Labor of Love

     Megan woke up this morning a married woman.  I woke up slightly dazed.  I couldn't sleep last night till well after midnight, trying to recall the events of the day.  Megan said the same.  She and Jeremiah stopped by this morning on the way to Miami after spending their first night together in the same little house the bridesmaids had the night before. Mike had offered for them to drive our car in place of their truck and Jeep.  (The clean white car looked a bit like a chariot as they drove away.)  Our only real contributions to the wedding have been service.
     He got up this morning to have us all clean the inside and outside of the car perfectly.  He also hauled the greenery that thankfully I was able to craft together all day Thursday for table garland the way I made wreaths years ago for his tree lot. I consider it a gift that when I finally went out to play in the two feet of snow from last weekend, I came up on the ten foot top of a holly tree (still covered in berries) that had broken, so I drug it to the house to use.
      All the sisters met us Friday morning to set the arrangements out on the table runners Mike's mom made, with centerpieces of bowls and large wooden candle pedestals his dad made and vases full of cranberries and cut white poinsettias that I had seen online and put together, placed atop cedar cuttings my dad had prepared, walnuts and tea candles dispersed over the eleven barn wood tables.  Once the glass and silverware were placed with the red cloth napkins, it looked nothing less than exquisite. Then, there were the eleven display tables to fill.
     But first, before it all began, we came together in the center of the "barn," held hands in a circle and took turns praying.  It was spontaneous and real.  Miranda, who called the prayer, went up to the loft and turned on the playlist I'd prepared, and we went to work, all day, leaving just in time to change and come back for the rehearsal and bbq dinner.
     His three sisters and Megan's four all went to the little rented house to spend the night, went on a midnight run to Walmart, and were up doing hair and makeup at 7 am.  Melody had their makeup photo shoot quality, and McKala made their hair into luxurious braided crowns and curls. Unfortunately, they were not ready themselves when the photographer arrived.  Nor had Madalynn, 10, gotten to have false eyelashes like the big girls and was moping.  Since Megan had already treated her to a pedicure and long manicured nails with them Thursday afternoon, I gave in and called Dad because I knew he was stopping at the store.  Next thing I know, he's calls me back, standing in front of the eyelash display of all lengths and colors, making sure he was getting the right ones. The thought of it was pretty charming.
      When it was time to put things in vehicles, I decided to change into my boots because snow melt was everywhere. What girls were left got up in Dad's giant, white, covered, dually truck that they'd been transporting things in, and I climbed into Mike's little Toyota hunting truck, floor length dress and all.  But soon, they turned off into a parking lot.  Megan had left her veil!  So, I drove back to get all 10 feet of it with it's Latin flair (that she had bought with her dress, not far from the Texas border on deployment) and arrived at the venue 10 minutes before the 2 pm scheduled ceremony!  Needless to say, the cowboy boots stayed on, even though I'd told everyone else theirs couldn't.
     In no time, Michael, our now 20 year old, nearly 300 pound O lineman was escorting me to my seat.  Very soon, after Macklynn escorted one and Madalynn the other, I had a lap full of 18 month old twin.  Mom had the other.  The girls all dressed in white toile barely made it to the front, much less to stay there. I had pacifiers and snacks in my pockets, along with Kleenex and my glasses and a comb and lipstick.

     And then the violins cued Megan in.  She looked majestic.

     I think the particulars of the wedding were so important to her, because normally she's found working on or driving something.  She wanted to be a "girl" for a day, and, boy, she pulled it off.
     The ceremony itself is a bit of a blur to me, except that they both were visibly moved during the vows and during Pastor Kevin's thorough explanations of marriage and how the wife ought to prayer over her husband when he can't.
      We were shuffled outside into the mist to start pictures.  Inside, the guests had access to a bar of hot chocolate, coffee, and apple cider alongside a display of milk and cookies both grandmothers had made and manned, Lauren Daigle's Christmas album playing all the while.
      I was struck in the picture taking when all  seven of our children were lined up with Megan in their gray tuxes and red satin dresses, and no one looked small anymore, not even Madalynn.
      We took the babies in for casual clothes, so I didn't see but am told Megan and Jeremiah used the snow covered hill and fog as their backdrop.  She wanted snow.  Man, did she get it.
      Megan came into the kitchen just as we were getting the babies in the playpen or maybe just when the Chicago style pizza was being delivered.  I can't remember.  Either way, I never left the kitchen. We needed to bustle her two layers of train, the way they taught me in the store, 18 buttons and thread hoops to find!  Thank God, Kaitlyn stayed to help after she changed the babies with me.
      Somewhere along the way, I decided to run out and get a bottle of Mexican Coke at the head of the pizza and salad buffet and take it back to the kitchen, where I rolled up a slice of hot pizza (not without dripping grease down my dress). It seems like it took forever to eat it, maybe because I knew there were people I should be talking to.  I was away so long that apparently there were people I completely missed before they left, never even saw to begin with.  I didn't know until afterwards that Franklin Graham's wife did indeed come. Neither did my friend, Heather, who just found out it was she whom she "laughed and talked for quite a while" with. (It says something for Mrs. Graham that she never revealed who she was.)
     Mike came to me while I was in the kitchen and told me of the talk he and Dad had just had.  They hadn't spoken in over a year and a half.  Dad extended an olive branch.  Although onlookers were afraid it was not so, it was.  And the anxiety that had haunted Mike every day had melted away.  He and I stepped outside into the cold to "breathe." It was surely a reprieve from the sweat that had been running down my back.
     When we stepped back in, I heard music, the "wrong" music, as in it wasn't on the "playlist" I had carefully and painstakingly put together in hopes of honoring the Lord in our celebration.  I was told it was because Jeremiah and Megan were lingering too long in conversations.  Truth be told, I knew they weren't really wanting to dance to begin with; just not their thing.  However, somebody finally turned on the father/daughter, mother/son song.  My peace was momentarily removed when I instead saw Jeremiah and Megan dancing to it!  Melody quickly notified Mike, so he stepped into his rightful position, asking for the dance.  His boldness found a good place there, since they were soon in tears with each other.  I looked beside me and so was our great friend, Heather, who had come through for us again and made the bouquets and boutonnieres.  She was weeping for the healing that was happening right there in front of everyone's eyes.  I looked to my other side to another of our great friends, Shannon (who had been flown in from disaster deployment just to be there), as she was recalling how things looked for the two of them only a year ago.  And there I was with lasting, true friends in the Lord, who had flanked themselves on either side of me.
      The intended song for Jeremiah and Megan came on, but they weren't out there.  I was suddenly alerted to a situation occurring.  Madalynn had gone to Miranda in an outburst of tears with fear that Mike would not live so that she might dance with him at her wedding, so she wanted to dance with him right then.  I scanned over, and there she was, a river of tears as he cradled her head in his arm, dancing.
     I had planned, and even sent a little line dance to several people to learn, hoping the songs and dance would be well pleasing to God, to set a new standard of fun.  But I think emotions were so deep, both good and for others bad, resisting any rightness in the occurring circumstances, that it all just fizzled out, even when I made a call for folks to come up.  Too, the ambiance was just really good: what seemed like hundreds of candles glowing, stomachs full, and conversations boisterous.
     I let it go.  I had predetermined not to take it personally.  To be honest, just the preparation, the singing and dancing I did on my own has welled up a joy and vitality in my spirit that I intend to continue.
      So instead of dancing, I pulled up a chair to my brother's table.  I hadn't seen him in a long time.  He's had a stroke and another during major surgery.  Even so, he and his family stayed afterward to rinse plates, babysit, and to do anything else they could.
     At whatever point, Megan was just plain ready to leave.  We passed out tubes of bubbles to send them off, but not before I got to talk with a beautiful pregnant woman of Pakistani heritage, who is a friend of the groom's mother and had flown in from Dallas that morning, about how much she loved the reminders in the preaching and beauty of the room.  There were people from all over, a young man from Washington state, who was a volunteer in Key West where Jeremiah and Megan met: some of Jeremiah's family from California and his childhood friend and groomsman from Alaska and another friend from Maryland, and plenty of others from up and down the East coast.

