Friday I wrote about a "Time to weep, and a time to laugh," and didn't get to the laughing part.  But that's okay, everyone knows about laughing.  And it usually happens spontaneously.  Carolyn called me one day last week, and we talked and laughed for forty-five minutes.  I was going to write about that--but for the life of me, I can't remember what was so funny.  Unimportant silly stuff I'm sure.

The next line in Ecclesiastes says, "A time to mourn, and a time to dance."  I am well acquainted with mourning.  So many people that I have loved in my life, that had a part in making me who I am, are gone now.  My Gran and Pops, my Mom and Dad, seven aunts, seven uncles that we spent our summers with, cousins--everyone that I grew up with in my family except for my brother and sister and cousin Ann are gone.  My daughter Amy, and the love of my life--Ken.  Gone. Sometimes I feel like the last leaf on the tree.  If you have a long life like I have, you will experience the same thing.

It is a different kind of mourning from mourning for an individual person.  It is collective sadness for all that is gone and can't be replaced.  I can't go back again.  No one can.  We mourn and then we must go on.  God understands our sadness--He felt sadness for the whole world.  He mourned for the death of his Son and the suffering He endured.  He mourns for those who reject Him.

But isn't it interesting that the writer coupled--in opposing thoughts--mourning with dancing.  The last five Psalms are called Hallel--praise Psalms.  From which we get the word "Hallelujah."  149:3 says: "Let them praise his name in the dance; let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp."  And the last Psalm, 150:4 says, "Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs."

We have heard the old phrase, "Dancing for joy."  Perhaps the writer was telling us that you can't spend your whole life in mourning.  There comes a time that you must find joy in what you have left. Not what you have lost.  I have four children, their four spouses, ten grandchildren, three great-grandchildren.  They bring me joy.  And as for dancing, one of my fondest childhood memories is "jigging" with my grandfather Pops, who played the fiddle and danced a jig while he played.  I bet he is playing the fiddle in heaven.  And I bet even the Baptists are doing a jig.

"A time to weep, and a time to laugh..."

The thing that causes me to weep is when someone has come through a long difficult struggle, and overcomes the obstacle that was in their path.  The thing, the problem, the tragedy, that they were tripping over that seemed insurmountable.  And yet they kept on keeping on.  It tears me up.

I can withstand pain.  I can endure death, and tragedy.  Sickness and hardship.  My heart will weep, but my eyes seldom do.  I guess you could describe my personality as stoic--which is defined in the dictionary as "A person who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining."  Sometimes I do what might be considered complaining.  But not because of the situation.  I'm one of those people who tend to think out loud.  And when I am trying to figure out a solution to a problem, and can't seem to solve it, I wonder if maybe you can tell me what to do.  Otherwise, I wouldn't say anything about it.  What's the point?

People weep for different reasons.  Different things touch us,  and we react in different ways.  It doesn't mean we don't feel the same pain.  Or the same joy.  It doesn't mean we aren't grieving deeply.  When Ken died, I didn't cry.  Fifty seven years of loving him, but I didn't cry at his funeral--which was tremendously moving.  Scott planned it all, (he is a Marine, too) and there were film clips of airplanes landing on carriers, flying formations, the Marine Corps Hymn...a real tribute to Ken's life.

But when we buried him at Arlington, there were hundreds of Marines marching in formation, the Marine Band, and the horses pulling the caisson, officers on horseback...I thought about all the young men who were there for that ceremony, who had gotten up that morning and donned their dress blues to march in a parade to honor a fellow Marine.  And of all of the Marines who get up every day and sometimes, like Ken did, face insurmountable situations--face death, but endure and do their jobs-- which might mean giving up their life, I was moved to tears.  They call themselves "a band of brothers."  Ken once said that when you are being fired upon you aren't thinking about your country, you're thinking about the Marine next to you.  You can't save your country in that moment, but you might save your brother fighting beside you. They say that Marines don't cry.  Sometimes, they do.

The rest of verse three says: "A time to break down, and a time to build up."

I have remodeled a bunch of houses.  Many times it involved tearing down walls that someone had put up years before--thinking their plan was perfect.  But it didn't suit me, so I got a crowbar, a sledge hammer and started tearing things down.  No problem.

But building a wall, well, I am no good at that.  I can do sheetrock and insulation.  I can paint.  But I have to hire someone to put up studs and doors--because I don't know how.  Tearing down is easier than putting up.  Tearing down doesn't require much thought or training.  Building up requires a lot.

I tore a 27 foot wall down once because I wanted it gone.  When Ken came in, he said, "Was that wall load-bearing?"  I answered, "What's load-bearing."  Luckily it wasn't.  So tearing down does require some knowledge of basic construction--and I have learned a lot through the years.

