A Thousand Tomorrows.....

Tomorrow (July 3) my daughter Lauren will turn 18. She is our youngest and with this "rite of passage" comes another poignant moment of nostalgia for me. Where did those years go? Did I live them well? Did I always speak to her the way Christ would have me to? Did I guide her and advise her correctly? Of course, because I am human, I definitely cannot answer YES completely. But I am thankful for God's grace - for Lauren's sake and for my sake.

Now we watch her fly. Even though she will be living at home for this year and attending community college - things will never be the same. She is exploring, stepping out, making new friends, and making many many more of her own decisions. Did I prepare her well enough? Will she do it right? I am praying so, but I know that she is human just like her mom is human. A wise lady today just pointed at her knees when I was asking her how she did with her daughter's exploratory years. The knees....ah, yes! Great idea!

So, my desire today is that I will take the next thousand tomorrows and beyond - and remember that getting on my knees is perhaps the very best thing I can continue to do for Lauren. Most of the other duties as her mother are finished, but interceding for her in prayer will (and should) NEVER cease!

Disappointment in the Jury Assembly Room

Well, so much for my noble, romantic plans to "save the world" to "make a different" in local legislation, to "impact 11 other people in the jury room". I simple sat and waited for my name to be called for 8 solid hours! Out of 132 people, there were twenty-seven names that were never called - and mine was one of them. So around 4:00 p.m., they released us all to go home - and because we had not been called, we would not be required to return. I have "done my duty" for the next two years.

So, I have no dramatic story to tell about jury duty. Period.

My Day in Court

As I sit here in this comfortable lounge in the Juror Assembly Room (which is actually a suite of almost a dozen different rooms) - air condition, televisions, plush chairs, business amenities, wireless availability, and a snack room - I wonder how different it must have been for potential jurors 50 years ago; even just 25 years ago when I was in high school. In one part of our introduction this morning, it was cited that a juror survey was taken about 4-5 years ago to help the court system better make this a "pleasant" experience for those of us called in to serve.

In my opinion, IF you are even just a decent American, you would be grateful to be able to give back - certainly not to a system that is without its faults, but to a system that is foundational to who we are as a nation. For me, the adventurer at heart, I am thrilled to be able to come inside this sacred assembly room - that, from where I'm sitting, looks more like a hotel lobby with breakfast bar. I am hoping that I will be chosen to sit on a jury and become part of the process that makes our judicial system like none other in the world.

However, fifty years ago, perhaps there was no air conditioning in the high ceiling, formal rooms that would have held potential jurors. There was no television broadcasting "The Golden Girls" or a hand-picked movie (but absolutely NO news of any kind). How exciting to think that I am actually living out a process of justice and balance in my spectacular state.

So stay tune for the continual episode of "Kim in the Jury Room"

On Becoming a Grandmother for the First Time

My head is practically spinning from all the "firsts" and "lasts" in my life right now! And, of course, there is the dynamic of the "firsts" and "lasts" that I don't even know about as I write this! There are a few "firsts" that I wish never to experience - if God would for me not to experience them: I've never had a broken bone, I've never been in a car accident (except the kind that happens in your own driveway with another car that you own), and I've never lost a parent. Those are "firsts" that anyone would want to live without!

Between October 19 - 24 of this year, there will be a first taking place in my life unlike any other - as I am hearing from "veteran" grandparents. My oldest daughter, Michelle, is 23 weeks pregnant with her own baby daughter! I remember looking at my daughters when they were younger and wondering what kind of mothers they would be one day. It seemed so far away at the time, but now....well, I can hardly absorb it! I find myself thinking about Christmas and the presence of a little two month old cooing somewhere under the Christmas tree (okay, that was sappy, but really! how cute would that be!) I think of next spring taking her, her mama, and her two proud, excited aunties to stroll down the streets of New York for a few days! I think of having my husband pull out the Jenny Lind crib which all three of our daughters slept in as babies, purchasing a new mattress, and setting up my own "Noni Nursery". I already have a rocking chair, will need a few more things for the nursery (sounds like I am planning on keeping her quite a bit, huh?)