     There, just like that, it was done!

     Everyone automatically went into cleanup mode.  A certain person we didn't even know named Daniel from Tennessee, his sister's escort, helped as much or more than the rest of us, as well as having done the organizing of the pizza in the kitchen.
     Timothy, our six foot six son-in-law, and Michael, six foot five, were taking down the four trees from where the vows were made.  It was intended to look like the outdoors with heights from 12 feet to 5.  Dr. Miller kindly provided them from his tree farm (along with all the boughs I used for the tables), the same farm Michael was the foreman of a few summers back and the same farm that Miranda made wreaths for a few Christmases ago.  Dr. Miller had ridden up with Jeremiah and Megan the week before to hand pick it all.  Dad had made and brought up from Georgia old fashioned stands for them.
     The music came in handy for the setup AND the cleanup.  Everyone gathered their valuables, the sentimental things that'd been passed down or made: all the wooden things not only Pop made but Dad also, Mamaw's punch bowl, Cleo's silver platter, McKala's things from her own wedding, everyone's crystal, nativities, and vases, the pine cones Megan gathered on deployment in Panama City where she only got back from December 3rd and the Redwood ones a Samaritan's Purse volunteer mailed her from California and the ones her Grandmother collected from our hometown in Georgia, Megan's childhood Flexible Flyer sled that'd I'd gone through thousands of pictures to find snow ones to display on, together with the winter ones Jeremiah's mother sent of him.  A special one I had enlarged was of him as a boy, loading Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes onto a small plane.  I was able to come up with one of Megan and Melody processing shoe boxes in Boone, NC, the original site.  I know there are others but there are still thousands more pictures on USB that I couldn't find time to go through.  Besides, there aren't pictures of the first year we packed shoe boxes from home in Georgia.  Megan called me recently when a question was asked at work, "Where did the first shoe boxes go?"  She knew, the only one in the room that knew.  She remembered what she put in it even.  When we moved to North Carolina, she volunteered as soon as she was old enough, 14, in the shoe box facility, the only one at the time.  Her brothers and sisters followed suit.  Macklynn will be old enough next year, and he will be old enough to go on disaster deployment, with an adult.
     His parents, Mark and Michele (gotta love that it's so close to ours, Mike and Michelle), staying at his apartment (and cozied and stocked it before flying home) left with the gifts, the top of the cake, their girls, a lot of the tuxedos, and I don't know what else.  Pop and Memaw needed to get back to their hotel room and soon back to Georgia.  Memaw is not well but was more concerned that she couldn't stay longer since Mike's not doing well.  Her eyes misted over not only for this but for the way others chose to go about the occasion.  I hated to see her leave in that condition.  Just before she did, as Heather approached to ask what else she and two of her devoted daughters could do, Memaw said to her, "I don't have a best friend, but if I did, I'd want her to be just like you."  Wow, did she get it right! 
     When we found ourselves gathered in groups chatting, someone realized we were through.  And we had a big round of applause! We all went home with the leftover pizzas and drinks, a nice reward: that no one would have to cook the next day.
      Mike, Michael, Macklynn, Madalynn, and I came home with five 16 inch pizzas, cookies, dressings and (family caught) salmon -  dip Jeremiah's mother made, tea Megan made herself to her own specs, and the second layer of the four layer alternating key lime and vanilla cake an SP coworker's wife made, no less beautiful or tasty than a professional's.  I felt compelled not to throw any of it away and, in so doing, did my part in consuming these things over the past five days.  Thank goodness it's gone, or my dress (I have already washed the oil and mud out of and put away) will not fit for the next wedding.  Mike and I barely got it on for this one - up 15 pounds from the last one!
     It didn't help that most of us, including Megan, caught a cold at the wedding, and that it's my PMS week.  How easy it is to fall off the wagon, if for nothing but food!  I should say that if only the cold, some parking deviations, the smell of a banned substance, and a lost, likely stolen, valuable are all that went wrong, it went well!
     By Wednesday, I could finally see the countertops again.  Jeremiah's family were back home in Alaska safe and sound by then also.  We only had them over once for dinner during their 8 day stay, but I don't think I could've added in one more thing.  It was certainly nice to finally meet the woman who has been reading and cherishing several of the very same books that I have here in North Carolina over these years.  When Megan was there on one of her three visits, she sent me a picture of a particular stack of books one night that gave me chills, and I knew we were on to something, that Jeremiah had been raised up under teachings of the best kind, by Mike and Debi Pearl, that Dr. Ed Wheat had been an influence in their home, and that the Ezzos, as controversial as they were, found a place in their house too, with practical, sensible ways of training babies.
 