If I had been a man--back in the early fifties--I would have been a carpenter.  That line of work, or education, was not available for women.  Girls had four choices: Secretary, teacher, nurse, or wife.  We weren't allowed to take any classes in high school that I thought were interesting.  We were required to take four years of "Homemaking."  Agony.  So everything I learned about carpentry was learned on my own.  Including mistakes.

But the kind of building up I did learn about when I was growing up was about building up character.  Honesty.  Fairness.  Kindness.  Hard work.  Education.  And on, and on...  My parents were sticklers for rules of behavior.  And with their "building up" in our lives, we were warned that we never tore another person down.  Tearing someone down is a lot easier than building up their character.

The hard thing is--because we know the rules of character, and how a person of character should behave--it's easy to see what's wrong with somebody instead of what's right.   Gotta' be careful about that.  You don't want to break down something that's load bearing.

This third chapter of Ecclesiastes--that I've been discussing--is one of the most widely known and universally quoted passages in the Bible. Verse 3 continues: "A time to kill, and a time to heal..."

I wish the passage had said "euthanize" instead of "kill."  But it's the same thing either way.  Like Pat's horse Reagan--that she had to "put down, euthanize," last week.  It was so sad, but he couldn't stay up on his feet; he couldn't support his own weight.  His season was over.  He was over a hundred years old in human years and was worn out.  He was dying that very day.  Pat said, "I am responsible for him.  He depends on me to take care of him--and I can't let him lie down out in the pasture today, in this 100 degree heat, and suffer in misery while he dies a horrible death."  It was the right time; he couldn't make it any longer--hard decision, but the right thing to do.  Pat cried all day.

We kill animals all the time.  We don't give it much thought when we are grilling hamburgers.  That's about animals.  But what about people?  I don't know about you, but if someone had broken into my house and tried to harm one of my children, I would have had no problem shooting them.  Wouldn't have wanted to, but would have done it anyway.  There is a time to kill.

Ken fought in two wars.  He understood death under fire.  But we Americans--you and I--send our troops into harm's way over and over again.  Justified?  We've been sending men and women to the middle East for fourteen or more years.  What are we trying to do?  Why are we doing it?  How do we get out of it?  Who knows.  As Ken would say, "As a Marine, I serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States of America.  Elected by the people of America."  He also said, "You don't ever, ever, go to war without an exit strategy."  Perhaps if we were the ones doing the shooting, or the ones being shot at every day, we would decide to do things differently.  But we are far removed from the killing fields and can go about our daily lives without much thought.

Killing is easier than healing.  But there is a time to heal.  Killing is instantaneous; healing takes time, sometimes years and years.  And leaves scars.  God sent His Son to die.  Allowed Him to be killed.  On purpose.  With intent.  What a horrible thing that Jesus endured--because you and I were guilty.  His death was a result of love.  God's love for us.  "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13  God did that.  For you.  For me.

 "...a time to plant and a time pluck up that which is planted."  That is the next line that the writer wrote in Ecclesiastics 3:2  I know something about that that statement.

I planted tomatoes back early in May.  Six Jet Star, and two Heritage cultivars.  They have gone into overdrive.  I have picked close to one hundred huge tomatoes so far, and they are still growing like weeds.  I have given away tomatoes up and down the street to anyone who wants them.  Everybody tells me that their tomatoes aren't bearing hardly at all.  I don't know why that is.  I love growing tomatoes, and have always been successful.  I think it's because I water them twice a day?

And okra.  I have picked enough okra to fry a skillet full and have family over for dinner.  It is also growing like gangbusters.  I have to pick it every day or it gets away from me.  The only other things I planted were parsley and asparagus.  It will take three years before I can pick the asparagus, but the parsley is doing well.  I cook with it every week.

Maybe the old timers were right (like the writer in Ecclesiastics said) about there being a right time to plant a particular vegetable.  I know that I've got the "right time" down pat for planting tomatoes and okra.  But there is no particular time that is dictated for "plucking up that which was planted."  There will come a day when the vines and bushes will quit bearing.  And nothing you can do will make them start producing tomatoes or okra again.  Those vines and bushes are done.  Their season is over.   It mattered when you planted them, but it doesn't make a bit of difference when you pull (pluck) them up.  They are now trash.   It is all a matter of the sunlight and temperature.

Which echoes what the writer said that I wrote about yesterday:  For every thing there is a season.  A time to live and a time to die.  The death of the tomatoes and okra will come at the first frost.  But in the meantime, I am going to enjoy their "season."  And even though the tomato vines will be through at the first frost, I will pick all the green tomatoes that are still on the vine, wrap them in newspaper to block the light, and still be eating my tomatoes come January.

Right now, I'm in-between the planting and plucking up season.  And it's all good.

