FROG
Part one

I flew to San Antonio to join my beloved attending a swank hotel conference. Confident, my bags secure, ID and personally printed pass in hand, I passed through the initial TSA security screen. Then I quickly deposited sneakers, a laptop, jacket, purse into the gray bins and a carry-on suitcase onto the rollers.

As I popped through the metal detector, the guard asked for my boarding pass, which was flying through the x-ray scanner. I tried to mimic Buddy’s puppy eyes innocence stare.

“You have to do 50 push ups and 50 sit ups,” he ordered.

I grinned and pushed my hands. He grinned and waved me through.

The week before I started solo daylight shopping, relying on my far vision glasses to enhance my healing eyes. The eyeglasses slide up on my hair whenever I need to read anything. Sometimes they pop up and down like a hotel elevator, especially, when I’m ferreting shop shelves with so many displays to glean at a glance.

If I’m alone with a shop lady, the eyes rest and the chats start.

At an imports store in the historic Menger Hotel, I met dear Connie. She convinced me to buy a three-inch frog and stick. The wooden pair formed a percussion instrument I could see my son Bud playing. Croak! But I also saw Bud re-gifting it to our new pastor since the two of us had seen his office.

Tall, thin, this soft-spoken theologian had the obligatory ceiling-to-floor books’ wall. About this wall, atop desk piles, in almost every niche, a Moses’ plague had broken out.

I nudged Buddy to ask the obvious, “Why do you have frogs?”

“Oh,” the pastor broke into a smile. “It wasn’t my idea. My congregants decided to give them to me as gifts. You see, I have this favorite motto, saying... and the first letters of the words spell out F.R.O.G.” Then he pointed to a sign with the motto.

Pastor handed my son a moving, musical frog, hoping, I think, to be rid of it. Buddy refused the frog, even though it sang his favorite country lyric, “It’s five o’clock somewhere...”

What do you think F.R.O.G. stands for?

a. Fully rely on government
b. Fully relaxed on grog
c. Foolishly rich on greed
d. Fully rely on God

Is this motto your personal motto? Why or why not?
Are you heading through life self-chained, without direction or a boarding pass to the final destination, to join your ultimate Beloved in a swank place that beats anything here?

T.M.T.T.L.T.T.L.
There’s more to this life than this life.