      Today, Friday, the 21st, I think everyone is settled back in from their labor of love and waiting for Christmas, which Miranda and I were saying yesterday seems like a downhill slide/easy street after the last week.  Mike is back to hunting deer and coyote from his rocking chair by the heater in his blind. Michael is working for Dr. Miller at the veterinary office and on farm calls during break, while we puppysit his three month old beagle, Lucy, in the basement and outside when it isn't raining.  Melody is waitressing and finishing up class at the community college.  Miranda and Timothy are each doing their work.  Macklynn and Madalynn are closing out their online semester today.  And McKala is bringing up those babies.  But Jeremiah and Megan are on their way back after a night of gale force winds and waves trying to port after having been to Cozumel.
     And here's the thing: Megan, the eldest sibling, has always had everyone's back, but now someone has hers.  And I don't know where they'll be going together (both being SP employees now), but I know she won't be going it alone anymore.

     And, THAT really makes me happy. 
       

(2018)

A New Thing

     Mike was restless Sunday afternoon and wanted to ride to the mountains.  I didn't really want to go anywhere, but I knew he did.  I even prayed in the car, as though we were wasting time, that the Lord might let us run into someone to share Him with, that somehow in this day He might be glorified.
    Yes, being with your husband is good.  But since he found out he is rendered permanently disabled a few weeks ago, I have been with him every day.  And I wasn't seeing that more time with him was key, even though I know how different I am when I'm swept away from the house.
     As we got up to the Parkway and he rolled down the windows to the shaded road and 80 degree temps, I started to unwind.  Soon we approached the mile marker where we moved in the late 90s, and I was reminded of the sovereignty of the Lord, how we were so desperate. Yet we were in a setting so beautiful that it seemed removed from reality, there with three little girls and a boy on the way.
     Within 5 years, we moved further into Ashe County and right in the midst of a 12 acre ridge that arced all the way around the house.  It never really felt like home though, because there was a whole lot of spending and pushing the envelope.  But there the kids were, five of them by then, in the middle of the high country, running around in the woods and creek, and riding anything with wheels or legs, and even getting to see Megan do a few flyovers.
     In 2008, that life flight to Baptist changed everything: Resurrection: Easter Morning, March 23, 2008. 
      After a year renting in the city, our Jesus quickly made a way for us to live in dairy country in north Iredell County: pond, creek, barn, pasture, and field.  The children, all seven born, could hardly have been in a more pristine environment, conducive to learning and working.
     That, too, came to an end about three years ago, as it made more sense for us to live in Wilkes County, because 5 family members were working here and going to church here at Mt. Pleasant Baptist.
    The recollections made me ask how is it that I could even be moved from the peace I have that God has always and will continue to have a good plan for us?  How is it that deep inside I resisted leaving for that drive on Sunday, questioning whether God could be glorified in that day?

     Mike stopped at The Cascades and surprised me by wanting to walk on down, this after having a defibrillator and pacemaker placed on Tuesday.  We made our way slowly but surely.  It reminded me that there is plenty we can still accomplish.  It reminded me that we still make a pretty good couple.  Parenting, on the other hand,  has always been a hard place for us: instances where he should have been one thing and ones where I should've been another.  I hope they will know that their suffering and want was not in vain, that their Lord has done a powerful thing in bringing us all this far.
    Far is exactly where Megan has been, visiting with the family of her Jeremiah, all the way up in Alaska.  They met at Key West (where Macklynn likely contracted the West Nile Virus that made him quadriplegic, Macklynn, Meant for More?, and my faith and obedience were tried more than they ever had been up to that point) on deployment for Samaritan's Purse.  She's been to see him 3 times, but this time he made it for keeps and proposed, in a place so remote they had to be flown there, the day before she left for the floods in Texas: Weslaco, which is where the mission church is that Mt. Pleasant Baptist seeded.  She's been there years back working in the community and funding the church building across the way in Mexico.  Not only is it her first official  deployment as the mechanic/driver on site, (doing the selfsame job her father did), but there is actually a mission team there from the home church here in Wilkes: with the preacher, his family, and several others we know and care for. I mean, that's God.

    It's God when you join a church in a different county and one day a young man named Justin taps you on the shoulder and says, "You're the Harpers."  He was the one and only child from the one and only family we shared a gravel road with off the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Now he's a music ministry assistant at the church we had just joined.
     It's God when you move on to another church and see the man named Jerry who baptized you and your firstborn many years ago in the New River, sitting two pews in front of you and finding out his daughter is a member.
     It's God when your daughter is hired on as a full time fire fighter, regardless of her broken leg, because she was highly requested and just as highly trained, at the only fire station in the state that brings in a Sunday school teacher on Sundays, where they are not allowed to perform "unnecessary work" on the Lord's Day, and where Bible study and prayer are witnessed frequently. (And on her days off, she still has work at the Crisis Pregnancy Center.)  
     It's God when that same daughter, who was a timid, late bloomer, has secured her own new car and apartment, right over the hill from another sister and her husband, and can be a very present aunt to her twin nieces.  She is also good enough to offer refuge to her soon-to-be 18 year old sister, who has had a very troubled couple of years, so that she might heal and prosper in the next ones. 
     It's God when a well meaning, "religious," overly concerned of what "NOT TO do" mother of many can be used as a "'repairer' of the breach," likened I think to, "And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in," to her own family. (Isaiah 58:12.) This is "what TO do."