For the last week, I have had verses from a book of the scriptures rattling around in my head--so I might as well talk about it.  It is the book of Ecclesiastes.  The writer calls himself the Preacher.  And if you have ever read this short book, it is summary of all parts of a person's life.  He begins by saying that everything is "vanity."  Verses 1:3-6 say, "What does it profit a man of all his labor...one generation passes away, another generation comes...the sun rises and the sun goes down...the wind goes south and turns around to the north..."  In other words, nothing changes.  He sounds like he is depressed.  Maybe he is.  But the writer makes some profound statements in twelve chapters.

He concludes those twelve chapters like this:  "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:  Fear God, and keep his commandments.  For this is the whole duty of man.  For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."  The book covers the stages of a person's life, and ends by reminding us that life is short, and we will answer to God for what we have done with our years.  It is worth reading.

But the passage that kept running through my mind all last week comes from the third chapter.  It begins like this:  "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."

I  realize that I am in the last season of life.  And I am learning what this season is all about.  You can't fully understand things that you have never experienced.  You can know "about" them, you can read about them.  But the emotions of experience make the season real, and you gain insight that you never had before.  That said, I am learning what it is like in the season of "growing old."  I thank God that it is my body that is failing me and not my mind.  I watched my mom go through the last season of her life--with Alzheimer's.  It was cruel.  They say it is the disease that kills the family.  And I can attest to the truth of that.  My mom completely missed her last season--in a muddled fog.

Chapter 3 begins: "A time to be born, and a time to die..."  The writer is telling us that everything that comes to us over the span of our lives is simply the nature of life.  My time to be born was March 26, 1938 in Fort Smith, Arkansas.  God appointed that time for me.  He appointed a time for you to be born as well.  And our days are numbered.  This book is a warning to us to use our life wisely.  To use our days fruitfully.  "Fear God, keep his commandments.  This is the entire duty of man."

We are studying the Psalms this month at church.  Some of them are tremendous.  Wonderful.  Others, well I struggle with them.  Such as the one we are looking at next Sunday.  Of all the passages in the Bible, I don't know why the Education Board chose this one.  Since you only get 52 Sundays in a year, I'd probably take 51 of them out of the New Testament.  That said,  Psalm 136 was used in worship back in Jewish history.  It is a responsive reading.  There are twenty six verses, and all of them make a statement of thanksgiving, or praise, or some attribute of God.  Each verse has one sentence, verbalized by the Jewish Rabbi.  Followed by a response of the people. Which was the same response in all of the twenty six verses:  "For his mercy endures for ever."

My point is that while it is interesting, and while it is true, there isn't much that I can teach my class  about a responsive reading--for application.  And I am an application teacher.  I want to read God's word and say, "Ah-ha.  So that's what God wants.  That's what I need to be doing better."

However, it does give us something that we should be doing.  "O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good."  Answered by the people,  "For his mercy endures forever."  The second, third, and twenty-sixth verses are almost exactly the same words.  The others tell something that God did.

So I will probably point out to my class that the thing that is called for in this Psalm, is to give thanks to God.  Paul tells us it is a required thing to do.  1 Thessalonians 5:18 "In everything give thanks.  For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you."  When you read something that talks about God's will, you should pay attention.  Those statements aren't open for interpretation.

We spend too much time thinking about the things that are going wrong in our lives instead of the things that are going right.  But if we stop, think about what we have that is wonderful; think about how we have been blessed, our attitude will improve.  It's that cup half full, cup half empty thing.

Give thanks.  It's God's will that you do it.  In everything.  Not about, or for everything.  Just stop and think about what is good--when you are in a bad situation.  It's there.  As Psalm 136 says 26 times, "For His mercy endures for ever."  Maybe that's what we are supposed to get out of this Psalm.  Be thankful and remember:  We are loved by a merciful God.

Little by little I am giving stuff away.  You have heard my mantra:  You want it in your twenties; you charge it in your thirties; you pay it off in your forties; you wonder why in the world you ever bought it in your fifties; and you get rid of it in your sixties.  Stuff.  Someone asked me what I bought at the estate sale that I worked last week.  The answer was, "Nothing."  Even when it went to half price on the last day.  I walked through eight rooms stuffed to the gills with everything you could imagine and didn't find a single thing.  Nada.

Most of what people buy is because someone else bought it.  So we want it too.  We want to keep up with the Joneses??  I got over wanting to have a new car in my late twenties.  At the time, I didn't know much about buying used cars--but Ken was an expert at it.  We were both driving a car to work, both of us driving 120 miles round trip every day.  For two cars that equals 240 miles a day.  It adds up in a hurry.  The savings in buying cars three, or four, sometimes five years old, was tremendous.  Find something with low mileage, put eighty or ninety thousand more miles on it, sell it and buy another similar bargain.  But for some people, a new is an emotional necessity.  To be honest, I don't get it.  Let someone else take that first and second year depreciation.

