Mom – Don’t Be Mad
But when love shows up on your front porch at 8 a.m., how do you tell her no?
I’m home.
Today
Today I will see him. Today. I might never let him go.
(Of course I then run the risk of my mother fighting me for him but I’m pretty sure I can take her.)
My flight departs at 2:05 p.m. and for the first time in my life I am carrying on nothing but my purse. I packed everything for fear of having to throw out make-up, lip balm or lotion I paid too much for.
While I think the new rules will make boarding and deplaneing much faster, they will also make baggage claim a crowded mess. (More than usual.) Not such a big deal in Port Columbus, but a nightmare on a Monday morning at Hartsfield-Jackson.
But who cares. Today I meet Michael.
General Haig
Last night Teri, who is in New Orleans for the first time post-Katrina, sent me a text message that simply said, “Lakeview is unbelievable.”
Most of my connection to New Orleans is secondhand. My parents’ memories, long weekends at the Lippincotts, Mardi Gras weekends as a child, a teenager, a college student. And yet, like many, New Orleans is a city close to my heart, even though it was never my home. It’s where my brother entered the world. The city where two fresh-faced Ohio twenty-somethings lived as husband and wife; where they became parents. Where I have spent many nights and eaten many meals and built many memories, some even legendary.
My dad doesn’t talk much, if ever, about the years we lived as a family in Houston. He rarely references that time – that time when I was a girl and he was married to my mom. But he speaks of their early years of marriage quite frequently and quite fondly. The years they lived in Utah and they were so poor that for entertainment they would drive to a small airport in Provo and watch planes take off and land. The years they lived in New Orleans: first in a Metairie apartment, then a duplex, before finally buying their first home, on General Haig Street, in Lakeview.
They only lived in that little house for two years, 1973-1975, but it’s the house they brought baby Guy home to, and it’s the first place they ever owned. “When we lived on Gen. Haig…,” or “That house on Gen. Haig…” are common phrases out of both of my parents’ mouths.
In 2002, my mom went back to New Orleans for the first time in almost 25 years so she could see Teri get married. She drove David around and showed him all the sights and one afternoon they drove out to Lakeview and slowly crawled down General Haig Street. An older woman, my parent’s former neighbor, now someone else’s, was outside sweeping. When my mom got out of the car to approach her, the neighbor recognized her immediately. “Judy!” she exclaimed. They greeted each other warmly and when my mom told her she was in town to see her daughter’s friend get married, the neighbor put her hand over her heart and breathed, “You have a daughter…,” both as realization and blessing.
My dad said that after Camille, he and my mother never experienced another New Orleans hurricane. They would hop in the car and drive to Shreveport or Lafayette and all their neighbors would shake their heads and call them Yankees. But once my brother was born, my dad said there was no way he would stay in that house, that close to the levees, even with an axe in the attic.
Five days from now, the calendar will mark one year, 365 days, since Katrina blew across the Gulf and changed her forever. And still, even today, most of Lakeview sits quiet. That neighbor on General Haig isn’t sweeping her driveway and the house where loved lived is a silent shell.
Good Enough
Your love makes me forget who I’ve been
Your love makes me see who I really am- “I Need You to Love Me,” Barlow Girl
I got baptized yesterday. When I was little I was hurt by the fact that my mom didn’t baptize me as a baby, as she did Guy. I thought it was just anther example of getting the short end of the second-kid stick. (i.e. Like the fact that I have no real baby book.) She tried to explain that she chose not to because she wanted it to be my decision – something I did on my own. This was pretty traumatic when I was in junior high and a friend told me I was going to hell because I’d never been baptized. I knew that couldn’t be true, as my salvation was real to me even then.
But in my “reawakening,” if you want to call it that, I’ve learned that salvation isn’t contingent on baptism. It’s the other way around. Baptism is simply a public way of announcing that I’ve made the decision to, as Carrie Underwood says, let Jesus take the wheel. It’s a way to unite myself with generations of believers and come up clean out of that water, belonging only to Him.