     There was a definitive moment during the many months of our separation, in one of those up at 3:45 mornings for work at the YMCA, so that I could be home before the home school day began, that I came surrendering to the my Lord and Saviour, in a room alone, feeling as close as I have ever felt, however comparatively minuscule, to the anguish of Jesus.  I felt physically strapped and drawn in opposite directions, torn apart, yes, for the guilt of my own sins I could now clearly ascertain, for the sacrifices I had to make, but by far, between my family which might never cohere again.  Completely distraught, I made a very conscious commitment to the Lord, that, yes, I will take this as you use it for your glory, just as I prayed a very sober-minded question in the local school parking lot, empty as it were; asking if I had laid my marriage at the altar of homeschooling that it would be made evident to me, while I know many would have said the very opposite had occurred. But they don't know the ways I know I went wrong, regardless of anyone else's choices.
     And these are the times that made me sure I had to let go, quit trying to save everybody and everything, to be quiet and watch God do what He does.  He told me he would, that he would "deal with ...," and He surely did.
      So much of what is classic Mike will no longer be: obviously, the binges, like the one that nearly killed him with alcoholic hepatitis in December.  The "go fast":  he's ridden his whole life, so he bought a super bike in January.  He bought me a bike too and after a whole ton of prayer, I said, "Yes, I'll learn."  I told our caseworker teary eyed that I had decided to be my husband's wife, and I meant it. But one night on a trip home in the tractor trailer, he asked the Lord if he was supposed to have the bike, and he promptly totaled it the next morning.  I was spared the treacherous risk I had deemed it to be, but more preeminently my husband saw a prayer answered as swiftly and as clearly as he ever had.
     His ribs had to heal, which gave me cause to give him care and affection and to meet his needs, the way I have a lot of times, but with overwhelming peace and security this time, with no accusations, no doubts.  I knew where home was, wherever he was, and not because I always like everything about him or even feel love for him to be honest, but because I am in covenant with my Lord, and my husband is in so many ways my salvation, my sanctification through Him.  I have seen provision and protection from other sources, but none can replace how God changes me through this person I'm to walk through this world with.

     He likes TV and eating out as much as anyone.  These things too shall go, as matters of budgeting.  The big man-size meals he posts pictures of will change, oddly not because of cholesterol (his arteries look great) or sugar but because of the sodium that makes him gain 5-10 pounds overnight, stressing his already damaged heart.
     Right now, even his strength is gone with the wrist injury from the tornado winds.  He is watching the very fiber of his manhood waste away.  After he made the choice to have the surgery for the defibrillator and pacemaker, which inherently nullifies his CDL, he went to the Social Security office after very deliberate instructions the doctor gave us both, and came home in tears with a dozen roses, per the song.  All the times he said he hated driving were as they had not been.  This was a game changer.  This was the end of the only thing he knew to do to support his family, "unskilled labor" they call the work of an over-the-road driver, even though he can drive with his eyes closed, keep perfect records, and knows most every road, store, factory, town, and city in this country and people who work and live there.  It was one year shy of 30 years, which is why the Social Security worker was shocked at the amount he's to receive once approved.  "Oh, you've actually been working," sadly contrary to the majority of recipients.

     He sees the end of something; I see the beginning, "Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert." (Isaiah 43:19.)  I wrote a prayer the other morning, "Lord, guide our days that we know your Word and honor your name; that we waste nothing, time or thought, that we lean into each other and the children and that we all lean into the kingdom; that we pray, learn, serve, work/exercise together, that you be glorified."
     Every single word, I mean.  These two youngest kids have held our family together like glue.  They have been the subjects of ferocious protection, and they have been a reason to finally get this right.  Not to objectify them, but it is awfully amazing to watch what the Lord will work out because of and through practical needs.  If we had quit our family as it were convenient, they would not have been born.  And "today" would not look the way it does, with our eclectic 13 year old son and our artistic 10 year old daughter. 
     In this trial, I professed also, as I was led of the Lord, to make His word paramount in our home.  And as it stands and is portrayed in Matthew 4:4, “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," we "eat" of it three times a day: in the morning with me, before lessons individually, and at night with their father.  
    Our new norm is going to involve a lot of togetherness, which is something we have not experienced outside of crisis.  It will be challenging to not have a "breather"/dispatched trip to make us miss each other.  But the kids will have a full time father. Macklynn is particularly in need of it.  And Madalynn will not have a distant father or the influence of a perpetually strained mother. 
    I suspect that things I can't imagine will come to fruition.  I expect that I will finally learn what it means to be my husband's lover.  I think we will all learn together - he was always the more fun teacher anyway. I believe we will worship together. I hope God has a mission for us together.  I look forward to planning and making meals together. I wonder where we will walk and explore together.  I smile at the thought of seeing our grand babies, together.  I can't wait to watch Michael play football at Western Carolina, together, and to give our Megan away to the one who sees in her what we do, together.  I anticipate the Sunday afternoons together when the kids come around, not because they are coerced or always want to or even feel like it, but because they have respect of the Father's will, purpose, and order: Proverbs 16:3. 
     And here's what I know:  that my place is home, wherever that lands me and however many more times that Mother's Day rose bush from the Parkway has to be dug up.  That fact was apparent to me before all the tests came back and decisions made.  And, who knows, the Lord might make room for me to write about it all.  But for now, I am witness that every day is a big day for our family: every kind gesture, every visit, every invitation, every conversation, every ounce of forgiveness, every defeat of sin and submission to Christ, not because Mike is dying but because ....the Holy Spirit is living.                                        

As for Me and My House

     It's after midnight, and I'm about finished with the hard work of parting with the majority of the books that have lasted till this move.  Now, I had sworn off years ago nursery rhymes, Disney, anything even slightly promoting "good" witchcraft, and anthropomorphism, which leaves no wonder that children think animals know their imminent demise. But, somehow along the way, I let down my guard, compromised for sentimentality or for traditionalism, because we can't seem to get enough of good ole country living stories.
     You know, we wonder why our kids are satisfied with things that are "unprofitable," futile, and vain.  Yet, look what we've been "feeding" them, since they were old enough to listen.  How is it that a Christian would read her child a book that her God has intentionally been left out of?  Why is it okay that the lessons He has taught us from the beginning are so easily portrayed as someone else's morals, as though he does not exist?  No wonder we need a hero; there is no God.
     This process is gut wrenching for me, as selective as I thought I'd been, especially the young children's ones and those they learned to read to. Because certain of these books represent windows of time and memories with each child individually.  But how can I continue to harbor them when I know what I know now?  In this age of information, it doesn't take long to find out: that when a person looks up the author of Sarah, Plain and Tall, "Christian" is automatically marked out of the search because there is no association; that when Louisa May Alcott is searched, we find her father was a Transcendentalist and the apple didn't fall far from the tree; that L. M. Montgomery of "Anne of Green Gables" fame wrote books that were "moral, but not Christian," and was disillusioned by religion as was evidenced by occult and humanism themes in her later work; that John Piper writes that Robert Louis Stevenson went so far as to join a club with the motto, "Ignore everything that our parents taught us," renouncing, of course, the faith of his father; that Mark Twain was quoted saying, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so," and, "if Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be - a Christian;" that Pooh's creator's son said that if he had spent the time on him that he did his characters that he might have had a father; and that even Old Yeller has nothing firm to stand on.  
      Then, there are Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew books on Focus on the Family's pluggedin's review that say "None" under Christian beliefs.  Fancy Nancy, that we have many of, has no Christian anything yet is sold on Christianbooks.  That should be an alert to how far we've gone. And an article about the American Girl company says that there has not been a new book accompanying a doll with a Christmas story since 2000.
     Have we been the silly women led astray the Bible speaks plainly of?  The one thing I can say is that I'm glad the kids have been workers more than readers, else they might have spent many idle hours with these books, of milk instead of meat.  A good thing is that we can hold on to tales like Pollyanna and The Swiss Family Robinson and Little House (although it sounds like Pioneer Girl has something more to offer than the others), and even Pride and Prejudice.  And there are still mainstays like C. S. Lewis, John Bunyan, and Elizabeth Prentiss.