I pretty much feel the same about clothes.  I am a garage sale nut.  And in Edmond, you can find about anything you want--with the original tags still on it--on any Friday (garage sale day) of the month.  People buy things, never wear them, gain weight (?) or receive stuff they don't want as a gift and put it in a garage sale for two or three dollars.  My cousin Ann and I go "garage sale-ing" every Friday.  It's a blast.  The ultimate Easter egg hunt.

It's not that I won't pay full price for things I might really, really want, it's just that I can't seem to justify it.  I'd rather give money away than spend it on something full price in a department store.  I am a true, dyed in the wool bargain hunter.  You might think "cheapskate?"  But no, I am not stingy.  I just think that if I pay five dollars for something that cost someone else a hundred dollars--I win.  People who don't know me well would think I spend a fortune on clothes.  Nope.  Never happens.

It's a game to me.  And I think it's fun.  Tomorrow is Friday.  Off to the hunt.  But I have a rule to this game.  However much I buy, I have to give that much away.  It works for me.  De-accumulate.

I am sometimes overwhelmed by the needs in the lives of the people I want to help.  Many times there is nothing you can do but be there.  Last week, one of the members in my Sunday School class had a sweet daughter-in-law who was walking her dog and was hit by a car going full speed.  The driver, of course, had lost his license and had no insurance.

She had both legs broken, both arms broken, both ankles fractured, a broken pelvis, and a broken eye socket--not counting torn skin and surface wounds.  Nobody knows how she lived--but she is still alive.  She will be hospitalized for months and months, and it will take multiple surgeries to put her back together.  And of course, putting her back together will never restore her.  She is broken into pieces.  Things like that make us so sad.  We don't know what to do.  We just pray that she can manage to endure as God heals her wounds.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Pat came by the house awhile ago with her horse Reagan--loaded in the horse trailer.  He is a rescue animal that she took in--somewhere between 25-26 years old.  He was was pitiful when she got him--you could see his bones.  He had been starved.  So she fed him, loved him and restored him to health.  But at that age, we all knew that he didn't have much life left.  However, this last year was so much better than the years that had gone before.  He was happy.  He gained close to 250 pounds.  Food makes a difference.  Love does too.  Food and love are sometimes all we have to give.

Pat was on her way to the vet.  Reagan couldn't stay on his feet this morning.  He kept falling.  He was worn out.  "It's time," Pat said.  "I knew this day would come and I want to do the right thing for him."  She always talks to her animals so I asked her what she told him before he went to sleep.  "I said for him to tell Jesus that I apologize that he came to heaven without getting a bath."

She had a stallion once that she had poured her heart and soul into that got cancer and died at the age of four.  He was a beautiful, beautiful horse.  It broke Pat's heart.  She never raised another after that, because loosing him was so painful.  "What did you say to Faroh before he died," I asked her.  She said, "Well, he was pretty hard to deal with.  I told him not to bite Jesus."  That's Pat.  To the point.

Last week I worked an estate sale that Becky and Lisa were "producing." It took them weeks and weeks just to unpack boxes that were in the garage.  Stacked to the ceiling.  The owner (in her 70's) had inherited all of her mother-in-laws stuff from the WW2 era.  Stuff up the wazoo.  After the garage was unpacked, it took even more weeks to deal with what was inside the house.  And more weeks to set up tables and decide what to put where--with no hope of getting all of it in the house.

I've been to a lot of estate sales through the years, but I've never seen anything like this.  After it was all set up, they couldn't even get it all on display.  Not enough room.  So every day more and more was brought inside from outside storage to fill the spaces that were emptied--when someone bought something.  You name it, this lady had it--dating back to the 20's.  One of them was a seamstress and if a sewing gadget existed, she had five or six of them.  She quilted, crocheted and knitted as well.

I was assigned a bedroom, with fabric stacked to the ceiling and sewing notions on shelves stacked to the light fixtures.  There were dolls as well, on shelves.  Fifty or sixty perfect untouched dolls in original condition.  It was a mad house.  Four or five times there were so many people in the room that you couldn't turn around.  Quilters bought cotton fabric by the bushel--well, by the stack.  And at the end of the first day, I was able to restock the shelves with fabric we hadn't been able to find a place for.  And the second day was just as busy.  Becky orchestrated, Lisa ran the cash register.

Which brings me to this:  We accumulate.  Stuff we will never use, don't need, don't have room for and many times can't afford.  I'm guilty as charged.  I love the glass Dresden dolls and boxes from before WW2 that were made in Germany.  I used to look in the windows of the Five and Dime store when I was a little girl and wish I had one.  But I couldn't afford the 25 cent price tag.  I didn't know anyone who could--except for one of the girls in my class.  She had a bunch of them.  Her dad was a banker.  The rest of us were poor.  What can you do with a Dresden glass doll anyway?  And your children won't want them--they don't know what a Five and Dime is and don't remember WW2.

