Baseball is not a sport I enjoy watching. It’s a little slow-moving for me. However, I enjoy listening to talk about baseball: the stats, the strategy, the technicality of how to throw a baseball and field a ball.

It’s not that I wasn’t exposed to baseball. When I was born my dad bought me a baseball and glove. In school I played baseball in gym class. Not being a very good athlete, I struggled. Catching the ball was difficult; hitting the ball was impossible. When each of my three boys was born, my dad bought baseballs and gloves and taught them to catch. I went to all of my kids’ games.

This morning a friend asked me how I want my time on deck to be spent. Even with my limited knowledge of baseball, I know about on deck.

For those of you who know even less about baseball than I do, on deck refers to being next in line to bat. The player waits in the on-deck circle which is positioned in the foul area between home plate and the team bench. Here the on-deck batter warms up as he waits for the current batter to finish his turn.

Using my friend’s metaphor, when people of the older generation pass away, I am left on deck. Both of my parents are gone as are my husband’s parents. All of my husband’s parents’ siblings are gone. Two of my mother’s are still living and one of their husbands. I’m not on deck yet, but I’ve moved to the end of the bench.

Since this morning the question has been rolling around in my head. How do I want to spend my time on deck? There are several choices. I can spend the time warming up. I can review strategy. I can plan for the kind of pitch that is likely to be thrown.

My first thought and answer was that I want to develop a character that is marked by what the Bible calls gifts of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. However, now that I’ve had some time to think about it, my answer is to spend my time on deck building, mending, strengthening relationships with the people who are most important to me–my husband, my children, other family members, my friends. Once I’ve gone to take my turn at bat, the thing that will be left of a lasting nature will be the relationships with the people I love. When they take their position on deck, it may be the relationship we shared that will help them be strong and capable for their turn at bat.

On the road of life, detours avoid a road that is dangerous and chaotic. The original woodpile kitty took a detour which took her from a dangerous, chaotic place to a safe, peaceful place. It is my story; perhaps this is your story as well.

It was October in south Texas, a time when the only way to gauge that fall is here is by the way the sun lies low in the sky and not by the temperature. I went out to the garage to talk to my husband when I heard the most pitiful meow.

I looked at him and he looked at me. He had chosen to ignore the meowing. Not me, “I think there’s a kitty behind the garage.” And with that I went to look.

Like an old woman hides her legs under a long skirt, our garage hides a conglomeration of ugly things: a pile of old flower pots, a stack of bricks, a neat-as-a-pin stack of firewood and a ramshackled pile of old wood. But no kitty. I decided that it was probably in one of the neighbors’ backyards.

However, every time I went to the garage, I heard that same meowing. And every time I’d scan the area behind the garage. Sometimes I’d walk around the flower pots, brick stack, firewood, and woodpile, but I did not find a  kitty.

When Butch got home from work I gave him the kitty report. His answer: I think you’ve got Claude Rains back there.

“Huh?” I said.

“Yeah, Claude Rains, the guy who played the invisible man in that old movie. You’ve got the invisible cat out there.”

I knew there was a kitty out there and I was determined to find it. I wanted it to live in my house where it would be safe.

The next day as I walked through the house, I happened to glance out the window. And there, bouncing across the lawn like a baby kangaroo, was a little grey kitty.

Armed with a flashlight I went to search in earnest. Like CSI, I shined my flashlight around the pile of old flower pots, behind the stack of bricks, in the crevices of the neat-as-a-pin stack of firewood. There was only one place left.  I shined my flashlight around and into the ramshackled pile of old wood. I got down on my knees and shined it up into the woodpile and there, glinting in the beam of the flashlight, were two little eyes. Ah-ha! I found it.

I put some food out on the lawn in view of both the house and the woodpile. Slowly but inevitably, the little kitty came out of its hiding place and ate it. I gradually moved the food closer and closer to the patio until the kitty was eating on the patio. In the morning, if we were extremely quiet, we could catch the kitty sleeping on the patio cushions. The slightest noise, and shoom! It was off to the woodpile.

