at work

Scotty Smith was the speaker at the most recent Laity Lodge retreat I attended.  It was the Youth Camp Alumni Retreat, and I am not an alum.  (My summer camps were in Maine, in Vermont, in North Carolina, and North Georgia).  But my friend Catherine is and she invited me and pointed out that I have enrolled multiple children at camp three years in a row and am an alum of the Lodge in my own right as I sign up for retreats as often as I can.  She lent me her legitimacy.

Scotty said this, “When I get to heaven, I expect that we will all stand around for the first 10,000 years saying ‘so THAT’s what you were up to!’”, referring to God and his great workings in and through our lives.  In all the ways that we don’t notice while they are happening.

I think that’s probably true.  To some very limited extent, it’s true for me now.  I can look back at my own history and see God at work.  Some events were terribly sad and even scary, but it wasn’t long until I knew that was God’s hand protecting me and his voice that called me to pay attention here - important information was being relayed.

My powers of discernment – of being able to dissect a relationship, a situation, an interaction – have improved significantly since my mind has become more clear and not as cluttered.  (Any divorce involves a period of temporary insanity on everybody’s part.  It is no one’s finest hour.)  But I often miss clues and obvious signs.  And it’s only later that I think “so THAT’s what that was all about.”

For me, writing is the tangible act of reflecting.  It is lining up all my little observations on paper as I think of them and in so doing, patterns emerge and truths are revealed.  Even more importantly, God reveals himself when I take the time to look for him.

I don’t know what he has in store for me or my family.  I don’t know what he wants for me except that I continue to protect and care for these children.  Beyond that, I don’t have any idea where he wants me to go or what I should do.  But I can look back – even in the recent past, and see him at work.  When I was sick and tired of making all the decisions, he moved my Dad to drive eight hours each way on a weekend to talk over the hard decisions, evaluate financial plans, determine survival strategies for the workday and even the future.  He sent me a buyer who loves my house like I do, one to whom I can feel confident selling.  He sends me signs and indications of trouble in friendships and lets me know where it’s safe to place my affections, and shows me when I need to step back and let other people have the dignity to be themselves and make their own decisions, without my trying to influence them.  He sent my mother to help me significantly by packing up my house – starting with the most densely-populated areas – the kitchen and the garage.

There is no question that he is present and intimately involved in the things that just seem to happen to me.  I am enraptured by the masterful weaving that is at play.  I am grateful for the way he encourages me to guard my always-too-eager heart.  I appreciate the friends he has chosen for me.  I can honestly say that I don’t have anyone in my close circle now who seeks anything less than what benefits me.  I see it in the way Rachel guards my real estate interests, how Kate and Carmen are actively approaching my small-house remodel project with my budget in mind.  Friends call to say “I want to help you pack.”  He sent Leslie over to man the impromptu garage sale while I met with the workmen. My mother reminds me to schedule the movers asap so they will be available in my very tight timeframe.  All of those are God working through the people who love me.

I am grateful for the ability to see him at work, even if I can’t see his completed picture yet.  Hopefully there will time for that in heaven.

constant forward motion

My friend announced the other night that he had signed up for a 100-mile run.  I wouldn’t even know how to approach something like that so I showed my ignorance by asking “How long will that take?  Like 12 hours?”

No.  Apparently he expects to be running – on his own two feet – for 30 hours in a row. 

I am incredulous.  “Do you not sleep?  What do you eat?  Do you stop and eat?  Do you walk some?  Are you f-ing crazy?”  (That is something of a family joke.  Asking someone if they are f-ing crazy when they spend their days in Europe hiking Montblanc instead of drinking wine.  That’s about how I feel about my friend’s plan.)

He said “Constant Forward Motion.  That’s the strategy for doing something like this.  You move forward constantly.  No matter how tired you are or how much you ache.  Keep moving forward.” 

I didn’t get around to asking him the larger question, which is “Why would you ever?” because then he and I acknowledged that “constant forward motion” is a pretty good motto for everything.

Constant forward motion is my mother’s strategy for packing up my house.  I helped a little bit yesterday.  I have helped none today as I had hearings and my work needed me.  She is really good at throwing things away and I am good at saying “Don’t throw that away!  I might need it!”  Which of course I don’t. 

It’s just that I bought it or received it as a gift one time.  So it’s mine.  And I might need it.  One day I might be looking for it and I won’t be able to find it and I will wish that I had it.  Maybe.  If I remember that I ever had it in the first place.  Which I won’t because it resides under the kitchen counters.  Hidden in the deep recesses of the lower cabinets, camouflaged with other oddly-shaped baking dishes which are also secret to me.