Jesus told us, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust corrupts, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust corrupts, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." Matthew 6: 19-20

Posting these things that I write is a responsibility that I don't take lightly.  I edit what I write three or four times before I publish it.  Leaving things out, putting a word in--that better exemplifies what I want to say.  I don't want those of you--who trust me to always tell the truth, and to research what I am saying--to ever be misled by some error on my part.  Once I hit the publish button, what I have said goes out on the web to the entire world.  Some of you send it on to friends and family.  I appreciate your faith in me, but sometimes when I write, I feel the weight of what I am saying and wait a few days to publish. Giving myself time to think it over.

"Who can understand his errors?  Cleanse thou me from secret (unknown) faults." Psalms 19:12

That being said, I know what I know for sure.  I know what I think I know for sure.  And sometimes I think I know a thing and later find out that I was mistaken.  I try to avoid writing anything until I am sure.  There are many ways of knowing--and many years of experience has given me hindsight.  Which is valuable.  I'm sure you have some of that as well.  In those cases, I know what I know for sure because of years of experience.  Not from a book written by some pseudo expert.

One of the worst mistakes I made when I was a young mother was listening to the only author around on the subject raising children--Dr. Spock.  And a man at that!!  I'm sure he meant well.  But his theories left much to be desired.  But being new at the baby raising business, I trusted him and made a lot of mistakes.  Experience allowed me to do better the next time.  And by the time I had my fifth child, I knew a lot about what I was doing.  And still made a lot of mistakes.

Mistakes are inevitable.  We do the best we know how, and as the poet Maya Angelou said, "I did then what I knew how to do.  Now that I know better, I do better."  The Apostle Paul said, "With this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:13

I have a goal.  To communicate knowledge that comes from what I have learned.  Both about the Bible, and about life.  I hope some of it is useful to you.

I don't think today's generation could have functioned back in the 50's and 60's.  Dial phone--land line (No overseas calls--they were way too expensive), no computers.  No "nothing" electronic to speak of, except the radio and TV--if you were lucky enough to own a TV.  And only a very few programs to watch on TV.  Three stations.  Rabbit ear antennas that only worked part of the time.  The news came on in the evening--no round the clock news.  Everything on the TV went off at some point after 10--to a blank screen pattern of some sort.

So when Ken would go overseas, we would write.  That's it.  We didn't speak for 13 months at a time except in letters.  If I asked him a question, it was at least a week--sometimes more--before I got an answer.  So all decisions were up to me.  The Bible may have a chain-of-command plan for normal families who have a live-in father and husband.  That doesn't work in the military.  Having someone to lean on was a luxury.   From the time I was 18 until I was 28, I did it all.

Veterans serve the country.  If they are married, so do their mates.  When they ask everyone who served in the military to stand up (in church on the 4th of July weekend), I always have to resist the urge to get up out of my seat.  Spouses probably ought to get a medal for time served as well?

I know the Bible says the husband is the head of the house.  But that didn't work in our house because Ken was seldom there.  He turned it all over to me and basically said, "Good luck."  He was really good about understanding how hard it was.  He always brought the paycheck home.  I handled the checkbook.  Never in his life did he question how I spent the money.   He was a generous man.  He wanted the the four of us--me, Pat, Becky and Scott--to be taken care of.  Jon didn't come along until Ken had been retired from the USMC for four or five years, and was teaching college.  Pat, Becky and Scott had a Marine fighter pilot for a father.  Jon had a college professor.

I wouldn't trade those 13 years I spent as a Marine wife for anything in the world.  I learned more in that compressed military environment than most people learn in a lifetime.  Civilian life, since then, is a lark.  Everything stays where you put it.  You move when you decide to move.  You live where you want to live.  Would I do it again?  If that's what it took to be Ken's wife, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I spent thirteen years ignoring the fact that Ken flew supersonic, single seat fighters.  Ignorance is bliss.  I never saw him fly.  That's the truth.  I didn't want to know for sure.  He had wings on his uniform, but you could buy those at the PX.   He went to work in the morning and came home at night.  Everyone said he flew.  He said he flew.  Maybe he did. You can't prove it by me.

When we were at El Toro for the last time, in '68, Ken would call and tell me when he was taking off, and I would take Scott to the end of the runway to watch.  I never watched--so I never knew if Ken was in the airplane or not.  Scott would tell me that his daddy waved at him.  So maybe it was true that Ken was a fighter pilot--but any of the pilots would have waved at Scott.  So who knows for sure.

I went to my share of flag draped funerals.  Flying military back then wasn't very safe.  "Buying the farm," as the pilots called it, was a fairly regular occurrence.  We were never in a squadron that someone didn't get killed.   It was always personal.  They were family.