Honestly, though, looking back over the years with my own grandmother, it is not the things that I will be able to give her that will be memorable and powerful in Layna's life- it is the gift of my time and my love: pure and simple. My grandmother took time with me. She took us places, cooked for us, talked with us, met our high school sweethearts, held us when we cried, and oohed and ahhed over every single messy picture we drew her.....she was embedded in my life up to the time she died in 2000.

My Grandma Horrell set the bar high and I choose to follow in her footsteps for my own grandchildren. So, whatever this new "role" in my life holds for me, Noni is ready and willing!! I'm not sure I've ever met this Noni that I'm becoming, but I'm pretty sure that I'll like her and will enjoy watching her grow into her role - almost as much as I watch my daughter grown into her role as a first time mother!

The Last Fifteen of the First 50

In 15 minutes, I will enter a new decade - and not just that, I will begin living the second half of a century! A writer I am, but even despite that, I am finding it very hard to even put into words what I am feeling of this. Part of me just thinks there is way too much emphasis put on numbers. 50 is just a number just as 49 is a number. It's not really a big deal in the scheme of things.

But, realistically, though I do understand that our lives are like a vapor, according to our Heavenly Father, 50 years seems much more like the whole kettle of vapor! I am amazed that God would allow me 50 years on this sin-riddled, but still extraordinarily incredible earth! For almost 27 of these years, I have been married to one of the most amazing men to ever be born. I have mothered 3 breathtakingly beautiful and fantastic daughters - been able to watch them all grow up and graduate from high school (the last one graduated exactly 2 weeks ago). My oldest daughter has married a wonderful young man and in four short months, they will bless me with my first grandchild.

I'm thinking that me turning 50 really is probably one of the best things that ever happened to me! The experiences I have had, the life I have lived, the blessings I have enjoyed, the pain and heartache that has strengthened me to my core like nothing else....all these things take time. But time and the use of the time given us is what ultimately defines us and what we will live behind one day.

8 minutes to go and I just have to say that I absolutely LOVED the 40's. You've all read those emails about each decade and the things that we learn through each of them. I will have to vouch to the validity of them - at least to the 5th decade. While we are young and seemingly invincible going into our second decade, we really know absolutely nothing about life. I would never want to live the 20's over again, except to replay my wedding and holding my two daughters that were born when I was 25 and 28. The 30's is a decade of revelation, exploration, and a heap of mistakes. When we are in our thirties, we start to think that we know so much about life and have lived enough that we start looking at those younger than us and assume that we can guide them along the way. We become confident in life - but then those kids that we had in our second decade start to get older and then we find out that we don't really know anything at all.

My opinion is that being the parent of a teenager is the antidote to the cocky, falsely confident years of our 30's. We enter our 40's with a hint of nostalgia, the big hoopla of friends, and the realization that time is quickly moving on. But within that 10 year span of time, live really is lived and a philosophy of love, commitment, and purpose is grooved into our souls.

In 2 minutes I will turn 50. But inside, I do not feel the numbers - I feel the experience of living. My spirit is still young and I would imagine, always will be! I, frankly, am not afraid of this turning of the tide!

IT'S HERE! I made it - and I want so to thank my Creator for the blessings and the life lessons that has brought me this far. I am absolutely ecstatic about this next decade! Bring it on! I am ready! For I know the ONE who is already there......

HAPPY 50TH, Me!!!!

First Phase Completely Finished

For a couple of months now, I have been wanting to write about these huge changes that are taking place in my life. Either because of a lack of words, no motivation, feeling completely overwhelmed and emotional, or all of the above, it has not happened. Lauren's senior year went by without scarcely a word being penned. It felt to me if I would have tried that they would have seemed morbid, familiar, boring, and redundant after a while. So, I opted for none at all.