Like those mysterious fish that live in the dark, cavernous ocean depths where the light doesn’t penetrate.  I have a whole population of dishes like that.  They could become extinct and I would never miss them because I already don’t know that they exist.

So my whole team of packers (Miss Pat, Rosie, Donna) do best when I am not around.  I only hinder the constant forward motion.  I am like the runner in Jeff’s race who will get to mile 60 and then decide that it’s a better idea to go back to the starting line and abandon the mission.

In theory, I love to purge my life of excess and needless objects.  In reality I am strangely attached to them.  Even when they are ugly or I have six of them or they don’t otherwise fit into my life.  Even though they hurt my psyche and I am going to have to pay someone to move them for me.

I know for a fact that I could be happy living in a shack with no television set as long as it didn’t rain all the time and I could send the children down to the creek with buckets and nets.  So why is it so hard to do the work it takes to get to that level of unencumbrance?  Why do I attach so much emotion and significance to physical things?  Why can I not just throw them out?  Is it guilt or shame over how many dollars were invested in stuff I never use?  Is it a depression-era mentality that wants it around just in case we need it?  Is it an attachment to the unlived-up-to potential of myself as a domestic goddess? 

I really don’t know.  I just know that it is easier not to be around when they go through your things.  I can live with the items being gone, but it’s hard to be the one who says “everything must go.”

written in the stars

Everything I know, I know from reading.  Not reading textbooks, either.  In my case, it’s usually fiction.  In this case, plays.  I was about to tell you how the stars are really coming into alignment, and then I wondered how I know so much about stars being in and out of alignment and the music of the spheres.  It’s all from Shakespeare.  As an English major, I was required to take a semester of Shakespeare.  Possibly two.  Additionally, I had done an in-depth Shakespeare course as a senior in high school, on an exchange semester in England.  So I have had quite a bit of exposure to his many works and their myriad references to ideas so out of the ordinary realm of knowledge.  Like the idea of the star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet.  It means that they just were not meant to be.  No man could fix what the stars had predetermined.  Double suicide was their fate.  Sadly.

Anyways, the stars are really coming into alignment around chez brightenthecorner.

The clearest example of this phenomenon is that my mother is coming into town tonight.  Just exactly at the same time that I need to pack up my house and have a garage sale.  She thought she was flying in for the Shakespeare festival at school, but I gave her the wrong dates.  Turns out that’s what we are doing next week.  This is the week of termite inspections and trolley routes that only stop at the Goodwill.  Heavy packing.  She is going to be very useful, because there is nothing she’s better at than getting rid of stuff.  It is truly her calling and her spiritual gift.

In fact this evening, before she arrives, I am going to pack up the things that are special to me and that I cannot live without, because once she comes in here, I will likely become too swept up in the current of progress to think clearly, and I am libel to get rid of things that I will wish I had kept.  I don’t know like what.  Just important stuff with sentimental, if not pecuniary, value.

I know this is a deviation from what I said yesterday, which is that everything must go, but y’all have never met my mother, and she does not fool around when it comes to throwing things away.  She is good at garage sales, too.  There is a family legend about the time that she was holding a garage sale outside, and my dad was watching football or Julia Child or something inside, and the next thing he knew, she was coming into the house with some shoppers to see if there was anything else they might want from inside.  Even it wasn’t for sale originally.

My friends find my house very spare and uncluttered.  They won’t believe what it looks like after she leaves on Sunday.  And there is no telling how much richer I am going to be if I can surprise her with a garage sale on Saturday.

And she thought she was coming all this way to see Antony and Cleopatra.  Surprise!

less

I know a lady who was married for many years and then her husband refused to give up his girlfriend so there was a divorce.  They had just built a beautiful architectual dream house.  She is very creative and artistic and inspired and she likes nice things.  Her house was gorgeous, and she did not receive it in the divorce settlement.  She must not have wanted it, and I could not understand why.  Instead she bought a small house with a patio instead of a yard.  It has one bedroom and a kitchen/living/dining room combo.

Well I understand it now.

In fact, if I didn’t have all these children, I might be renting a dorm room.  There is nothing like having your life go all haywire and disappointing to awaken the yearning for manageability.  It may not even require a life-upheaval to yearn for manageability.  My friend – we’ll call her K – is blissfully married (as far as I know) and wishes to purchase a tiny house to live in.  I don’t know if she would invite her husband and three children to live in it with her, but in place of her dream home – which she and her husband designed and built – she dreams of small.  Compact.  Cozy.  Manageable.