Once, when Ken was qualifying everyone in the squadron to land the F4D on the carrier, (which had never been done before), out of 25-27 pilots, they destroyed four planes, killed one, and broke another one's back.  Pilot error on two.  Aircraft carrier personal on the other two.   Hooking wire on the carrier was as dangerous as it could get.  They would say that doing it at night, in a storm, on a pitching deck, was the scariest thing they ever did.  Ken would say, "Getting fired off the carrier deck at night, (a catapult shot) is optional; landing, however, is mandatory."  No other way to get back on.

When everyone was qualified, they left for a year doing intercepts of Russian planes on the Japanese, Korean coast.  Russia had heard that the plane the Marines were flying could take off from the ground and reach them in record time, and Russia tested the squadron, to see how fast the F4D really was.  Ken said the first time he lit the afterburner he thought he was in a rocket.  It was the fastest thing the USA had going (from ground to altitude at the time) however, it used so much JP fuel they couldn't stay up very long.  But they flew it that entire year without another accident.

We had two babies when he left.  Both in diapers.  I just stuck my head in the sand about what he was doing.  No use thinking about it.  Not knowing was how I coped.  It worked for me.

When he was in the training command at Pensacola as an aviation cadet learning to fly, Ken said they practiced stalling the airplane--so that if they ever stalled a plane in real time, that they would know how to recover.  You practiced at altitude.  You never, never, ever wanted to stall a plane on approach to landing--or you would automatically end up dead.  So they practiced landing over and over again, making sure they didn't slow down to stall speed close to the ground.  You always wanted to hit wire (on land--practicing for carrier landings) at full speed--so that if you bolstered (hook missed the wire) that you had enough speed to get off the end of the carrier when you were at sea doing it for real.

But he said he messed up on a turn in the beginning stage of learning to fly--put the plane into a stall, and did everything he wasn't supposed to do.  Rotating the plane a few feet from the ground.  "I should have been dead," he said.  "But God is good.  By some miracle, I ended up wheels down when I hit the ground.  And shook for an hour or so."  All of Ken's friends would sit around telling "war stories," and tell of all the near misses they had.  One stalled, landed upside down uninjured, then unbuckled his seat belt and fell out of the inverted cockpit and broke his arm.  That was a "duh."

Another one landed long on the airfield at El Toro going too fast, ran out of runway and ended up on the train track a couple of hundred yards from the end of the strip--uninjured--and got hit by a train.  And survived.  Lost the airplane of course--which was a strike against him.  You don't ever want to lose a plane.  The paper work was horrible.  Ken was the safety officer at the time--which meant he had to file the accident report.  Pilots didn't want to create paperwork for him for something stupid.

I was at the squadron at El Toro one day and a pilot who had been flying an F4D, (they called it the Ford) walked in soaking wet holding his helmet.  He had ejected into the Pacific.  I was shocked, but the rest of the guys didn't pay him much attention.  The CO was really ticked off, "You lost another one of my planes!"  They had lost so many airplanes in that one area that they dubbed it "Ford Bay."  Pilots were cheap to replace.  Planes weren't.

Everyone of those guys had dozens of stories--that grew bigger and bigger every time they told them.  They never talked about their heroics, how they won their medals, or the wars they fought.  Just the stupid stuff.  And there was a bunch of that.  It's a wonder that any of them lived to tell about it.

I got to sit in my old Sunday School class--Carolyn is the teacher now.  She did a fantastic job.  I learned two new Biblical facts that I didn't know.  Carolyn has a wonderful style of presentation--she is an English and Drama major, and staged and presented wonderful plays in her years as a teacher at Pryor High.  A talent she now uses to draw everyone in the room into everything she is saying.  She makes it interesting.  I seldom hear a preacher who can do better.

The Pharisees had asked Jesus where He got the authority to speak the things he was saying--and who had given Jesus that authority.  And of course Jesus didn't answer the question, but asked them a question instead.  (Matthew 21:33-45)  And then gave a parable about a man who had a vineyard and entrusted it to his servants to care for it, tend to it, protect it, and harvest the grapes.

There were multitudes of people there at the time, listening when Jesus spoke.  But the parable didn't apply to them.  Jesus was speaking directly to his accusers, and he did it in such a way as to answer their question without using the words they were hoping for.  Words to hang Him with.  The words that they were hoping for.  They really didn't want to know who gave him the authority to speak.

But there was no doubt that the Pharisees knew that He was speaking to them, and that Jesus was accusing them of the evil that Isaiah had written about hundreds of years before.  Jesus quoted scripture from the fifth chapter of Isaiah.

Isaiah told the Israelites that he (God) planted a vineyard (representing Israel), and when He left the country, the servants (the Pharasees in this instance) killed everyone (the prophets) He sent to collect the rent, the grapes.  So He sent his Son, and they killed Him as well.  It is a much longer story, but Jesus knew the Pharisees had studied the scripture he was quoting.  And knew that Jesus was talking about them being the ones (the evil servants) that would kill the Son.