Exactly a week after my youngest one graduated from high school, I find myself still extremely weary and even a little numb from it all. How are you supposed to feel when your child-rearing days are completely over? When you drive on campus the day after her last day at school and you realize you are looking for her car - wondering if she was late for her class? Then you realize....no, you will never need to wonder that again. You will never see her car parked in that familiar spot again. You will never pay another sports fee, you will never go to another soccer game anticipating the "game of her life" (and in your eyes, every one of them - are). You will never have to hear about the drama of high school friendships and "first loves" gone bad. You will never send a check to the cafeteria to pay her lunch bill or send a teacher a note again explaining about a sickness that has kept her away from school. You will never wash school uniforms or move a scattered backpack containing the mysteries of Human Anatomy or Romeo and Juliet.

Those days are gone forever. Never can you regain them. Never can you recall them to do them over, to try a little harder or spend a little more time talking in the car as you take your junior higher to school. It's done - and how you did it and with what attitude you did it - is gone with the turning of the tassle. The tassle turned from the right to the left seems a simple act, but with it comes the shifting of responsibility, accountability, and accessibility.

When I watched her hand touch the tassle and innocently (and excitedly) turn it to the left, I felt my own shifting of a sorts. A shifting away from motherhood as I had known it. The proactive, passionate mother who hardly ever missed a ballgame and attended every single performance of the school play. A mother who brought to school the lunch she had left in the frig or the guitar she needed for practice. The mother who went home to retrieve the camera for the capturing of precious memories and ran to the store to pick up the class party snacks. The maddening mother who called and emailed teachers and coaches when she did not feel her child had gotten her "just deserves". I was that kind of mother and I have absolutely no regrets.

I have a friend who has only one child and I thought of her often as she experienced complete menagerie of emotions her daughter's senior year. It was both her first and last of everything having to do with high school - all in one short, emotional year. I, at least, had already experienced the first child doing this exact thing six years ago. This oldest daughter is now married and only a few months away from experiencing motherhood for the first time. So, I know and have pleasantly experienced that there is definitely life after the high school years. Good years - different, true - but good all the same.

The innocence of childhood long gone, the graduated, young women in my life are discovering so much about themselves, about their father and me, and about life. And I'm liking that I am there to enjoy it.

So, first phase finished. Memories galores - absolutely no regrets! Onward to the second phase! I have a feeling it will be the absolute best...just as the first was!

Transplanted Love - Part 2

Sitting in a hospital waiting room - when someone you love and care about is behind those doors somewhere - is perhaps one of the most maddening things a human has to endure! We love to be in control (or at least THINK we are) and when someone is wheeled into an operating room with a doctor and his team, the last bit of reserve we might possess just disappears into thin air! My brother had at least a dozen surgeries between the time he was 13 and 16 (prior to his kidney transplant). I had sit in the waiting room with my parents and numerous friends and family for all of those surgeries. None of them were ever easy; though some of them were memorable (for another post down the road).

On a side note, I think one of the most practical thing anyone has ever done for us while we were "living" in a waiting room was my Uncle Jimmy. One day he had come down to visit with us and my brother, and before he left, he emptied his pocket of all his loose change and encouraged those in the room to do the same. Before long, we had at least $20 in change that could be easily and readily used for the hungry vending machines! I have never forgotten that. People have come in and said all kind of things in order to comfort us and show us that they cared. They preached, prayed, cried, read scripture, and expounded on their philosophy of suffering. None of those really moved me more than just someone's "presence" - sitting quietly beside me - or that gesture of emptying of the pockets to make sure we had enough change to get us through the hours and hours and hours of sitting and waiting and hoping. To me it's a modern day rendition of the commandment, "If someone thirsts, and you give them a cup of cold water, you do it in Jesus' name." Giving me change so that I could buy that cold water (or Sundrop :) is the same thing to me!!

As hard as it always was when we waited for my brother to have surgery, the day of my brother's kidney transplant - with a kidney taken from my mother - was the longest and hardest day of my life (up until a few experiences I had as a missionary in Africa). Not only was my brother wheeled away on a sterile white stretcher but also was my precious mom. In order for this "live" (meaning that the donor was a person still alive, instead of someone who had died and had donated his organ) transplantation, my brother was put in one operating room and right next to him (in another operating room) would be my mother. I have no other siblings, so there I sat with my dad and at least two dozen other people. Waiting. Waiting. Smelling the staleness of hospital air. Hearing the talking, but not comprehending. Breathing, but not really using the air. Waiting.