     We get one shot at this.  Make it count.

I'm Worn

     I'm tired, run down.  All the activity looks good on Facebook: 6 doctor appointments in one day, seeing all 7 kids on others, doing anything from checking on a baby horse Michael delivered to racing down the drag strip with Mike.  When I posted that, in 24 hours, Mike had been flung by a tornado, Miranda had broken her leg at work, and Melody had had a seizure waking up from oral surgery, I got a lot of prayer and concern comments.  My first thought was I hadn't gotten my point across that this is pretty predictable for us.
     As the days have gone by, I've been hoping those prayers are still in play.  Because often it isn't the event that's as cataclysmic as the fallout is, the upheaval of daily routine.  Now, sometimes it's God moving us out of our comfort zones, but oftentimes it's the devil removing us from the discipline of Godly living.
     When I'm "running," there's less sleep, more caffeine, whatever food, a disorderly house, more acne, less exercise, more haze, less accountability, more irritability, and more importantly - less intimacy, on every level with everybody.  I have an actual list of times when the distraction of exhaustion led to life altering circumstances in our family.
     So, I've learned to guard the fundamentals, to rid anything that isn't essential, to welcome the cleansing fire.  Since we've moved back in together in March, we have been careful not to reintroduce things that don't matter, clutter of any kind. I have learned during the separation to take things directly to the Lord for his approval or disapproval.  "Seeming good" is no longer good enough.  I want answers.  I want God.
     You know what it is on these busy days?  I realized it crying in the shower while ago.  In only a matter of days, I miss my Father.  I miss waking up talking to Him and lingering there.  I miss studying His word with great intention and wonder.  I miss finding His will so neatly pieced together, in the little things throughout the day and conversations.  I know these things can and should happen regardless, but there is something about home, something about not being in a rush every morning, something about looking forward to how I might please my Lord by pleasing my husband, something about sharing my God with my children in all things, something about knowing what's going on at home, something about having time to maintain and feel like a woman, something about pulling things together for a meal, something about sitting in the sun or watering the plants. There is life in these things.
     When I get led away from home, something begins to die; everything begins to die.  That was part of the unraveling of last summer. I remember vividly lying down in complete and sheer exhaustion the afternoon before our 28th anniversary, even posting the song, "Worn."  After all, in the prior month alone, McKala had delivered twins and Melody had had brain surgery, among other things.  That day my life spun out of control, much because of distance and disillusionment.
     So, I've seen up close and personal that, "The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: ...," the very fiber of family, by dividing out, one by one, and by throwing off attentions so that yet another might be lost.
     But God ... but God continues, " ...I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”  (John 10:10).

Teach Me

     I woke up in the bed in Madalynn's room again but with tight shoulders from a stressful dream. Soon enough I realized I had the migraine aura.  I took a Benadryl, got an ice pack, and went back to bed.  I woke up feeling okay.  But within minutes, it returned, compounded.  I got 3 more Benadryl, a strong cup of coffee, nose spray, and a bag of broccoli (because we can't keep a good ice pack to save our lives). 
    All that came through for me.  But I'm as ornery as a bull.  I've gotten onto everyone, which cleared the room.  Macklynn and Madalynn are outside even though her wrist still hurts from being sprained while I was in the hospital with Melody, and even though Macklynn has allergy symptoms.  Everybody in the house does and is probably the real reason I started having a migraine.
     I hate feeling this way, not in charge of myself.  It's so sad to me that people would choose to numb their reality like this.  I want them to be free of what inhibits them from seeking the Lord, the only solace they will ever find. "There is no peace, says the Lord, for the wicked." (Isaiah 48:22). 
     Contrarily, Melody has not needed any pain medicine today, not even Ibuprofen.  I am floored.  I can't believe my own disbelief. Just like that, she is fine.  I'm shaking my head even now.  Five days ago we were readmitted into Baptist with uncontrolled pain and declining vision in one eye. 
     In the interim, Mike's shoulder pain has taken a turn for the better also.
     Question, do you ever get so used to the misery that you don't know what to do without it?  I confessed this weekend to an old friend that it's as though I need to stay in a low place to stay close to the Lord.  How shameful is that?
      But my children have exhibited what I so often do not.  I found out that two of them sacrificed their personal liberties to sanctification while they were on vacation.  It is a rare thing that a parent could find out anything better.  Yet, there is unrelated information I have found out this weekend that I wish I hadn't, especially since I can't do a thing about it.  But can I?  There is always prayer, which is the greatest of all resources.  I have seen the Lord already at work about it. 
    