The Pharisees were enraged--but could do nothing because Jesus hadn't directly accused them, but everyone there knew that He actually had--with a story.  A parable.  Which some say is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.  Jesus was a master at parables.

I spent three days in Pryor and am now home.  Worn out.  Frazzled.  But it was fun.  The 1956 high-school reunion was interesting.  Everyone there--but me--was old!!  People told funny stories, ate too much food, and every time someone came in the door, someone would ask, "Now.....who are you?" and they would answer, "I'm Bob, or Sue......who are you?"  And then one of them would say, "You look the same as you always did," and everyone in the room would laugh.  

The best part of the weekend was going to my former church.  Everyone was so glad to see me--which was nice.  I got a zillion hugs but the best part was that everyone told me how great I looked--you never stop being a vain woman, just give us a compliment.

The thing about a church stretched over a lifetime is that you have helped raise each other's children, got their teenagers through a few scrapes (when their parents threw up their hands in despair), helped each other through tragedy, sickness, difficulties, took a million casseroles to help someone out, and loved each other forever and a day.  It's a like family reunion on steroids.  Wonderful.  I can't imagine what heaven is going to be like.

I will never have another church like that one.  The secret is to start going when you are young.   But it is never too late to start.  You can't find that kind of love anywhere else.  Once you serve the Lord together, learn to forgive each other for their rough edges, help each other through the bad times and celebrate their good times...you bond.  It was encouraging to see so many young couples there with their children, starting that life journey by going to church with their families.  Through the years, I've watched people try other paths that end up sad.  So sad.  You have to make a commitment to take a different path if you want to end up where you want to go.  And at the end of the day, at the end of our lives, let's hope we choose the right path so that we will end up with God.

I am amazed at how short life is.  Right in the middle of living it, it vanishes.  Way before we are ready.  "Once I was young, and now I am old.  Yet I have never seen the godly abandoned or their children begging for bread."  Psalms 37:25

A couple of days ago, I said I was going to tell you how I met Becky Bacon:  I went to a study at our church covering the second Chapter of Philippians, and sat down in the only empty chair.  The lady on my left was someone I had never met.  I introduced myself, and asked where she was from.  She said she had just recently moved to Pryor and didn't know anyone.  Her name was Becky Bacon.

She told me that her former pastor had been a missionary to China, and had told her that one of his close missionary friend's home base was in Pryor and was one of the most wonderful persons this pastor had ever known--that she and Joe should get to know him. "What's his name?" I asked.  "Bill Swan," she answered.  "He was a pilot in the Navy before he went to China--a flight surgeon.  He worked at NASA as an astronaut physician.  Have you met him?"

"Yes I have," I told her.  "What is he like?" she asked. "Is he as wonderful as my pastor said?"
"Absolutely not," I told her.  "He's a brat."
"No!" she said.  "That can't be true.  My pastor said that he was a doctor, and gave his life to help people in China regain their health, and to tell them about Jesus."
"Well," I told her, "I have a different point of view.  He's my ornery baby brother--five and a half years younger than me.  Just enough to drive me crazy when we were growing up."  She realized that I had been teasing her.  "I can't believe that the first person that I met in Pryor is related to Bill Swan."

"Yep," I told her.  He may be as wonderful as you heard, but he made my life miserable when we were growing up--because he was such a pest.  For example, when Ken and I were dating, Ken wrote me two or three times a week.  Bill would get home from school before me, hide the letters and make a clue-trail with one note leading to another.  Sometimes it would take me an hour before I could find the letter.   He would leave clues in trees, the attic, in the washing machine...I could have strangled him--easily.  And I could give you a dozen other ways he was a major nuisance in my life."

"I was married and gone before Bill grew up.  But he came to live with us one summer when Ken and I were in South Carolina, and I decided that maybe he was going to turn out okay--maybe he wasn't such a pest after all."  He and his wife Janet spent 37 years in China.  "Go ye therefore and teach all nations. Whatsoever I have commanded you..." Matthew 28:19-20.  Bill and Janet did just that.

I called Pat and said, "I really want to go see Ken's sister in Amarillo next week, could you work out a time to go with me?"  She said, "Throw your toothbrush and a change of clothes in a bag.  I'll be there in thirty minutes and we'll go right now."

It was the fourth of July, she had no plans, neither did I, so we dropped Squig off at Becky's house and left for Amarillo thirty minutes later.  Stayed all night at the Holiday Inn and came home the next day.  She had to be at work at two.

I knew I needed to go soon.  Ken's sister, Mary Lou, is ninety-two and not doing well.  I would have gone by myself, but my girls don't want me to do that anymore for fear I'll have car trouble or some other catastrophe and get stranded.  It's a four hour trip, no problem for me to drive, but I'm trying to learn to be agreeable--which is hard.  I prefer being in control.  Which--I'll admit--is not completely possible anymore.  Becky's husband Craig takes care of most problems that arise.  He is stellar.