My downward mobility movement is gaining momentum.  My new house is a sure thing.  My old house is under contract.  I will be going from 2400 square feet, plus guesthouse and three-car garage to 1767 square feet and standard two-car garage, no guesthouse.

That can only mean one thing: at least 1/4 plus all plus 1/3 of everything must go due to space limitations.  I have never felt more on-the-cusp-of-liberation in my life.  The only hard part will be getting from here to there.  I look around and all I can see is the stuff that is weighing me down.  My psyche hurts and my back will ache from moving it.

When my children’s father and I divorced, he generously gave me the house and everything in it.  I have the china and the crystal and the knick-knacks and the family photographs and the albums and some of his mother’s furniture.  I have rugs and pots and pans and pictures on the walls.  Chests and tables and train tables and play tables and coffee tables.  Couches and chairs and an ottoman and a lot of serving platters and trays.  Many books.  Three television sets at last count, only one of which is plugged in anymore, and it is not connected to the cable – just the DVD player so we can watch Batman cartoons.  Because that is important.

There is not going to be room in the new house for all of this stuff.  I see a garage sale – maybe more of an estate sale in our near future.

I also see what the lady I talked about earlier must have seen as well – a chance to start fresh.  A re-do.  A small little abode that isn’t too expensive to maintain and isn’t more than I want to care for.  Something that is sufficient for our needs, but without an inch of wasted space.

I believe that the American dream is a hoax.  I think it’s a mirage imagined by Madison Avenue and fueled by our hunter/gatherer inclinations.  Americans like to shop as entertainment and we love to fill our homes with props and amusements.  Board games, video games, books, craft sets.  It is this never-ending drive to acquire that fuels factory smokestacks in China and the widespread rental of storage units.  We pay someone to provide a place for us to keep the stuff we never use.  That’s somewhat illogical, if you ask me.  I would like to not pay and not have any more than I need.

In my new house, items shall have to be beautiful AND useful if they are going to be able to come in.  I am going to have “Less is more” stenciled over the front door and tattooed on the back of my hand.  I am going to remember that what I enjoy the most are my friends, my children, my books, and a comfortable place to enjoy them.  That isn’t made unmanageable and uncomfortable by excess.

You are all invited to the great unloading of the excess.  I hope to raise enough cash to hire some movers for the very few and carefully-selected things that will be allowed into my new life.

debriefing

That was a super-fast trip I just made.

I left home after Anna’s performance in the ballet spring showcase.  I rescued Wade from having to watch any more tiny dancers pointing their toes and doing plies.  We left before the really beautiful and intricate performances of the accomplished dancers, although I was impressed with everything presented.  But I was hot in the late May sun at the Riverstage and had been manning the water booth and Wade was ready to go see Joseph.  We left on Saturday afternoon and returned home on Sunday night.

I have mentioned here that Wade isn’t as talkative lately as usual.  The principal pro tem also told me that she has noted his seriousness of late.  I decided to take advantage of our three hours in the car to find out what’s going on with my introverted over-achiever.  So I cleared out the passenger seat and told him that this was his lucky day.  He was going to get to ride in the front seat.

Please, no one call CPS on me, because the airbag was turned off.  Sometimes a mom just has to balance the safest place for a child to ride in the car with the child’s need to have his heart unburdened and receive some maternal insight.  Not that he knew that this was what was happening.

So he was very excited to be able to sit in the front and when he tried to put his headphones on and listen to some music, I surprised him with a cable to play his ipod over the stereo, he expressed hesitation: “Uh, mom, it’s the Beatles.  Is that okay with you?”  I assured him that the Beatles would be fine with me.   “As the background music for some mother/son conversation,” I said to my devious self.

The first thing we discussed was that he didn’t want to go to the church I attend when I’m in Austin.  He preferred Joseph’s church.  He didn’t want to have to go with me on Sunday.  I already knew that he preferred Joseph to me, but I wondered what he liked so much about the Baptist worship service.  “It only lasts 30 minutes” was his reason.  “Your church lasts an hour, so I like to go to theirs.”

Then he told me that he preferred his old church to the church to which I have been taking them.  I said that he was welcome to attend church there as often as he wanted when his dad or grandparents would take him, but that when he was with me, we would go to the church I like.  That God doesn’t care which church you go to, he just wants you to acknowledge and worship him, so that any church was as good as any other, and that’s a decision you can make when you’re older.  When you are a kid, you go to church with your family and that’s the way everybody does it.

