So much to say, and yet so little.

I’m tired, but it’s a good tired. A happy tired.  A fulfilled tired.

More and more I love the verse in Luke(2:19) that says But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.  It tells me so much; that even Mary, the mother of Jesus, did not understand everything, that she kept the mysteries in her heart and thought about them.  Pondered them, like I ponder my own mysteries.

Even Mary, the mother of Jesus, did not always understand. 

I saw someone at the track yesterday, someone I last saw standing on a street corner in Charlotte, waiting for the light to change, as I was waiting…for the light to change…for change.  The wind blew his hair, ruffling the blue work shirt he wore, the lunch box he always carried swinging on his hand. And then the light changed, and moments later Sharon and I were on foot on the sidewalk, the stupid black heeled shoes I wore slipping off my feet until I finally let them go, and my bare feet pounded the hot summer sidewalk.  What were we running from? Him? Ourselves?  The microfilm in the library that would finally answer my one remaining question, the answers I did not, particularly, want, but was required to have?  Running from the lack of a death certificate, a picture, an old memory faded in time?

I have no idea now.

I am tired. I am thinking tonight of David, and his face blends with the face I saw in the crowd. Somedays the ghosts all blend together; and the list is starting to be long. Tomorrow night I will probably delete this, let it be lost to the vacuum of cyberspace.  This is probably something I should not write.

I met someone.

If he googles me, he will run across this site.  I know this.  He majored in theater, and now remodels houses.    He wants to move back to North Carolina. He likes country music, NASCAR, real barbecue and sweet tea.  If you listen closely to his voice, you will pick up just the tiniest hint of a southern accent. 

Most astonishing of all, his chosen denomination is PCA Presybterian. 

His name is Bill.

 I thought about this as I caught just the tiniest glimpse of an old but not forgotten face in the crowd today, I thought about Bill, this theater house remodeler Presbyterian Tarheel. 

And I pondered.

I was angry when I wrote that last entry(now deleted).  Hurt, wounded, angry. 

Now I am simply tired.

I’ve been at the track, then at work, listening to the litany of crimes a daughter has committed. Lies and deceit and disobedience and manipulative and the mother just wants to throw in the towel.

I am tired, too.  Tired of this world.  Tired of the pain we cause each other, tired of the grief I see in people’s eyes, tired of the anger and greed that can murder.

I am going to take a nap for a few minutes, get up, brush my hair, and go back to work.  And hope, somehow, that the world rights itself before it is too late.

And it’s alright
Yeah, I’ll be fine
Don’t worry about this heart of mine
Just take your love and hit the road
Cause nothing you can do or say
You’re gonna break my heart anyway
So just leave the pieces when you go

 

Another day.
Another newspaper article with a face I know all too well.

This time it was David Cady. 25 years old; quiet, intelligent, peaceful, murdered.

Shot three times.

Dead.

How is it even possible?  So young, so alive, with so much promise, now so senselessly dead.

David, the last person in the world you’d expect to be murdered, was shot to death. 

He lived in New Mexico, though from Watkins originally; studying astrophysics(why am I not surprised that David wound up in astrophysics?), shot by a neighbor after David confronted him over the mistreatment of animals.  Why does that not surprise me, either?  There was little that bothered him more than injustice, more than mistreatment of the innocent and helpless.

And I am left with the age old question, the one for which there are no answers…

Why?

 

I learned several very important things yester-evening at the Chemung County Fair:

#1: I may be hick, but I’m not that hick. 

#2: Middle aged women should not wear tube tops. Ever.  There are things that I can live forever without seeing, and that’s one of them.

#3:  I’m not a fan of cows.  I attribute this to several things in my life:

(a) My grandfather is missing two fingers that he lost in a farm accident, but until I was old enough to know better, he very seriously had me believing that a cow ate them.  I truly believed that if I got too close to a cow, it would eat me.

(b) I am lactose intolerant.  This means that since I was very young, when I had milk, I would throw up. 

Thus, I grew up believing that cows ate people and produced poison. 
There’s a large part of me that still believes this, particular after being nearly peed on last night by a large bovine.

#4: There is such a thing as a 900 pound hog, and I saw it last night

#5: Jo Dee Messina has never done a bad song. 

And to illustrate, here is the last song she sang last night(and my personal favorite):

 

Well you filled up my head,
With so many lies.
Twisted my heart
Til something snapped inside.
I’d like to give it one more try
But my give a damn’s busted.

You can crawl back home
Say you were wrong,
Stand out in the yard and
Cry all night long.
Go ahead and water my lawn.
My give a damn’s busted.

I really wanna care,
I wanna feel somethin’
Let me dig a little deeper…
No…
Sorry…
Nothin’

You can say you’ve got issues.
You can say you’re a victim.
It’s all your parents fault, I mean
After all you didn’t pick em
Maybe somebody else has got time to listen.
My give a damn’s busted.