Mary Lou is the only member of my family that is left in that last, Greatest Generation.   When she is gone, I'll be the only leaf left on the tree.  Mercy.  What a horrible thought.  On my side of the family the only one left is my brother Bill.  Well, there is my sister Lisa, but she's too young to count.  She's the same age as my girls--21 years younger than me.  She and Becky were born seven days apart.

The thing you lose as you age is the common knowledge and experience of those who lived through the same things you did.  World War II, rationing, the great depression, no TV, not much of anything that people seem to depend on today.  Nobody flew.  They walked or took the bus.  Air conditioning was obtained by opening the windows.  We played hop-scotch, jacks, hide and seek, etc.  All "play" was outside.  Information came on the radio--usually days and days out of date.  I could go on and on about that.  Suffice to say, all of that is gone, and as those who experienced what you experienced are gone, a piece of yourself goes with them.

I'm going to my high school reunion this week-end--1956.  It will be fun.  We get together every other year and reminisce.  The fifties were the last decade of wonderland.  The war was over and the insane, crazy, stupid sixties were yet to come.  My generation was truly blessed by God himself.

 

I just got back from Amarillo, Texas.  Unexpected trip.  Will post tomorrow.

Sunday evening and Monday morning were pretty special.  Becky Bacon came and stayed the night.  It was great--as always when she and I get together.  We laugh a lot.  Especially about Joe, her hubby, who was one of Ken's best friends.  Joe is a little boy in a man's body.  Becky asked him if he could make it without her while she was gone--and of course he said, "No problem."  He then left the car windows down in the rain and soaked the car.  He also left the ignition switch on and had to get a jump start the next morning.

Becky calls him "Peter Pan."  Which is such an apt description.  She even bought him a Peter Pan costume--which he wouldn't wear.  "I don't need a costume!  I already am Peter Pan."

In his defense, Ken said that Joe was the most awesome pilot that he ever flew with.  And that is saying a lot, because Ken flew with the best of the best in the Marine Corps.  Once Joe steps into the cockpit, a total transformation occurs.

God love him, he is one of my favorite people as well.  He is an Indian-Indian.  A full-blood Cherokee, who was adopted by the U.S. Ambasador to India--where Joe grew up.  When he goes into his Indian-Indian mode, we all have tears running down our faces--laughing.  He is so funny.  He has the entire India-head-nod down to a pat.

As the Ambassador's only child--back in the days that he grew up in India--Joe went to school with the Maharaja.  (And recently went back to India (with Becky) and was invited to lunch with his childhood friend--the Maharaja.)  When he reached his teens, the pilots making runs from England to India would let him fly back and forth with them.   Now Joe teaches students to fly.  He loves to fly.  Peter Pan forever.

God gives us friends and I have been blessed with so many wonderful friends.  Tomorrow, I will tell you about the first time I met Becky Bacon, and how God brought our friendship about, and ultimately Ken and Joe's as well.

"Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend."  Proverbs 27:17

I am reading Terri Blackstock's books.  Murder.  Mystery.  Mayhem.  The three M's.  She does three or four books, using the same characters, and then moves on to a new series.  They don't require that I concentrate very hard, I have figured out "who done it" fairly early on, and they are easy to read.

She is a Christian writer who has real, believable characters who don't spout the usual churchy stereotypical terminology and memorized verbiage that you sometimes hear from "holier than thou" types of people who may want to share Christ but are not comfortable in their own Christian skin, or are using someone else's spiel.  I think we need more writers who don't have to use vulgarity and filthy language to communicate.  It is refreshing to read books that communicate with class.

I especially like the way her characters talk to God.  They don't use the usual verbiage we hear in church.  They just talk to Him.  And chew Him out when things go wrong.  And apologize.  And question what in the world He is doing.  But never lose sight of the fact that He is God, and they aren't.  Refreshing.

I pray short prayers off and on all day.  I can't concentrate well enough to pray very long.  I do better in spurts.  I just talk to Him--because of a book that I once read back in the 60's: "Prayer, Conversing With God."  It changed the way I pray--not suggesting that I am an expert at praying.  I'm not.  Up till then, I always used the phrase, (because I had heard others use it) "Lead, Guide, and Direct."  But the question was asked: Lead where, Guide who, and Direct what?  I had no idea.  It was just a phrase I had learned that sounded proper--like everyone else's prayers.  I had no idea what I meant by it.  Actually, I had never thought much about what I was saying.

And another phrase I had learned was one that I said when we blessed our food:  "Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies."  I never use the word "Nourishment" in any other setting.  Now I just say, "Bless our food and thank you for it."  And I sometimes, I wonder what saying "bless the food" means anyway?  Does God bless people, or does He bless stuff?  Maybe I will just say, "Thank you Father for the food."  Perhaps we should all think more about what we are saying when we talk to God???