Every day I plotted and planned how to get close enough to catch it. I wanted more than anything for it to live with us in our house.  After about a week, I knew I was not going  to catch it with my bare hands. Not to be deterred, I borrowed a live trap from my veterinarian. The kitty didn’t weigh enough to trip the latch  so Butch rigged it so the door would close. Finally after several attempts, we caught it. And it was mad. Around and around the trap it ran, nothing but a grey blur. When it finally stopped, we took the trap, kitty and all, into the bathroom.

For a couple of days the woodpile kitty lived in our bathroom. I’d go in periodically and pet it and pick it up. When I heard purring, I knew we had ourselves a new kitty. We were able to determine that it was girl. The name? Claude, of course.

After her woodpile experience, she did not like to be petted, much less picked up. Nevertheless we cohabited peacefully.

One morning according to my habit, I went into my study to have a quiet time. Claude came in, sat at my feet and began meowing and meowing. She acted like she wanted to be picked up. So I did. I held her up on my shoulder under my chin and stroked her soft fur. She was so still, cuddling up to me. And then she started purring.

Sitting there in the quiet, I remembered that we had no idea where Claude came from or how she got in the woodpile. I wondered where she would have ended up without our detouring her into our house and family. As I thought about Claude’s detour, I clearly saw my own detour.

I had gotten myself into a woodpile when I got pregnant as a teenager. I knew enough about teen moms to know that I should have been divorced; I should have had multiple children with multiple men. I should not have graduated from high school, much less college. I should have lived in poverty. None of that was true for me. God had detoured me into a life with a husband who loves me, a good marriage, wonderful children, blessings too numerous to list.

I translated Claude’s kitty language of purring into my language. “Thank you”, she said, “thank you for rescuing me from the woodpile. Thank you for inviting me to live with you in your house.” In her little kitty way, she was saying, “I love you”.

Claude and I had each been led on a detour out of the woodpile. Like Claude, there was nothing I could do to repay my rescuer. All that was necessary was the giving of thanks for all my rescuer has done, is doing and will do for me.

Thank you, Father, for the detour out of the woodpile and into your house where it is safe and sound.

On the road trip that is life, there are two kinds of detours: those we chose and those chosen for us. How’s your road trip going? Are you on a detour? On my life’s road trip, I once chose a detour and got off the correct road. This is the story of that adventure.

I grew up in a dysfunctional family. Everyone’s family is dysfunctional in some way, some worse than others. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being perfection, my family was probably a 4. Because my mother did not have good health, the energy in our home went to her in an effort to keep her happy and calm. My dad had his own business which meant that he worked Monday to Saturday. On Sunday we went to church. This family structure didn’t leave a lot of room for me and my needs.

I grew up, discovered boys and started dating. I found a substitute for the attention I yearned for at home. In my freshman year of high school, I began dating a boy who I dated off and on until we were juniors when we dated steadily. One thing led to another and, by the end of our junior year, we were pregnant. In my family and at that time, the only options were to get married or place the baby for adoption. We opted to get married. We were 17 years old.

Being pregnant was not what I had wanted. I was raised that this was the worst thing that I could do. I had failed in a social sense and I had failed in a spiritual sense. I was a follower of Christ. I went to church every Sunday. I was a member of the youth group and the youth choir. I came from a good family and I was a good student. I had let everyone down: my parents, myself, my friends, and, worst of all, God.

I hadn’t just taken a detour; I had gotten off the correct road altogether and was traveling down the wrong road.

So what could I do? I decided to make up for the bad thing by doing good things. I continued going to church. I taught Sunday School and volunteered at church for anything that needed to be done. To keep my secret, I lied. I lied about my age. I avoided talking about weddings. I didn’t want anyone to know the real me and what I had done.

This was my state of mind and spirit for twenty-five years.