     Just now, I had to go dig something out of a bag in the back of the truck.  Never fails that when I clean out the kids' stuff, I always throw away something I shouldn't.  One kid is mad that I wouldn't let them leave with another.  I accused one of something they didn't do.  It's like when I pray for the Lord to teach one, and particularly in regard to my husband, I am immediately convicted of my own form of that sin.  So, I have to switch up in the middle, for him to teach "us."  And by the end of the prayer, it is always teach "me."   Nothing like marriage to teach you how bad a person you really are.
     Contentment, something else my old friend and I talked over, to be thankful for all the good in today while it is still called "today." We view lust/greed as the worst of many sins, when all it might be is wanting what is not meant to be yours not necessarily forever, but yet.  The disregard of any commandment is the mistrust that God knows vastly more what is better for our souls and those of our families. 
    Our family, as it stands, will expand by two on June 12th.  McKala isn't due until July 11th, but all things considered including that the babies are resting firmly breach, taking them really is safer for everyone involved.  I still can't entertain the idea of new life. I feel like it will be the "lose it" of all losing its.  It's bad enough that I lost it in Walmart, of all places.  Four days after Melody's original admission to Baptist, I was restocking a little, in a daze.  I can't remember what started the conversation about Melody with the cashier. But by the time I was paying, we both were crying.
    I almost lost it in Walgreens too, when they would not refill Melody's pain medicine, because there was a discrepancy between that and the prior prescription.  Thankfully, someone I know was standing there, so I was especially accountable for what was going to come out of my mouth. Within a few minutes, the pharmacist overrode the problem, and I was on my way. 
     It's been like that the whole time. When I thought we would have to battle the system, individuals have made exemptions and extensions for Melody's assignments and exams.  The doors have been wide open for us to walk through.  To Melody's credit though, every teacher has reported that she is a "great student."  Reputation walks before us as we are led of the Lord, which is also what invalidates the gossip from mean girls and perverted boys that she has been this place and done that thing, when she was never there to have done those things.  It doesn't prevent them from hateful looks and catcalls in the hallways though.  She wrote a poem about it, which the teacher asked her to read aloud.  She has been publicly mocked for it.  But she stands strong ...and goes places like she did last night, fishing with her friend and her parents, aunt, and grandmother.
     There will be no fishing at the lake this Memorial Day.  The docks are flooded.  It goes without saying that we are free to be concerned with such frivolities because of the ones we give tribute to today.  Sacrifice, a fading trait.  Without personal sacrifice, there is no real love, no real purpose.
     Again, it begins at home, with family.  Last Thursday, Mike and I were still at the hospital with Melody and needed Michael to stay home from the job he loves, to babysit for us. He agreed without hesitation, made a big breakfast, and finished the sanding Miranda started on the baby bed that Victoria gave for McKala.  Friday, her day off, Miranda went to McKala's appointment with her, cleaned her house, and took her shopping.  And wouldn't you know it, when a person is trying their best, the world falls in around them?  But true to form, Miranda keeps moving, like the good soldier she is determined to be. 
     It has not been all work.  Mike took me out to eat, and who was there but Megan and Shannon?  We all went to the theater together.  And, of course, the phone vibrated right in a pivotal scene.  But between the uncertainties of Melody's and McKala's conditions, I had to find out who it was.  It was only Madalynn wanting to know if she could make herbal tea.  I don't know if this speaks to good training or to their fear of me.  I can be a tyrant (which I'm guessing "rant" comes from). Toward training, I'll mention that today she asked if she could have the other half of her chocolate pie.  She said, "Yesterday you didn't say 'Lord willing;' you said I could have it today."  She had me.  And as she sat at the table, she said, "I think the refrigerator is broken.  It's making a boiling sound." 
     It was the ice maker.  That's how much either the TV has been on or the tablets have been running lately.  Silence, so rare.  I'd like to say we'll be back in the groove soon, but McKala has requested that I stay with her for the first week as she learns to nurse both babies.  There will be another family push to care for Macklynn and Madalynn.  It turns out Melody's surgery already having been done will lend us a babysitter that week, the week after school gets out and ideally when she would have gotten a job.  I recognize that sacrifice, and we have covered her on some costs we wouldn't have otherwise.
     McKala hasn't gone to work in two months (which the owner there and the one at her prior job actually were brought to tears over). So, she doesn't quite know what to do with herself.  She has things prepared: the new and the old, the white woven cotton blankets and sheepskins that were hers and Michael's, my "almost" Irish Twins, the closest I will ever come to real twins.  We found them while she was here last and the baby book she didn't look twice at when she was about to be married that finally came to life in her hands, as she sat there taking care of  Melody who was throwing up from the combination of pain and strong medicines and didn't want her to leave her side. 
     Funny how our need for each brings us closer than any other thing can.  This I am learning to accept.  "So, teach us, Lord ...teach me," the way David Jeremiah described this week about the Lord's Prayer, "to have a heart coming in praise to You, the Almighty God, and understanding that in Your love and dominion, I can rest in and be thankful for Your goodness and perfect will." 
    Without praise and thankfulness, there is no such thing as contentment and peace. 

We're Home

     I just heard Megan and Melody drive up.  I'm waiting for them to find me in what we fondly call "the sideyard," where I weedeated the overgrown natural area yesterday so that we could hang up our hammocks and have a bonfire tonight.  We're missing four of the kids, but that's all right because two have been almost 30 miles out to sea with Dad today.  One has stayed back at the beach house to relax with Mom on this Mother's Day.  And the other spent the night here.
     Timothy and McKala came last night and helped us make fajitas and homemade salsa.  She said she was so dizzy at church this morning that she didn't stand for prayer.