I don’t know where all these ideas about church came from, but like I said, he has been awfully quiet for a few weeks.  He also asked me a lot of questions about why we were making such a short trip and wanted to know what kind of party I was attending and with whom I was going.  I told him that I was going with a group of friends, and he wanted to know who specifically.

It bothers me when he expresses concerns that sound very adult in nature.  He is mature, and I don’t mind his asking me questions, but I don’t ever want him to feel like he is placed in the middle of adult business.  I can’t keep him little forever, but we must all make it very clear to him that he is not expected to be the adult.  He is a child and the parents are in charge.  He is to go about the business of being a kid – going to school, playing, and reading.

We also discussed the children in his class and his friends.  He asked me questions about the military and I told him that his grandfather and great-grandfather served in the army and the air force.  He was impressed.  I told him that in addition to a distinguished stint in the service,  that his Grandaddy was also voted “Most Handsome” in high school.  It seemed like a good time to fill him in on all the Carter family history.  We talked about Ole Miss and Tulane and how much training you do to become a physician, and why his grandparents chose to live in Greenwood.  He wants to be a lawyer like his dad.  His friend, J, wants to be a neurosurgeon like his dad.  I told Wade that all the lawyers I talked to advised him to become a neurosurgeon.

We talked about his upcoming trip to Europe.  I told him that I lived in Europe as a child.  He was surprised.  I explained how my parents sent me to German kindergarten and that I started speaking German at near Henry’s age.  How they said that I was just quiet for a few months (hard to imagine now), and then one day started speaking fluently.  I told him that learning a foreign language as a child lays down pathways in the brain and enables one to learn languages more easily as an adult.  How everything you learn and do can change your brain physically, and how Charlotte Mason pre-dated brain science with her knowledge of the importance of cultivating good habits.

He asked me why people were so convinced of the truth of evolution.  That was a tough one.

I answered that God is omniscient, and that while there is much truth to evolution, Charles Darwin wasn’t God – just an observant human.  And that those who reject evolutionary theory outright are not as smart as God either, and that there is much information that is unknown to theologians or scientists, and so insisting that any science relating to development of species is infallible or that our Christian beliefs are complete is to put ourselves in the place of God, and we just are not capable of knowing all the answers.

I think I confused him enough with that answer that he let the topic drop.

After about 90 minutes of riveting conversation, he asked if I minded if he played a video game, and I said “of course not” because I was running out of answers to his many questions.

He chose to ride home with Mrs. P tonight instead of me.  I can’t imagine why.

calling

There is an organization whose arena is the internet, with offices in Kerrville, Texas, named “The High Calling.”  The name refers to their founders’ confidence in the idea that the work we do is a calling and an opportunity to exercise our faithfulness to God, hence “The High Calling of Our Daily Work.”

The name alone has caused me to really think about what it is that I am supposed to be doing with the 1/3 of my life that I give to my office.  If you were to follow me around, you would think that my job is to talk on the telephone, look at papers, be available to detectives and defense attorneys who come and go up and down our halls with no announcement, laugh a little, ask a lot of questions, sign my name on many documents, walk back and forth to the courthouse as many times as needed, present cases to the grand jury – which means spending a morning or afternoon interviewing witnesses in front of twelve people and then answering their questions on the law and asking follow-up questions of the witness that will help the grand jury determine whether a case should move forward to the trial stage.  Saying “yes ma’am” and “no sir” to the judge, asking permission to speak, to approach, to ask questions of the court or a witness.  Argue a little.

What I am really doing is shepherding criminal cases through their many stages: investigation, arrest, presentment to grand jury, appointment of attorney, scheduling hearing, motions hearings, negotiations, and either a trial or the entry of a plea of “guilty”, in return for which I recommend a finite sentence to the court.  And if I am successful and the defendant is convicted at trial, I get to defend the jury or judge’s decision when the defendant, now convicted and incarcerated, appeals to the appellate courts.

The guiding principle of my work is this from the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure:  ”The prosecutor has a duty, not merely to convict, but to see that justice is done.”  It brings to mind popular words from the prophet Micah (6:8):

He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God?

I feel very fortunate that my prosecutor’s duty and God’s requirement coincide.  I am to seek justice.  When I love mercy and justice, I can prosecute without persecuting, and can evaluate the facts of each case based on what is just and right, giving each person involved some benefit of the doubt.

I have a lot of freedom to do what I think is right.  The leaders of my office do not concern themselves with how many defendants on my caseload are convicted.  They don’t care how often I go to trial or worry whether my plea-bargained sentences are stiff enough.  They trust that I am analyzing the law and facts competently and no one is looking over my shoulder criticizing my work.  If they are, I don’t know about it.  That, in itself, is an honor to be trusted with something so significant as the determination of another human being’s liberty and making decisions about what is just.

