lopsided conversation ensued. By lopsided I mean that for the next hour and twenty plus minutes I was subjected to a thorough and devastating brow beating, made even more devastating because it was inflicted by someone I dearly loved. More problematic, was that the reasons for this person’s unhappiness with me, were rooted entirely in issues of self-interest.

The effort made near the end of the harangue to convince me that we had many other values in common did little to soften the blow. The main goal seemed to have been to make me feel like I didn’t understand what the person had endured because of sexual orientation. Really?

The point made to me, which showed a total lack of appreciation for my predicament was this: “You have a choice to be either George or Georgia. I have no choice to be gay.” Again, really? My response to that argument was never heard, because just as I began to rebut the charge somebody’s phone, not mine, conveniently died and I found myself talking to myself. If I’d been granted the opportunity rebut, this is what I would have said.

“You’re right, you have no choice to be gay, that’s way God made you, but … you do have a choice to act on and express that fact. Unless there is an issue of severe mental illness, we always have choices in expression, whether or not it’s expressing our choice of Coke or 7Up, do I wear black or white today? A person may be gay, but there is nothing which absolutely forces that person to express to the world what they are. The fact that they are ultimately happier and possibly a more valuable member of society, expressing what they are has little bearing on the undeniable fact that absolutely nothing but personal motivation forces the expression.”

And then I would have said this: “True, I do have a choice to express “George or Georgia” but like being gay I have no choice in the fact that I am both; that I am dual-gendered. For years I chose to express “George” because that was the body I was born in and didn’t know I had a choice, but that didn’t change the fact that I was also “Georgia” did it? No, of course it didn’t. Up to this point we’re carrying the same cross aren’t we? But, it’s not the same cross beyond this point.”

“From this point on it becomes an issue of appearance. I confess, God has blessed me immeasurably with physical traits and characteristics that for the most part make me, “Georgia” visibly indistinguishable from most women. But, in the dual-gendered community I am not the norm and I know and appreciate that fact.” Few others like me have the options and good fortune I have, primarily based on appearance.

I also appreciate the fact that having the opportunity to work in a regular job, in the eye of the public and being accepted as I am is a blessing beyond belief. And when I stop to reflect on that, I realize that what I wanted to add to the aforesaid conversation is probably of no value to anyone but me, because what I am is only a small portion of the who, what, where and how I am. Really!