If you know me at all, you'll be surprised when I tell you that I literally sat for six hours and said not a word. One of my "second" daddies sat beside me most of the time and kept patting my leg, bringing me something to drink, but seeming to understand that I could simply not have eaten a bite. It was so long. I thought I would go mad with the thought of it. I remember going back and forth in my mind with the craziest thoughts: who would I want to die if I had to choose? What IF the doctors came out and said that they both had died while in surgery? What IF my brother died anyway - after my mother had done this amazing thing for him? What IF my mother died while giving a kidney but my brother were to live? Could my brother endure life without her and no blame himself? Would I blame him? It's absolutely amazing the thing the human mind can conjure up when put under stress. The scenarios we imagine, the bridges we build, the monsters we devise. It's sad but true that those are the times when every single Bible verse we may have memorized simply dissipates into the stale, antiseptic air we breath in those waiting rooms.

Where is the trust? Where is the realization that God is the ultimate authority - even in those operating room? Why can we not rest in that truth? Ah, the human-ness of us!!

Transplanted Love - Part 1

I don't even remember how I found out about this guy's blog, but I check in on it every couple of weeks or so. http://cfhusband.blogspot.com/ His pregnant wife was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis, chose to have the baby against the odds and with much risk, and since then, the baby girl has been born, and the wife is on an active transplant list for a double lung transplant. When I first started reading this blog, things were bleak. God has done amazing things - day by day, step by step.

One thing I found myself doing was thinking about how tired this guy must be. Months of living in a hospital, carrying the weight of his wife's situation and now a baby girl - he must be incredibly tired. Oftentimes the caretakers are overlooked, not on purpose, but just because the trauma and care given to the one terminally ill outweighs everything else.

But I have been there. Not as a spouse or even as a parent, but as a sibling. When I was 16 years old, my younger brother (who was 13) was diagnosed with a terminal kidney disease. Day by day, week by week, month by month, I walked it, heard it, prayed it, saw it, smelled it, screamed it, cried it - with my parents and my brother. Looking back, I was the overlooked one. I do not say this to bring a negative light on my parents or others, because they could have done no better. My Christian walk was not strong enough within itself to help me stand firm on my own. I just had not learned to do that nor was I, honestly, in spiritual shape to do so. Living far from God and most of the time, in rebellion against my parents, I know that I must have added a layer of pain and distress to my parents that I could not have imagined then. (But oh, after being the mother of three daughters - oh, I know so well that layer!)

During my senior year in high school, it was evident that my brother would need a kidney transplant. Standard procedure is that immediate family - if they are willing - would be tested to see if they were a close enough match to share one of their kidneys. My dad, mom, and I all were tested at Duke Medical Center. Out of the three, I matched the closest to my brother. However, after some deliberation, my parents decided that it would not be a good idea for me (being so young and getting ready to start college) to donate one of my kidneys. I remember being so very disappointed and angry at my parents from keeping me from doing this one important thing for my brother. Now, in hindsight, I can understand their concern about having both of their children in surgery at the same time and then worrying about any future problems with me.

So, after a rocky and extremely laborious time, I conceded (there was nothing else I could have done anyway - I was only 17 years old - and could not have signed the consent forms for myself). My mother then stepped forward to give my brother one of her kidneys. Literally giving life back to him for the second time.

On the eve of my freshman year of college, we moved to a short-term apartment in Durham while my mother and my brother went through the last phase of testing and preparation for the "live" kidney transplantation.