Until one day God got my attention. I was reading Psalm 51, the psalm David wrote after his indescretion with Bathsheba, a psalm I had read a hundred times. Suddenly I saw that all the work trying to make up for what I had done was not necessary. God had forgiven me and redeemed the terrible thing I had done, getting pregnant without being married.

Up to that time, I had been driving down the road in the dark, checking the map constantly, and then second guessing the directions. That day the sun came out. I discovered that I was on the correct road; I needed to stop driving according to my own rules. It was time to stop doing and just be.

Are you on a detour of your own choosing? Pull over on the side of the road. Check the map. Is it time to get on the correct road again?

I hope you’ll be with me in the next post when we arrive at this road trip’s destination.

Each summer on Father’s Day weekend our church has an all-church retreat at Mo Ranch on the Guadalupe River near Hunt, Texas. The theme for this year was “Road Trip”. Our senior Pastor, Trey Little, taught three sessions each based on a road sign: yield, detour, stop.

Everyone has experienced at least one road trip in their lives. Maybe as a kid on a family vacation. Maybe in college with friends. Or maybe on your own family vacation. Road signs such as yield, detour and stop are encountered on a long road trip, but even more frequently on road trips around your home town. And they can be frustrating.

As I thought about the road signs, I decided that the detour is the one that frustrates me the most. I’m going along minding my own business, listening to the radio, making progress toward my destination and suddenly: detour. There’s workmen ahead doing no-telling-what to the road and I have to go another way. Frustrating. Time-consuming. But soon I’m back on the road making progress toward my destination.

My life has had a lot of detours. I’m going along minding my own business, making progress toward my destination and then: detour.

There are two kinds of detours: one of my own making and one that God puts in the road. Here’s the funny thing though. Since there are no actual detour signs on the road of life, it’s easy to get detoured and not even realize it. Regardless of the kind of detour, it may be years before I realize I was even on a detour, where the detour took me and when it was that I got back on the road making progress toward my destination.

Reminds me of our new kitty, Frank.

It was Friday afternoon about 2:00. The phone rang. It was our veterinarian’s office. They knew we were looking for a kitty and had one if we wanted it.He had been covered in burrs sitting in the middle of the street.  A woman had almost run over him. She brought him to the vet’s office where they cleaned him up. We should at least come see him.

Butch and I looked at each other. We were planning to go to Austin for Mother’s Day and we’d be gone overnight. How were we going to manage a new kitty? With a shrug of the shoulders we decided to have a look.

He was so small he fit in my hand. All the burrs were gone and all that was left was a little orange, fluffy thing. He started purring and snuggling up to my neck.

I looked at Butch. He looked at me. “O.K. we’ll take him.”

“Well,'” said the veterinarian tech, “he’s only about 4 weeks old which means he has to be fed every 2 or 3 hours. But he’ll lap, so you don’t have to bottle feed him.”

Oh, my!

“And,” said the tech, “you’ll have to help him go the bathroom. Dip a cotton ball in warm water and wipe his genitals like a mamma cat licking until he goes. And that should be done every 2 or 3 hours, too. Just do it every time you feed him.”

What!

In the meantime, the  kitty was purring and snuggling and chewing on my t-shirt.

To the store for cat food and kitty formula. He was so hungry; he quickly lapped it up getting himself covered in food in the process.

Our sweet neighbor, Yvette, who was going to take care of our older cat while we were away, agreed to take Frank to her house for a sleep-over on Saturday night. She is the best neighbor ever.

As soon as we pulled into our driveway on Sunday, I went to get Frank. When he heard my voice he came running and jumping for me to pick him up. After only being with me for 24 hours, he knew my voice and yearned for me to hold him. He knew who he belonged to, or maybe who belonged to him.

Through no fault of his own Frank had been on a big detour.  We don’t know how he got in the middle of the street covered in burrs, but we’re certain it was not his choice. And now he had food, warmth, cuddling, and love. He had completed his detour and was on his way toward his destination.