Well your relatives said
It was all just a mistake
A product of the prozac
And your co-dependent ways
So … who’s your new enabler these days
My give a damn’s busted.

I really wanna care,
I wanna feel somethin’
Let me dig a little deeper…
Naw..

Still nothing.

It’s a desperate situation
No tellin’ what you’ll do

If I don’t forgive ya,
You say your life is through
Come on, give me something I can use

My give a damn is busted

 

 

I had a nightmare this morning.
I dreamt I was married–which in itself doesn’t make it a nightmare, just an impossibility.  I couldn’t see my husband’s face, only feel him…his warmth. Dirt underneath ragged fingernails. The smell of concrete.  And then I realized we were not married yet, but that we would be, someday, in some world.
And then I dreamt my husband’s boss told him to go get something, to take his truck and go pick up something for work.  And my husband, who was not my husband but would be, did, and he was standing beside something heavy(a tree?) and suddenly there was a loud rumble.

And the trees fell on my husband, and crushed him.

It was the worst dream I’d ever had.  It was the most real dream I ever had.
I woke up and prayed, and prayed, and prayed for the strangest thing ever–my future husband’s safety.  The husband I don’t even think I will ever have. 

But sometimes, what God asks us to do does not make sense, and I woke up this morning from the dream, around 7 AM–I knew that God was asking me to pray for my husband’s safety.  And I still don’t believe I will get married…but I trust God. And I prayed like never before, even if none of it made sense.

And I have been carrying that with me all day, about things not making sense. About the horror of that dream.
About the horror of this world.

And then my new case files today; not details I can share, just broken children trying to find their way in a world that has not been kind to them.  I’m not codependent enough to think I can change their lives; change is not something one person can facilitate in another, it is something that must come from within.  I’m not foolish enough to think that I can change someone’s life by pouring my own into them; I choose, instead, to pour my time and energy and love into the black hole of broken hearts, knowing full well I will probably never see the results of my love. 
Is this codependency? That strange need some people have to be needed?   We learn in general psych that true codependents, not the Hollywood version, but truth, is that codependents are people who believe their worth comes from others, who have low self esteem, who often grow up in a family where anger and substance abuse was a way of life.  They grow up to find themselves caring too much about others, rescuing the ones they love from the natural consequences of their actions, tend to attach themselves and love only people that need them, feel guilty when they assert themselves, and can’t form proper boundaries.   Physically, they develop ulcers and intestinal tract problems, probably the result of pent up emotions and anger towards those they couldn’t save.

I deal with them every day, because they, who are usually women, seem to be drawn to adopting troubled children.  It never works out well.

I ask myself every day if I am in danger of becoming this way.  If I care too much.  I don’t think so, my therapist doesn’t think so, and none of my friends think so.  I have way too much self esteem for that. 

But if not this, what am I doing?  Why am I throwing myself into helping these lost causes?  Why have I chosen this as my life’s work? 

Solely this.

Because many years ago, I picked up the newspaper and saw a friend’s face on the front page.  I was not yet a teenager, and still startled at the cruelty and tragedy of life, the way it strikes those you least expect.  Those who have had too much.  And I chose to fight that cruelty, that tragedy, however I could, wherever I could.  It is like writing for me, this working with broken people; both my poetry and my counseling are my ways of coming to terms with the unexplained pain that I see, that I have felt. 

My poetry, my work with combat veterans, my work with abused children; it is all one and the same.  It is my way of trying to make sense of the chaos and the horror around me.  More than one person has explained to me how futile this is, how, perhaps, self-serving.  More than one person has shared with me the foolishness of expecting a loaf of bread to erase blood.  Ah, yes, the foolishness. 

Perhaps they are right.  Perhaps I have boughten into a childish, foolish thought.  Perhaps nothing I ever do will ever amount to anything; that I will never get married, or my future husband was never in any sort of danger two days ago, or I will never bind the heart of a broken child.  Perhaps nothing I do is, really, worth anything at all.

I don’t know.  But then, I was not asked to save the world, only to light the candle in my corner of it.

I just wanna be mad for a while.

Bless the beasts and the children
For in this world they have no voice
They have no choice

Bless the beasts and the children
For the world can never be
The world they see

Light their way
When the darkness surrounds them
Give them love
Let it shine all around them

Bless the beasts and the children
Give them shelter from a storm
Keep them safe
Keep them warm

Light their way
When the darkness surrounds them
Give them love
Let it shine all around them

Bless the beasts and the children
Give them shelter from a storm
Keep them safe
Keep them warm

 

                    

 

I am tired.  And weary.  If it wasn’t for my kids right now; if it wasn’t for their eyes that have seen so much more pain than my own, if it wasn’t for their joy in the face of unspeakable heartbreak, if it wasn’t for the consistent reminder they give me that we are so much more than what has happened to us and what we have done…

But even for all the heartache, all the misery, and the horrible things we humans find to do to one another, it is still a beautiful world.

 

This is my town.