Nachamu Ami,
Part One, The Storm

Maria let her face grin the biggest smile you can ever give without revealing braces or the teeth behind them. And she stood looking at her mom.

“I will never forget that hug,” I remarked about the previous night.

“Don’t expect it every time.” Her eyes as well as her body quickly rolled away from me.

For a split second she stood in her “Maria way,” her chin up too high, back arched, arms stiff at her side.Then she went to fix her breakfast on a September day that stayed dry. Thank God.

For three consecutive days over 20 inches(51 centimeters) of rain flooded Georgia counties far north of us. In our area a mere four inches(10 centimeters) fell in a few hours. That deluged night my hairdresser’s son chose not to drive into his apartment complex. The paved entryway had a huge dip filled with water covering the hood of an unoccupied car.

Our family stayed dry in our Deep South home that sits on a rise. Storm waters channeled from the roof into gutters, down the slope to street drains, and then underground pipes. The pipes gushed into a manmade lake behind homes across the street, a lake my Maria can view through bottlebrush pine and pecan trees. Those tall trees canopy great shade during the day. But one nearby tree became the lightning rod that sparked fear that singular night.

Earlier that night Buddy checked all the locks, shut blinds, and the main lights. Sister Watchdog made sure he took his seizure medicine, before she hurried upstairs to draw her drapes. Both tried to sleep. But no light blocking drapes can block the lightning blast flashes that interrupted the hiss of constant rain.

In our backroom the red digits of the clock warned it was an hour and a half to midnight. Thanks to a DVR, the TV, and two T. Edison’s incandescent bulb lamps, we parents could wind down before hitting the pillows. So we hoped.

Boom! Scientists say you can calculate how far away lightning strike is by counting the seconds between your sight of a flash and the first rumble you hear of its thunder. To calculate the miles one divides the number of seconds by five. To calculate the kilometers one divides by three.

We didn’t see the flash to figure out how far away the lightning bolted in our backyard. The boom plunged us into darkness. My laser eyes searched the dark and found a pinprick of light from a battery backed up alarm panel. Then they ferreted out a blue glow in the hall. The nightlight was on!

MBH hustled to flip two circuit breakers. Adult voices and feet echoed in the stairwell. One voice spilled sentence after sentence in a tight pitch that tugged this momma’s heartstrings.

“It’s okay, honey,” I yelled, hurrying to stand outside the blacked out room. In the backdrop of a lit stairs, Bud followed his dad while Maria ran to me. My Maria ran to me! She let her head fall onto my shoulder as she wrapped her arms about me. Stroking her hair, it felt as soft as her frame, not one ounce of stiffness . . . as she yielded herself to a parent-child comforting embrace.

In the floods of this temporal time and space, as you grope for light in the gloom, in the loss of control, in the angst of terror, a calm parent stands ready. With eyes, ears, arms, and every fiber of a parent's will wide open towards YOU, a Parent longs for you. Long suffering he waits on you to come, to yield to an eternal embrace.

Embrace the Parent whose words,
penned long ago in Hebrew,
speak for all time:
“Comfort, comfort ye my people.”

As We Gather This Weekend

Some plan to gather with groups for a weekend event. Will it be an unforgettable event or a memory you want to delete? How you remember that event will depend upon you, how you react . . . or what you hope to convey to others.

Labor Day weekend, my eldest son flew in for a family visit. Hugs & Joy! Sure sibling ribbing flamed, and mom fell into ancient ways of über mommy posturing. Thank God my kids let forgiveness and mercy guide them, as they’re twenty-something adults.

Sunday we hosted a barbecue, inviting another family, the mom, a former home-schooler like my eldest son. Over an amber-tinged photo album, they recollected memories of home school cooperative field trips and projects. My eldest felt they did a poor job on a Indian Navaho village model; his former classmate disagreed, “It was the planet we tried to paper Mache, but went all squishy.” After serious banter, both agreed on the squishy planet and laughed over other memories and updates on old friends.

But there’s one memory my eldest didn’t recall, one etched in me that I hope my kids have forgotten, forgiven.

On a weekend long ago, my three kids and I joined other home school families in a pro-life event. Standing at the end of a five-mile chain, my kids and I held one white poster with three printed words, no graphic pictures. Toward the end of the event before my husband came to get us, a clunker sedan screeched up to our side. We jumped back. Inside white man in with ragged dirty blond hair screamed bombs and expletives. My husband picked up his young wife in tears, ashamed, ears burning for weeks after the event.

The room echoed. Doors shut to the other rooms. Shocked by those words, I was more shocked at how calm I became. The insults didn’t crumble my faith nor God’s love and mercy towards the one who was obviously hurting mad.

Centuries before Jesus suffered Roman expletives, scourges, and thorns, David wrote, “All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads . . .” The response Jesus gave to such insults the poet Isaiah predicted, “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.”

The weekend approaches. The people gather. No matter what bombs or transgressions fall about you, let ultimate GOODNESS help you find redemptive ways to make a memory worth remembering.

The Patient Pace of Perfect Vision: 

20/20 Finale

Today starts September. Hints of fall showed up as wee pumpkins in the coastal patches we viewed on a recent visit with family in Northern California. Some called the timing of this trip serendipity. But when I stepped into the rental car and my sister called to beg me to take mom to the doctor that very afternoon, timing was divine. My mother is in good hands and health. And it’s well past time to blog now that MBH,my beloved husband, Bud, and I are back in the Deep South.

Colleagues of MBH warned that our family would find Georgia's August days unbearably hot and  humid. Triple-digit Fahrenheit temperatures, they claimed, would melt us. A handful of days may have edged 100 degrees, but nothing like those in jungle heat. Through sun-tinted eyeglasses I squinted into the empty sky over the village, searching for shady clouds to gather against the steep foothills of the Himalayan range. Villagers looked the monsoons to feed water pots, rice fields, and gardens, to rinse away greasy sweat from every pore and hair follicle, to lift the claustrophobic pressure of humidity that sapped energy.

For a few weeks the Deep Southern summer seemed just as oppressive as in Southern Nepal. I thank God for the inventive minds that created air conditioners and electricity to run them. Still, our second August Deep South seems sweeter and cooler than those hot season months on the northern India “Terai” or plains. Recently our thermometer has dipped into daytime highs of eighties, even seventies! MBH is faithful to keep our lawn green with sprinklers, but God has turned on sky sprinklers almost every other day.

I praise my Maker for another blessing. My eye doctor recently measured 20/20 vision in my surgically corrected, far distance eye, huzzah! Or perhaps the Jewish doctor might say, “Blessed be the name of the L_rd!” Sans glasses, worn since I was nine, my Lasik and PRK Lasek eyes now delight over lush landscapes. Rusty dry lawns and fresh cotton fields grow lush green against the red clay. Deciduous trees dress like a Southern belle in full-leaf regalia. Flowers that had withered in early August now stand to blush petals. Human brows may be furrowed but at least we don’t have to mop them of sweat.

Unless one is in Los Angeles, where on this 2009 September day, triple digit temperatures blast from fires consuming mountainsides and homes. Pray God’s protection for the firefighters. Pray safety for the LA families affected. Appeal to God for the approaching Baja California hurricane to soften and hasten to quench the flames. Not only can God send a Jewish doctor to heal my sight, God sent his One and Only Jewish Son into the flames of Doom and up from the dead to rescue and save many. Even you.

Let Him give you 20/20 perfect vision by faith.

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son for you. Amen