When we’re on a detour, sometimes we take up residence in a woodpile. Next post I’m going to tell you about a detour of my own.

Last week a friend from my childhood called to tell me that her mother, Ruth, had passed away. Ruth was the last member of the “gang”: a group of women from our first neighborhood when my parents first moved to San Antonio in the mid-1950’s. The gang consisted of my mom, Nita, and Ruth, Glatha, and Janie. Two other women, Dorothy, and Marjorie, were also in the gang, but as time went by they did not stay in close contact as the others did.

Janie’s kids were at the service also. Just hearing the names brought back so many memories. Tears welled up in my eyes. Embarrassing.

Boo had put together a collage of photos of her mom and included were some pictures of my parents who are both deceased now. They were taken at my parent’s house not long before they moved to assisted living for dementia patients: Ruth and my mom and dad gathered around a table sharing a meal together. From my parent’s first house until their last house, through fifty years of friendship they shared raising children, divorce, deaths, laughter, retirement.

We lived behind Ruth and her family only about a year, but some of my most vivid childhood memories are of spending time at their house.They lived across the alley from us. Her daughter, Boo, was a little older than me. I idolized her. Boo had an older brother, Boatie, and a younger brother, Bobby, who was my sister’s age. My sister, elegantly attired in one of our dress-up dresses, married Bobby in the alley when they were five years old. Boo had a monkey, Josephine. (I always thought it was Boo’s, but at the service I learned it was actually Ruth’s). Boo and I spent many hours coloring together. She taught me about outlining in black and staying in the lines.

Our moms and their gang got together and exercised at each other houses. They played bunco once a month even after some of them moved from the neighborhood. They met for girls-only lunches and socialized with husbands included.

When I was grown, in my early 20’s, I went to lunch with my mom and Ruth. I don’t remember the restaurant, but it was elegant with linen tablecloths and napkins. Ruth ordered a martini and so did my mom. I had never had one before, but it seemed the grown-up thing to do so I ordered a martini as well. One sip and my throat burned so badly I wondered how they could drink them. Looking back, my mom went to lunch with her friends, let her hair down a little and had a mid-day drink. And I thought I was so modern, because that’s what I do with my girlfriends. Maybe I’m more like my mom than I want to admit.

When my mom passed away, Ruth told me she wanted to come to the service but it was difficult for her to get out. As I was greeting people in the reception after the service, out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman in a wheelchair flanked by two younger people. I immediately recognized them even though I hadn’t seen them in years. It was Ruth, Boo and Boatie. Realizing the effort it took for her to come, I was very touched. What a close friendship my mom and Ruth must have shared. I know my mom would have been so honored by their presence.

As I sat in Ruth’s service missing my mom so much, wishing she was there to share memories about her friend, I thought about my own girlfriends, the ones I have known since high school in the late 60’s and even some since elementary school in the late 50’s. Friends I’ve had for almost 60 years. The ones I meet for lunch and have a mid-day drink with. Will we make the effort to be at the final services for each other? Will we attend on the arm of our children when our infirmities make walking difficult? When I’m gone, will my children attend their final services to represent me and friendships that had lasted so long?

I pray it will be so.

I was in an intimate conversation last night. It brought back memories of sitting up late at night with my best friend in high school and baring my soul, telling my inmost secrets, desires and goals. Crying and laughing with her. That doesn’t happen often in my grown-up life.I would rather encourage my conversation partner to talk about herself than reveal anything about myself. It’s hard to see from here how to be intimate with another person. And yet, that’s what I yearn for.

With so many ways to communicate–email, Facebook, Twitter–I feel like I’m communicating more. But am I actually communicating meaningfully? Just before I started writing this post, I wanted to communicate with a young woman I am mentoring. I began writing an email thinking it’s the easiest way for both of us. I can get started doing what I want quicker and she can read it at her leisure and answer when she’s ready. Then I stopped myself. I am her mentor, for goodness sake! If I am going to resort to email and not a personal call, how are we going to build a strong, caring relationship which is integral to the mentoring process. I clicked the email closed, picked up the phone and talked to her.