     That was Sunday. This is Friday. I brought Melody back to Wake Forest Baptist Hospital on Tuesday after she could barely comprehend and particularly not see her classwork. Last fall, she was finally diagnosed after four years of headaches different doctors pondered were caused by bite alignment, hair heaviness, or hormones, with Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension. That means for her the "bottle neck" in the veins which leave her brain let spinal fluid build up in her head, so much so that her optic nerves swell and cause her to lose vision, never mind the chronic headaches she suffers.
     Tuesday was her breaking point. She said there was no way she could do EOGs in that condition, much less study for them. Her right vessel is dominant, so it's the one they went through, her Femoral Artery in the inner thigh, to carry stents into by catheter.
     No holes in the skull for a shunt, no shaved head, no complications, right? During the exploratory catheterization the night before the surgery, Fentanyl was administered too quickly and she all but stopped breathing on the table. She was awake and saw the doctor tear off his scrubs, start grabbing equipment, barking out orders, and having people called in "Stat!" THAT is why I call for prayer in times like these. Yes, what Melody has could be something worse; it's a condition, not a disease. BUT as Satan would have it, uncomplicated procedures become complicated.
     I've been reading in Ecclesiates these last days. It says, "Things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath. This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all ..." (Ecc. 9:2-3). This is easy for me to quote. But I'm not the one suffering. Just know that calamity is never a reason to denounce Christ. Our reaction to and through it is what proves who we are and are not in Christ.
     Yesterday was bad. We were set to leave but were on the tail end of the meds. They had taken her off the IV meds and there were no orders to give her anything else before we left. That's when the pain became unmanaged, and it took four hours to get orders to put the IV back in. Then, in the wee hours the night nurse decided Melody was "sleeping soundly," and she let all her medicine lapse. When Melody woke up, she was crying out loud. I can't say that I've seen her do that more than one time in the last four years. They got her meds going, but it was too late. It took almost two hours before they got it back under control, finally with morphine.
     This morning is round two of trying to leave. She's off the IVs again. They've switched her oral meds to stronger/different ones. Another neurosurgeon came in this morning and said that the pain stems from the fact that the nerves are not in the brain, but they are in the covering of the brain, the dura, which is exactly where they've placed stents a centimeter in diameter. Imagine a large foreign object exerting pressure on the fibers, trying to expand itself between your brain and skull.
     They can't say when the pain will subside. They can't say how long the stent will last. They don't know why this phenomenon happens. Seems to me that it's an anatomy defect. All I know is that this is feeding her passion for medicine. AND that prayer is always needed. Because although, some of the people on staff here at Brenner Children's Hospital are the best of the best, they still are human and do err. It's a big reason I pray so heartily for McKala. Yes, her babies are "safe," but she still has an active case of walking pneumonia, mycoplasma that is a particularly sinister and hard to kill bacteria, which the infectious disease doctor wants untreated. The "dizziness" at church I mentioned earlier is because her pulse is racing. The stress on her body is keeping her heart meds that she takes for POTS (a condition she's seen for at Duke and is likely caused by the four walking pneumonia infections she's had since she was 14) from working effectively. Her heart is in overdrive trying to "call up" the blood from her lower extremities because her nervous system does not do its job.
      As I was telling Pastor Dale, who so apparently loves the Lord, when he came here to see us, it seems that Satan has realized that he cannot have the hearts of my children, so he will "try" their bodies to discourage them. I am not devastated over the physical state, not that I wasn't in great distress last night and could've just kicked myself that I didn't set my own alarm for her meds. What would be despairing though is to know that any one of them denied Christ in the end or lived their faith laxidazically, which is the same. While we are waiting for that end, we are tested, put to the fire. I pray that it pushes each of us to crave His Word and to seek Him fervently in unceasing prayer, not always in requests but in praise, that we might trust and obey. There really is "no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey," similar to what Soloman had to say after all his getting of wisdom then folly,"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." (Ecc. 12:13).

      It's Friday night, and we're home.  They finally found the right cocktail of oral medicine to keep Melody's pain at a reasonable level.  It'll just be Melody, Mike, and me for the weekend, since Megan has taken Madalynn to Georgia for their twin cousins' birthdays and graduations, where they'll also meet up with Miranda, Michael, and Macklynn on the way back from Florida. Madalynn and I didn't exactly get the week we'd planned together.  But we did get to swim at Aunt Cindy's pool and go to that bakery she's always asking me about.  Mike colored with her AND did some major cleaning for me.  (He said if his shoulder's gonna hurt either way, he might as well do something.)  And she got to spend two days with our friends, the Heacock's, while I was at the hospital.   
     I just love the kids all being back in North Carolina, Megan at work, Michael at school, and McKala married.  They went from somewhat of a disconnect to doing things together regularly.  Some of the things I was afraid Macklynn and Madalynn would miss out on, even the travel, are suddenly upon them. 
    It got started up in December when Michael and Melody convinced Megan it was a good idea to buy a timeshare weekend while they were in Bass Pro Shop.  So, on Michael's spring break, when he could've been "other places," he went with Megan, McKala, and Melody to Charleston. 
     During Melody's spring break, she stayed at McKala and Timothy's house for two days, tie dying shirts, buying ducks for his grandmother, and going to a free Triple A ballgame put on by Duke Energy, where Timothy is gainfully employed as a lineman.  They kindly invited Macklynn, so Melody drove all the way home to get him.  The next two days Melody spent with Megan playing softball, hiking, cooking, and going to the gym.  Melody was invited to do a lot of unseemly things, and she chose to stay on the up and up, with family. 
     That's the deal.  And although, they sometimes get a little too loose, crass, or blunt with each other; they are forever bound together.  They've spent their childhood days playing, learning, and working and their teenage years volunteering all over the east coast, training, and even working together sometimes.  They hold each other accountable.  They are built in counsel and chaperones to each other.  They don't have to find a place to "hang out," where things might go south.  They don't have peer pressure, because they didn't grow up with it.  Community really does start at home. 
     So does teamwork, just like the shower we put on for McKala.  Melody baked another incredible lemon blueberry cake that was six layers.  Miranda and Megan bought decorations.  And Miranda pulled them together to make a first class affair.  Megan bought games, but the conversations were so lively that we didn't need them.  So, they're tucked away for the next time.  Madalynn was so elated to be asked to go with the "big girls" to get a manicure before the shower.  She's learned the value of saving her money to get to do big girl things. 
     There's an annual local music festival, and we all got to go because Miranda volunteered two whole days with the fire department parking cars.  The tickets would've been many hundreds of dollars. Then, a couple of weekends ago, after Michael, Miranda, Melody, and Megan rode in her new Jeep to Mount Airy, McKala and Timothy came to spend the night with us.  I pulled off some homemade pizza, and we all watched a movie. 
     Last week after work, Megan and Miranda put in an AC compressor in Miranda's car.  A couple of days later, Megan and Mike put one in my van.  Megan didn't go on the fishing trip this year, so when the three left, she went to the movies with Timothy and McKala.  I love first of all that Mom and Dad invite them and that Miranda was willing to take Macklynn on the getaway she's so been looking forward to. And I love that the boys are there together. 
     There is a seven year gap between them.  And Michael's been away at school and working when he's at home.  He managed though to take Macklynn to the lake to try out the boat.  He also took and stayed with Macklynn for the free Y summer camp day.  Above all, he took him to his favorite trout stream up the mountain, which is normally a solemn place he has for himself Sunday afternoons, near Dr. Miller's place.  Michael's either interned with or worked for him for four years now.  He got to do a large animal call last week, and they rode together with Megan to have lunch.  I like how they know each other's "others."  There is a weaving together that only God can do. 
     Melody's good friend, Kaylee, came bearing gifts to the hospital and you can bet that big sister was there this week, too.  Megan was a second mother to Melody.  "Megan" was even Melody's first word.  I was on the phone with my friend, Amy, and we both heard it.
     So, here I am at 11:25 pm scratching my arms from the poison ivy I got myself into weedeating.  Melody is resting, thoroughly medicated with 2 Percocet and 800 mg of Motrin intermittently. I can hear the videos Mike is watching in bed.  We don't normally go to bed separately, so I'd better head on in there.  Our oldest is headed south with the youngest, and the second will be headed north with the boys tomorrow, forever giving me something to pray over and about, but mostly to give praise for.  My life is better than I ever imagined it might be.  I'm so profoundly thankful that in our ignorance, simplicity, and youth, we were still able to understand and appreciate the command of fruitfulness and are here together to see what continues to grow from it ...and to hear those fishing stories when they get home.   