We All Have the Right To Be Beautiful

Earlier today I heard an commercial on the radio about a website called "Doctorssayyes.com". There was a quote that really struck a chord with me. "We all have the right to be beautiful" To a Christian, that quote should bother us in many ways. It says to me, "God can make mistakes, and if He has done so with your looks, we're here to fix it." It says, "No one has the right to tell me how I should look. That is my prerogative as a human." It says, "My looks are everything that I am. I must speak loudly with my looks. There's nothing else to me." It says, "I was born in this world for it to be all about me."

Oh, I could go on and on with the interpretations, but I think you get my drift. That whole commercial just made me sad. In Psalms 39:11, it says, " When with rebukes You correct man for iniquity, You make his beauty melt away like a moth;
Surely every man is vapor." Physical beauty is just that: temporal and fading.

Psalms 49:10-14 says, This is the way of those who are foolish,
And of their posterity who approve their sayings. Selah
Like sheep they are laid in the grave;
Death shall feed on them;
The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning;
And their beauty shall be consumed in the grave, far from their dwelling. People spent thousands and thousands of dollars in the hope that they will receive approval, notice, and renown by their physical features. And then....one day, the results (temporal beauty) goes in the grave with them.

Now, I am a woman and I like beautiful things as much as other women. Admittedly, there are times when "things" (beauty) pulls me to dwell on what might not necessarily be good for me or for my spiritual growth. Our Western society has gone wild with the beauty craze making cosmetology scream into millions earned in revenue! It's heady to watch commercials or scan magazines day after day and read (or see) the promises to make us youthful, more alluring, more beautiful!

But to the very depths of my soul, I choose to believe and embrace that I am fearfully and wonderfully (perfectly) made by my Heavenly Father. He makes no mistakes in His creation. My flat feet and crooked smile are not imperfections to anyone except this society. I am beautiful to Him who made me and gave His life to redeem me.

Honestly, in my opinion, we have no rights of our own. We were bought with a price and in that - I choose to find beauty! Everlasting beauty!

New Year Resolutions: Back It Up!! Check It Out!

Last time I told you about our home invasion the week before Christmas. Two of the biggest things we learned:

1) Don't just keep saying that you need to back up the pictures and important documents on your computer. DO IT!! This week! We lost over 2000 pictures on the computer that was stolen. I knew better. It was always my intention to buy an external hard drive and get the pictures off both of our computers. Even now - I have bought the external hard drive - but it still sets empty. Once again, I am putting off backing up more pictures and documents on our old desktop. When will I ever learn??

2) Familiarize yourself with your home insurance policy. Do you have enough coverage to replace everything in your home - or are you just trying to get by as cheaply as possible? We have what Allstate calls the DELUXE policy, which sounds really comprehensive to me, but don't let that fool you. Our comprehensive policy DOES NOT cover the personal property of any who is not under our immediate and legal care - no matter the age. Patrick, the young man staying with us during our home invasion also had his laptop stolen, but is not covered because, even though he is under 21, we are not his legal guardians.

In fairness to Allstate, this is an overall corporate policy for most insurance companies. Everyone is responsible/expected to have home owners insurance that would cover his personal property no matter where it is - especially college students - they are covered even while away at school. Hopefully, Patrick's mother's insurance is going to cover his laptop loss. You might want to know what your policy covers so that you can inform anyone that is going to be staying with you for any length of time (or even one night) if they have personal property of substantial worth.

So, our claim of a stolen laptop and an iPod probably seems petty (especially to the insurance company) - and considering how our insurance is going up slightly for the next 3 years because of it - it may not have been worth filing. However, when Jeff tried to fix our sliding glass door and could not, we had to add another element to the claim. Because of having to replace that door, it seems that our claim has gained a little more merit and may pay off in the long run. However, filing claims is just one of those things you have to decide whether it is worth the risk or premiums being increased!

So, after saying all that, I do wish you a Blessed and Happy 2008 - no matter what may happen. I have found in my life of almost a half of a century that God is in control even when we're not - and even when it seems that no one is. He is and always will be.

I hope I remember that as we now wait to hear whether Lauren's car will be totaled and, if so, how much we will be given for it. Then what? How will we replace that car? God is in control........I bend my knee - and ear - to my Heavenly Father!