Engaging in and developing the art of intimate conversation is new to me. It is difficult for me to reveal myself. Talking about the details of my life is not comfortable. Looking the other person in the eye, allowing tears to flow, laughter to well up, concern to show, none of this is comfortable for me. And yet, I crave sharing this kind of intimacy with my friends.

Last night in the intimate conversation, I made an announcement about completing something I had been struggling with for months. My companions heard me; they reacted to my announcement. But not like I had hoped they would. I was hurt. It’s hard to see from here, but perhaps, I thought, in this relationship I am not expected to struggle with this sort of thing. That did not soothe my hurt.

In the light of day, I have been analyzing what happened and I have concluded that it is hard to see from any one person’s perspective what’s happening in a conversation. Each participant brings expectations and needs to the table. When I arrived at the scene, I yearned for intimate conversation, for a place to reveal my struggle and my triumph, a place to receive affirmation and congratulations. With expectations and needs clouding my vision, it was hard for me to see from there.

So I am endeavoring to learn how to do this intimate thing. It’s hard to see from here, but I have made progress. Even though I left last night’s conversation with hurt feelings, I did reveal a struggle, what I am really doing and how I am really doing. Maybe next time, it will be easier for me to see from here, express myself better, make a better contribution to the intimacy, and open my hurt feelings to the balm of friendship.

 

 

I compete in half marathons, 13.1 miles. Sounds crazy, huh? But it’s only half as crazy as competing in full marathons, 26.2 miles. Running 13.1 miles requires quite a bit of training. Even running 3.1 miles takes a bit of training. Part of that training includes competing in shorter races. This last Sunday I competed in a 10 mile race.

In a perfect world, I would have trained for this race almost as long as I train for a half. But for several reasons I did not. First of all, my husband, who is also my running partner, had sinus surgery. Secondly, allergies hit me especially hard this spring and I just didn’t feel like slogging through 15 to 20 miles a week. We had signed up for the race several months ago with every intention of competing, but I decided that I just wasn’t going to do it. However, as April 15 got closer and I began to feel better, I changed my mind. The hotel reservation had been made–yes, we even travel to other cities to run–and the rest of our running group was going even though only one other woman was going to race. I was a little scared; 10 miles is hard. Nevertheless, Sunday morning, 7:30, I was on my way to my assigned corral.

Racing is more than a good pair of shoes, although that is the most important equipment a runner or walker needs. The next most important thing needed or at least the most popular thing is technology: iPods, ear buds, cell phones, and GPS watches. Me? I always take my cell phone in case of emergency, but no iPod or ear buds. I do use a GPS watch. So as I walked to the start, I turned my watch on. It immediately gave me the low battery warning. Then I realized that I forgotten to charge my watch because I had not been training. I was going to be without knowing distance or pace or time for 10 miles. I was going to be totally reliant on the mile markers and electronic timers and my own muscle memory for pace. I told myself, “It’s OK. I can do this.”

For every race I have a goal and a strategy to reach that goal. My first goal is to finish. My second goal was to finish in no more than 2 1/2 hours, a 15 minute pace. I use intervals which means alternating between running and walking. My strategy for this particular race was to walk for three minutes and run at a very slow pace (what I call my granny pace) for one minute. Then toward the end of the race, if I had anything left, I’d shorten the walk interval and lengthen the run interval. Fortunately, I had brought my interval timer.

Since I don’t use an iPod, I have to make up my own diversions. This race was billed as 20 bands and 10 miles. Every half mile or so there was a band, a nice diversion but I needed more. So I thought about problems and issues I have and tried to work out solutions in my mind as I walked and ran along. This worked for about 3 or 4 miles and then the miles started to wear me down.