A Day in the Life of this Mother

    I woke up this morning in Madalynn's room in the bed we made for Aunt Mandy to sleep in after she and Memaw drove all the way from Georgia for the baby shower. Since Mike is still dealing with pain from the shoulder surgery, coupled with sleep apnea, I usually have to get up in the night. 
    In a departure from my normal morning priorities, I got country ribs boiling to bake for bbq later.  And I got a load of laundry going to ensure Macklynn has all he needs for the adventure he's setting out on with Miranda and Michael tomorrow.  Mom and Dad have invited the kids down once more to their Florida vacation rental to spend the days offshore fishing with Dad.  A change of scenery will be welcome, even to Mady and me left here at home. 
    I'm still diligently praying that the Lord would provide responsibility and exposure for our younger children who don't have other little people to take care of and nothing more than two dogs and two cats to tend to.  But just in the last month, not so much yet in work for the kids but opportunities in the face of Mike's hours being cut to 38, Macklynn and Madalynn have been whisked away by our friend, Shannon, to Mystery Hill up near Tweetsie; Macklynn to the Y summer camp fun day, to fish in the boat Pop sent up, and to a Triple-A baseball game; Madalynn to get sister manicures with money she saved from Christmas and to the baby shower for McKala.
     McKala, it's coming full circle.  My young ones will be aunts and uncles, with someone to be responsible for.  It all struck me hard the other day and again today when I was listening to my play list and the baby music that I planned for the shower came on.  The sobering realization finally came over me that spirits breathed into new lives by God will once more be in my realm.  I haven't had much anticipation, neither did I for my own, because children are not simply goals, legacies, or experiences.  There is no true preparation of understanding to meet completely unique eternal souls.  And that they are identical just blows my mind. That a barrier finally "appeared" between the two of them to prevent them from a high mortality rate is answered prayer.  That they are both already around 4 1/2 pounds at 31 weeks is amazing.

    I just got back from the high school having had to bring Melody another 800 mg of Tylenol.  I don't know what this means.  It appears that she is having a spinal leak from the lumbar puncture she had last week.  Her spinal fluid pressure is back up to 28, normal being 8 resting.  We're waiting for an appointment with the neurosurgeon who did her catheterization last fall to determine that she has stenonis/narrowing of the veins exiting her brain.  The remedy he recommends is the insertion of stents.
     So, I cannot afford to have hindered prayers.  I have a daughter with a high risk pregnancy, a daughter who is in line for what amounts to brain surgery, a daughter who is training to go into fires for a living, a daughter who is preparing for disaster relief learning to drive a tractor trailer, and a son who is a up against a line of 300 pound football players now that he has been moved to Center, ironically the position he started at as a little boy.  That's just the big stuff.  We have other diagnoses we've received recently.  Plus, four of us have caught the latest sore throat and cough.  That makes 6 times Macklynn's been sick since January.  All these things together have brought my immunity so low that what I normally can stifle with rest and peace has gotten the better of me, forcing me onto daily meds. 

     But today, today I got to sit on the porch for a while basking in the sun, like a big ole mother bear out of hibernation, in the chair Michael made for me for Mother's Day three years back, listening to music on the phone Megan got me for Christmas, and seeing the good in all that's happening.  As the devil would have it, we'd stay wound up in prayers over the physical state of our loved ones.  And I do, but what gives me great joy is knowing the place I will be with them all one of these days, and that during these hard ones we're to affect as many people as possible toward Christ. 
     The Lord has led me to raise the children to get up in the morning with a smile, regardless of the emotional and physical pain they carry, with hope for the best and with thanksgiving that it's not worse.  That's why most people who know that Melody just finished up a championship softball season would never think she has a debilitating condition, left untreated causes blindness from sheer pressure on the optic nerves.  They don't see me taking her medicine to school for the headaches, and some of them even doubt the kinds of procedures she's had done already. 
     I'm convinced that if the Lord doesn't heal us that not only is He teaching us but we also are meant to influence the ones who are helping us.  During her spinal tap last week, which is without anything but a local anesthetic, a nurse shared with Melody her daughter's attempted suicide.  Whatever Melody said brought her to tears. 
     No matter the age, a professing Christian ought to be counsel to someone, available and willing always.  Otherwise, something is amiss.  Look, we don't even have to go out searching for some special opportunity.  They're everywhere, like the girl at the grocery store.  I usually get her line.  Her name is Selena, so I wrote it down on my prayer list.  I was in a big hurry two nights ago to get home to finish making enough supper for the guest list that had grown to eleven throughout the day.  She could see the frustration in my face and so that she would not take offense, I explained and found an in to tell her I thought enough of her to have her on my prayer list.  Her eyes widened and she eagerly whispered, "Pray about 'this' for me."  Now I know she knows that I care, and next time I'll be prepared to ask her if she knows the Lord. 
     It's not that hard to figure out, this Christian life.  As a wife and mother, it involves pleasing my Lord, helping my husband, and training my children.  By helping my husband, I am pleasing the Lord.  By training my children, I am helping my husband and pleasing my Lord. And all the while "reaching forth" my "hands to the needy" and "opening" my mouth in "wisdom" and having the "law of kindness" in my "tongue" to anyone and everyone I come in contact with.  Period.  Every other endeavor burns.