Wonderful Savior, my heart belongs to thee
I will remember, always, the blood you shed for me
- “Knees to the Earth,” Watermark
North Point Ministries does baptism a little differently. You go in a week earlier and videotape your testimony, rather doing it live. I taped mine last Sunday and it was surreal, to say the least. First, I’ve never been mic’ed in front of an actual camera with lights and the works. I told my little story, doing my best to keep in short and uncomplicated (when it is neither), and tried to not feel too much like a liar.
I think there is this misconception that committing yourself to something and believing 100 percent in your gut is somehow enough. As if I had those two things alone, they would be enough to ensure clean living and a happy heart. And maybe it is for you, but I doubt it. Buckhead Church has this saying that it’s a gathering for all kinds of people, save one. Perfect people aren’t allowed. It’s an oft-repeated ice breaker, but it’s also a reminder that salvation doesn’t bring perfection and when we expect it to, we’ll only end up hurting.
I’m definitely different now, that is for certain, but I still struggle daily to be the kind of person I should be and can be. It’s not enough that I believe or that I have clear convictions about right from wrong. No one exists in a vacuum. It’s because of those reasons that I have found myself spending more and more time with my “church friends” – sitting at coffee shops till wee hours of the morning talking and talking and talking; planning movie nights and cooking dinners. I used to be the kind of girl who wanted to go out dancing, drinking, whirlwinding, flirting. Those things don’t hold my interest as much anymore, or when they do catch my eye, I usually end up with a guilt hangover.
I’m still capable of some very bad behavior, this I assure you, but the difference now, I guess, is that I’m not satisfied with sitting in sin anymore. It’s not what I want for my life: the easy way out, the quick fix, whatever other cliché you want to toss out.
Yesterday Andy began a series called “Everybody,” and he broke down, verse by verse, Romans 3:21-26, where Paul clearly lays out the new relationship with God that Jesus’ life and death created. It’s fairly famous scripture – all fall short of the glory of God but all who believe are made right with God through God’s justice. The Just became the Justifier.
I think every person, everybody, wants to live a good life. They desire to be good people and treat people fairly and do right by others and themselves. And while it’s an age-old conversation – the spectrum of sin and good versus evil – something flawed can never attain perfection. A broken glass, even one with the smallest chip, is as flawed as the shattered cup. Sometimes I feel like the worst of the worst. Maybe only right ahead of Castro and people who park in undesignated parking spaces and make it almost impossible to get out of the deck. Sometimes I am in awe of the poor decisions I make and they cause me to wonder: if I really believed, if I am really saved, would I still have these thoughts? Would I still do these things? And the answer is yes; it has to be yes.
Trying to be good isn’t enough. We aren’t good enough – we will never be good enough and no matter how hard I try to walk the narrow path, sometimes I am going to fall down. Sometimes I will trip and fall and while it is sometimes easier to stay down – I have stayed in the dirt plenty in my life – His love gives me the power, the ability, to stand up and brush myself off. But sometimes I still wonder – how many times do I have to get back up? Shouldn’t this be easier?
The journey is long, the road is hard, but He has gone before me and He helps me carry on. I can’t do this alone. I can’t do it without Him. I’m not good enough. I will never be good enough. But He is. He is enough to carry me when I just can’t carry on.
Without Him I am broken; I have fallen short. And when I come to him, contrite and guilty, He is the father who will never, ever stop loving me. No matter how great my sin. No matter how far up the spectrum my evil thoughts aspire. To realize that, to learn it, is a gift and a lifesaving message. It’s something I want everyone to know. I tried to go it alone. I am a smart, strong, stubborn, iron-willed person. And even yet, even yet, I was never enough on my own. I couldn’t do it by myself. I couldn’t do anything. I had no answers. No plan. No understanding of how life was even livable, sometimes.
He is enough. Thank God.
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Compassion