As I ate up more distance, my muscles began to hurt and the humidity began to get to me. I had some gel and took some electrolyte pills. My groin, where my legs attach to my hips, was really tight. This was a new pain for me; I chocked it up to my lack of training. I needed something to think about, something to keep my mind occupied.

Another thing I do is study Greek. Not Greek that anyone speaks, but ancient Greek. I have a reading partner and we read the Greek New Testament together. Currently we are making our way through 2 Corinthians, chapters 4 and 5. These chapters are about our earthly, perishable bodies and our heavenly, imperishable bodies, about how as our earthly bodies are wasting away but inwardly we are being renewed. At about mile 6, I needed that reminder. My earthly body was definitely hurting. It was showing me that it is wasting away no matter how I try to take care of it. At that point in the race I needed to know that somewhere inside, I was being renewed. I drew on that to keep going.

From my brain I wrestled up a verse I had memorized in Greek, 2 Corinthians 5:17. In English, it goes like this: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come!

I thought about the rest of my running group: 3 couples who all went to high school together, except one husband (but we adopted him). All three husbands weren’t racing because of health challenges: sinus surgery (my husband), brain surgery, and chemo for malignant melanoma. One wife didn’t race because she trained even less than I did. The woman who walked the race has spine issues. I have problems too, but nothing that effects my running. We are all falling apart and getting old. It is evident that our earthly bodies are wasting away. We need the promise that inwardly we are being renewed. More than that, when our perishable bodies cease, we will have new, imperishable bodies.

Thinking about all of this and concentrating my mind on Greek distracted me for several miles. When I could see the finish line, I had some left, so I ran as fast as I could over the finish line. My time was 2:17:08, a 14:34 pace, faster than I had predicted. Not bad for an old body, don’t you think?

I have a woodpile in my front yard. To the untrained eye it is a flowerbed, a very large flowerbed. It covers about half of our yard and is planted in a groundcover of asiatic jasmine. There is also a stand of shrimp plant and a stand of turk’s cap. And it’s dotted with four live oaks. These are good. However, there is also an invasion of potato vine. This is not good.

Potato vine is a very fast growing plant that is not tempermental as far as water and light goes. It does well in little or much sun, little or much water. And it’s very difficult to get rid of. It is intertwined in the asiatic jasmine. It is climbing up the live oaks. It is climbing up and around the turk’s cap and the shrimp plant. And it has made a run at climbing up the front bay window. My husband took care of that by wrenching it’s hold from the screen and jerking that one arm of the vine out. But I know it is still there, lying in wait until he turns his back and in the blink of an eye, it will be back, creeping and crawling up the screen, trying to obliterate the view from inside the house. I hate potato vine!

I must admit that it has gotten out of hand because I have not been diligent about killing it. The year before last I spent quite a bit of time pulling it, dousing it with Round Up, cutting it back from the trees and windows. The plant was relentless and I was not. This is going to be the year that it’s eradicated, or at least mortally wounded.

As I’ve studied the encroachment of this plant, it has occurred to me that I have some potato vine kind of things in my life, things that I let grow and overrun my best intentions until they are no longer anything but dim memories of what I should do and how I should be. In my friendships, potato vines are failing to return a phone call or email until the object of that message is forgotten but the slight is not. Potato vines are failing to remember an important date such as a birthday or anniversary of a death date. Potato vines creep into my thought life as they entwine around prayers and become regrets of “if only” or revenge of “I should have said”. Potato vines creep into my marriage and choke out kindness and patience so that only anger remains.

Only assiduous work will eradicate that potato vine from my actions, thoughts and attitudes. Finding it wherever it’s growing and pulling it out by the roots or pouring on the anti-poison of loving kindness. All the while diligently watching and keeping alert to its presence.

I am ready to do whatever it takes to win my flowerbed–and my actions and thoughts and attitudes–back from the enemy. I am the hunter, the killer. Potato vine, say your prayers, partner. You are a goner.

 

I have a kitty whose name is Claude. She is an inside cat who found out that it’s scary outside. I’ll let her tell the story in her own words: