One night about two in the morning, long after Ken and I were asleep, I was awakened by a noise at our bedroom window.  At first I thought it was the wind pushing the forsythia bush limbs against the screen.  But It scared me, so I woke Ken up.  He told me it was nothing--go back to sleep.  But I heard it again, so he gave up on me letting him get back to sleep and got up to check.  When Ken finally came back to bed, I asked what it was.  "It was nothing.  Go back to sleep. I'll tell you in the morning," he said.

Scott had spent the night with his best "buds" at a friend's house--at a sleep-over--six or seven blocks from our house.  They were all nine or ten years old.  It was the year that the song "The Streak" was out, and of course, being nine years old, that was what they decided to do at two in the morning.  Go streaking through the neighborhood.  Thinking that everyone in the neighborhood would be asleep by then.  But Sue Wayne Pierson, who was hosting the sleep-over party, got up to check on them just as they went flying through her back yard.  Buck naked.  Busted.

Ken shared the story with me the next morning.  All the boys had been in real trouble with Sue.  She gave them a lecture and sent them back to bed--dressed in pajamas of course.  But Scott had such a guilty conscience, that he came home in the middle of the night to "Confess" and get his dad to forgive him before Sue told us what the boys had done.  He was scratching on our bedroom window, trying to wake his dad up, in the middle of the night.  "I confessed that I was sorry to God, but it didn't do any good,  I knew I would have to confess to you before God would forgive me.  I'm sorry and I won't do that again." (Ken and Scott were new to the parent/son game.  Ken had been gone off and on for almost all of Scott's early years, and Scott didn't want to disappoint him.  I did most of the parenting, and after two girls, Scott was a new experience.)

He was fairly obedient--with things I told him not to do.  Problem was, I could never think up all the things there were to tell him not to do.  Like going streaking.  He was always in trouble, doing things I hadn't told him not to do.  I told him not to point his BB gun at anyone, or windows, or houses.  He blew out the street lights on our block.  I hadn't told him not to do that.  I took him down to the mayor's office, had him stand there and tell them what he had done.  It took him forever to pay for the lights with his allowance.   When God was looking for a mother to place Scott with on earth, I guess he chose me because he knew I wouldn't kill him.  I admit that I sure did think about it.

This birthday thing keeps going on.  My neighbors next door (Dean and Jeaninne Bryce) had a celebration birthday dinner for me.  Neighbors came.  It was lovely.  Mexican food.  So delicious.  One of the neighbors (Linda) brought strawberry short cake with whipped cream and chocolate over the top.  Decadent.  Mine had a candle.  My wish was:  that they would do the same thing--with the same food--for my 90th.

I am so blessed to have made such wonderful friends in Edmond.  I didn't think I would be able to do that.  Because it is hard to do in a new place.  But like I have said before, God plopped me down in the middle of neighborhood heaven.

Becky Bacon is here.  Came last night and stayed for her eye appointment today.  Results weren't good.  Bad news is that she has to have more surgery.  Good news is that she will be coming back to spend a week with me.  She is the most calming person I have ever known.  Just totally peaceful.  Nothing rattles her.  We just sit here and don't talk or do anything most of the time.  It's perfect.  She's one of those people that if I have dirty dishes in the sink, I don't have to clean them up or load them in the dishwasher--until I feel like it.  She knows where everything is.  She leaves her stuff in a drawer in the guest bathroom.  I love it.

When I go to bed at night and say my prayers, I seem to fall asleep in the middle of the "Thank You part."  I am the world's most thankful person.  The list goes on and on.

My daughter Becky missed my party.  She just spent ten days in Japan with her youngest son, David, and his wife.  She is now hooked on Sumo wrestling.

One of my "thankfuls" is that I thank all of you out there for reading what I write.  It gives me a purpose.  I am humbled that you stay with me.  Tomorrow, I am going to tell you a funny story about Scott.  He will probably kill me.  Or sue me for defamation of character.  However, everything I tell about Scott is the truth.   There's no defamation involved!!

Saturday, Pat gave a birthday party for me.  It was a first for me.  I had never had a birthday party before.  When I was growing up, when someone had a birthday, we just ate dinner together with the same crew of family members that we ate with every Sunday.  The only thing that marked the day was a cake for desert instead of pie.  We didn't have parties.  Nobody could afford banners, balloons, ice cream, and such folderol.  The idea of such excess would never have occurred to anyone.

So having a party in my honor was a new experience for me.  My first real birthday party.  I had a lot of fun.  There were 28 people who came, and three who couldn't make it came the next day.  There was so much conversation going on that the house hummed with a subtle roar.  I think I missed most of it.  I would wander around trying to take it all in, but I never got to visit with some of the people at all.  You could tell that everyone had a wonderful time.  Pat outdid herself.  Food, food, and more food.  And deserts.  Chocolate pound cake--my favorite--German chocolate icing, whipping cream, lemon tarts.  Everything I love to eat.

My next door neighbors are having me over for dinner tonight, and inviting the couple from across the street.  Both of my neighbors bring me a plate when they cook--which is almost every night--but tonight is a dinner to celebrate my 80 years.  I feel like Royalty.  Everyone is happy for me!!  I guess it is a milestone.  Not everyone lives this long.  God willing, I'm not done yet.

Today, I am planting tomatoes.  Perfect.  Scott brought me an entire flat of Jet Stars.  Ann took a few, she wants to try them.  Scott got me started on Jet Stars--they do really well here.  This week I'll plant okra.  It's too early, but I can't wait.  Spring.  It is wonderful to have another spring.  In honor of my birthday, as usual, the redbuds are blooming.  (You will have to read the story about the redbuds in a former post.) The daffodils are nodding, the Bradford pear trees look like vanilla snow cones, and the phlox is starting to bloom.  Tulips are tuliping--in every imaginable color.

I think that this is what heaven is going to look like.  Green.  In full bloom.  All year around.  Except there won't be years.  Scott says that everyone will be permanently thirty-three years old.  I like that.  Thirty three was a good year.  But then, so was thirty four, and thirty five, and........they have all been good years.  Even the bad ones.

I was born on March 26, 1938.   America was still crawling out of the great depression.  And two weeks before I was born, on March 12, German troops marched into Austria and annexed it for the Third Reich.   Within a year and six months, they would invade Poland. That's the world I was born into.  Upside down.  America entered the war when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  The government built a German POW camp in Pryor--in the middle America--so that if one of the  German POW's escaped, there would be nowhere for them to go and no way to get there.  I was not yet four years old when my father went to work at the Pryor powder plant in 1942 making explosives and ammunition for the war.  All of my first memories have to do with something about the war, or the conditions that it caused in America.

My dad would bring me bracelets that some of the men would fashion out of scrap copper bits and pieces, or steel slag that were tossed out at the ammunition plant.  The men would lay the trash metal on the train tracks for the trains to flatten.  Then they would  braid the scraps and fashion bracelets.  I wish I had kept mine.  It was the one bright spot that I remember.  Nobody had things like that.   Ration books for food, tires, gasoline and everything else a family needed were the norm.  I grew up on rations.  We would trade food coupons for gas coupons if we had to go somewhere.

Schools were crowded.  Teachers weren't paid money.  They were paid in script--promissory notes, which they couldn't always cash.  People who had cash would buy the teacher's script for pennies on the dollar.  Most teacher's cashed their script for almost nothing--to buy food.

Phones hung on walls and had to be wound up to use.  It was years before my family had a phone. You didn't call a number, you picked up and an operator would take your request.  My family's number had three digits.  TV didn't exist.  All news was by radio--in the evening as a rule.  I can still see my grandfather sitting on a stool with his ear up against the mesh on the front of the huge radio trying to listen.  Everyone had to be silent during the news.  News was news.  Real events.  No opinions.  Visual news was at the movies.  On Saturday.  For a dime--if you had a dime.

 I didn't know anyone who had seen or flown in an airplane until I was in high school.  Most roads were dirt.  There were no interstates until I was out of high school and Eisenhower was president.   I am 80 years old and my world has changed.  But God hasn't.  He is the same.  Faithful.

Tomorrow, my daughter Pat is hosting a birthday party for me--come and go from 1 to 4.  Everyone is invited.  All of you, too.  She wanted to do it at her house but she lives thirty miles from here in the country--so I said do it here.  I will be eighty years young.  I thank God that I am in good shape and able to do almost everything for myself.  I certainly don't feel like I am eighty.  I have no idea what that should feel like anyway.