I realized several years into prosecution just how much power we actually wield.  When I sign a criminal complaint seeking an arrest warrant, and later, when I ask a grand jury to bind the case over for trial, I am depriving someone of his freedom.  I am asking the police to arrest him on sight and take him to the jail to await trial.  He will no longer be able to work, his wife won’t have his salary to help her with the bills, she may lose her house.  There are always children involved.  At a minimum, we damage his reputation.  (Unless he is the kind of guy who is proud of being “locked up”, and there are some of those, believe it or not.)

So I need to be certain of my facts and sure of my reasoning before I take those rights away from another American.  My colleagues and I are charged with a significant responsibility, and while I do enjoy the work and find it interesting, I must never lose sight that my Christian duty and my prosecutor’s duty are the same: to glorify God in my work by seeking justice rather than a conviction rate to gratify my ego, observing principles of mercy where possible and appropriate – usually to a victim or a family, but occasionally to a defendant, and to walk humbly.  The humble walking means to observe the power with which I am entrusted and to seek to become worthy of the duty.  I can best do this by asking for the ability to start every day with new eyes, not cynical, jaded eyes from yesterday who see all defendants as the same, and automatically seeking the state’s pound of flesh.  I am to respect the dignity of the accused.

I’m glad that my profession has such clear guidelines.  It makes it so easy to know how it is that I am to approach the daily work:

humbly.

spotty

I have such smart friends.  I am very lucky.

Yesterday I was able to get some  advice on multiple subjects just from asking my friends.  My lawyer friend who is a genius for decorating and wardrobery, my doctor friend who willingly returned my call, even after I had texted her the sensitive nature of what we’d be discussing.  She’s not afraid of my very graphic and direct questions.  She even had the kindness to say that she wonders about the very same thing all the time.

She is really something.  She is an OB/GYN and her boy/girl twins are friends and classmates of Henry.  Twins are a lot to handle.  She was surprised and delighted to learn that she and her husband would be welcoming a baby boy this summer, as the twins are turning five.  That is exactly what happened to me.  Wade was six and Anna was turning five when Henry was born.  He surprised me.  And the best part has been seeing the effect on the older children of having someone little to take care of.

I was just starting to get into the rhythm of having two children -  approaching school even – when we got Henry.  My friend’s twins have just really started to grow up, and now she and her husband will be starting all over with a new baby boy in the house.  She will be the first to tell you that there is no such thing as safe sex.

I am excited for their family because I have experienced how having Henry has really cemented our little family.  He has made us more real.  More substantial.   The more children you have, the less the chance that you can run away from home.  You just aren’t alone for long enough to make and execute a plan.  Somebody is always needing a piece of you.

I asked her if my big kids could come to the twins’ birthday party with Henry and me, because I didn’t want to leave Henry unattended at a swimming pool or Wade and Anna alone too long at home by themselves, and she said that they were welcome.  She said “That is something I have noticed about you,” and I became very defensive.  What had she noticed about me?  Which of my hidden deficiencies had been noted by her observant eye?

“You are socially spotty.  You are here and then you are there and then you have to leave this place to go pick up child A and you have to leave child B while you do it, and you never stay anywhere for very long, and I think it keeps you from being able to relax and enjoy yourself.”

I lost all defensiveness at once.  There simply wasn’t any point to trying to explain, argue, or justify.  She knew the truth about us, and it was really nice to be understood so completely without having to say a word.  She wasn’t judging me – just stating her observation, and I appreciated it very much.  She gets me.

That is exactly what it’s like.  No sooner do I have one child semi-squared-away than I am called on to see about the next one, and the next one.  No sooner is one asleep than the next one needs me to talk to her for a little while.  And the last one awake wants to know my email address so he can send me a text message from his  ipod touch.  I am right here in the house with him, but to be fair, he doesn’t attract very much of my attention because he is so self-sufficient.  I suppose we will talk electronically from now on.

Sometimes it’s so busy that I don’t have time to eat or sleep I begin to get run-down.  Sometimes it’s busy and I think it’s funny or at least comic.  They are a good little bunch, and I think about how lucky my doctor-mama-friend is to get to learn what I know.  Socially spotty and pulled like Stretch Armstrong in different directions, but not the least bit bored.  Ever ever ever.  Boredom might even be considered a luxury these days, but still, I wouldn’t know.