Pat is making chocolate pound cake--which is my favorite.  With whipped cream, or German Chocolate icing on the side--if you want it.  I like it plain.  And punch.

It is a blessing to have begun a new project--this late in life--by writing something everyday.  Who knew that you could reinvent yourself at seventy-five and start something completely new.  I had never written much, and yet here I am five years later still writing every day with almost 2000 postings.

The thing I like the best about this time of life is that I get to get up everyday with nothing to do and go to bed with it only half done.  Doing half of nothing takes a lot of time.

One of the best things is that I don't have to make anyone else do anything they don't want to do anymore.  There's no pressure.  Raising four children, with Ken gone so much, involved enforcing a lot of "house rules."  I don't have to enforce anything ever again.  Hallelujah!!

I'm playing my marimba for the choir on a regular basis--when we go to different places to sing.  I keeps my fingers, hands, wrists, and arms agile.  Everyone seems to like to hear me play, and that is rewarding.  I feel like I'm doing something useful.

My mom and her sister (Ann's mother) both had Alzheimer's disease.  It was tragic to see them so helpless in their later years.  I thank God everyday for my mind and my ability to communicate.  I pray that He lets me continue to write for years to come.  To be able to reason and think is God's second greatest gift to us.

Jesus didn't have an "I'm God," and I have a free ticket to pass "Go" when he came to earth.

Hebrews 1:17-18  "Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brothers, (us) That he might be a merciful and faithful high priest...to make reconciliation (to God) for the sins of the people (us).  For in that (because)...he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to comfort those who are tempted."  He didn't get a free ticket for anything.

Some people say, "Well, Jesus was God, so he wasn't tempted by the things that I am tempted to do.  He didn't have the same problems that normal people have."  Not so.  In 1 Corinthians 15:45, Christ is called the "Second Adam," because He was born without original sin.  But He had the capacity to sin.  He just resisted temptation.

In Philippians 2:5-8, we find that Jesus was made just like us: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God didn't think it was robbery to be equal with God.  But made himself of no reputation and was made in the likeness of men."  In every single way.

Once you hold the Holy Spirit within you, you have what He had.  The presence of God within you guiding your behavior.  No, you aren't God, but you have the capacity of God within you.

You can do it.  Stop doing wrong things.  Start doing right things.  Scripture declares that we can overcome our nature since Christ now lives inside of us.  That's what He came to do.  To put the Spirit of God back into us.

"Christ in you, the hope of glory."  Colossians 1:27

Hope of glory.  I'm working on it.  You can, too.

The next passage in Hebrews that caught my eye is in 2:1.  The verse begins with the word: "Therefore."  Any time the word "therefore" appears in a Biblical letter, you should pay attention.  The writer is going to say something important.  Hebrews 2:1, "Therefore, we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip."

Paying attention.  Listening.  Asking questions.  But then, subsequently, storing what we have learned--for our future benefit, or the benefit of others.  We are what we learn.  We are what we remember.  We store up knowledge for the future.  A child that touches a hot stove won't do that again.  A child that has his first ice cream cone will want another one.  And a child who has someone that will read books to them will become a reader--and subsequently be full of knowledge.  

We are the sum of our experiences.  We are the sum of those who have gone before us.  I watched a documentary today on the evacuation at Dunkirk, France during World War Two.  The horrible conditions that befell the English troops as they tried to flee across the English Channel away from German forces.  They evacuated 335,000 men on life boats trying to get them back to England before they were overrun and killed.  Thousands upon thousands died in that effort.

Every fisherman in England who had a fishing boat set sail to help the battleships in their effort.  To save the few they could also carry.  The people of England will always remember being part of something bigger than themselves.  They saved lives.  They risked their own lives to do it.  The documentary was about patriotism.  The rescue effort they made will tug at your heart.

The book of Hebrews is about Jesus and the sacrificial effort that he made to save us.  Coming from Heaven to Earth to rescue us.  To save our lives so that we could have a future.  It should tug at our hearts.   Lest we forget, or fail to pass the story along to those who haven't heard it.  Jesus died.  He gave up his life for yours.  He took your penalty on Himself.  It was a gift.  You get a free ride Home to live forever on Heavenly soil.  "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13.

After he returned from the war in Vietnam, Ken told me, "God willing, I will never leave America again." And he didn't.  And we will never have to leave Heaven.  It's forever.