The Joy of Life

Yesterday I got a call early in the morning from my daughter-in-law. She said the women of the church where my granddaughter Paige attends preschool were hosting a hotdog lunch for the children and their parents. It was a fundraiser to rebuild a wall at the school that got attacked by termites last year. The wall is repaired but funds are needed to pay for the work.

Paige and I were the first in the fellowship hall and were greeted by seven women, all my age or ten years older. On the counter was an old-fashioned electric steamer filled with cooked hotdogs inside buns, staying warm and ready for hungry kids. On the stove was a pot of bubbling hotdog chili.

We gave the first woman our $6 and while another woman served our hotdog, Paige perused the variety of condiments the women had placed in front our hungry eyes: pickle relish, coleslaw, sauerkraut, chopped onions, mustard and ketchup.

I asked Paige what she wanted and she said, “Mimi, please put the ketchup on first with little squiggles and then shadow them with the mustard.” Her words; I promise. “Shadow them?” I asked. And she walked me through the squiggles just to make sure I got it right. After making her hot dog I spread the mustard on mine and then asked for a little chili.

We had a choice of multi-colored Goldfish, pretzels, or waffle potato chips and Paige said she wanted one of each. I said pick one and I’ll pick another and we’ll share. She got the Goldfish and I picked the chips. We had a choice of soda to drink but Paige is a water drinker and so am I so we passed on the sodas and I filled our plastic cups already filled with ice by another woman of the church, with water from the sink. One final choice that came with our meal was a basket filled with snack desserts. We both picked a chocolate cake filled with marshmallow cream. (Paige is not a sweet eater so her dessert came home with me in my purse.)

For a few minutes we remained alone in the fellowship hall with the women. It had been reported in the paper that this church and another Methodist church in Chattanooga were merging because the membership at this church had declined. The preschool, however, a staple and much respected in the Chattanooga area, will remain on the premises and continue to function. But with only 36 active members the church could not keep functioning alone. I asked the women if they were excited about the merger and there was dead silence. I apologized if I asked a bad question and a few laughed and finally one spoke for them all saying it is a good thing although they are sad. It was clear they were doing their best to see the good in the merger and keep a positive attitude. I wished them luck and thanked them for hosting the lunch.

A friend of Paige’s along with her mother, father and little brother joined us at our table. At the end of the meal Paige’s clothes were decorated in yellow/red blotches and her upper lip was yellow. You can’t beat mustard and ketchup oozing out of a good hotdog. Paige loved it so much she asked for a second one so I went back and bought another one which we split. Afterwards we were invited to play on the school’s playground. And by now the small fellowship hall was filled with mothers, fathers, grandparents, little brothers and sisters and children from the preschool all enjoying a happy joy-filled lunch.

For the next hour-and-a-half I sat on a bench observing Paige as she played “house” with the same friend that we shared lunch with. Another grandmother sat on one side and told me about her life and her other grandchildren while a new mother sat on the other side of me holding a six week old baby. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to experience joy: joy in stopping long enough to just sit; joy in hearing the stories of these two women who have nothing and yet everything in common; joy in seeing children doing what they do best – play; and joy in sharing this experience with my granddaughter Paige.

Tractor-trailer wreck snarls traffic

This was the title of the online news reports after a crash on Interstate 24 yesterday afternoon. The truck evidently went around a curve along the Tennessee River and smashed through the guard rail and over-turned into the opposite lane of traffic, spilling fuel and injuring the driver and passenger of the truck.

The article then goes on to say that both lanes of the Interstate were closed for five hours, backing up traffic in three directions. Why three? Because not only was Interstate 24 closed both ways, but Hwy 27 which feeds into the Interstate was closed.

You might wonder why I even noticed this bit of news as we have accidents on the Interstate quite often here in Chattanooga thanks to the central location of our town and the number of travelers who pass through it going from one destination to another. But yesterday, we were returning from a birthday party celebrating our grandson, Hayden’s first birthday. He lives in North Georgia and we have several options to get to and from his home. One is to take Interstate 75 and merge onto Interstate 24. If we had taken that route, guess where we would have spent the afternoon doing? Right, sitting in our car, unless we were able to exit off and drive through town to get home. The second option, to skirt around the foot of Lookout Mountain and then go through St. Elmo to Hwy 27, going north would have been simple and although we would have seen the traffic, we would not have been affected by it. The third option and the one we chose was to come in on Hwy 27 from the south and pick up Interstate 24.

You can imagine our concern when we began to merge onto the Interstate and saw the traffic at a complete stop. That was the bad news. The good news is that by staying in the far right lane, we were able to merge onto Hwy 27 north with ease and avoid any delay. But I knew the others on the highway were in for a while as it was a very eerie sight to see orange cones and police completely barricading the Interstate. As far as the eye could see there were no cars.

And yet as we followed our usual path home, we were continually exposed to drivers that most locals call “foreigners.” You know, that driver who is in town and doesn’t know where they are going, but follows the crowds or meanders in and out of traffic at a snail’s pace as if someone is directing them where and when to turn. Out-of-state license plates were everywhere, especially at the gas station at the bottom of our mountain. We stopped before climbing up the mountain to our home and I made a comment about the unusual amount of out-of-state cars. And then as we started up the mountain and noticed the slow-moving traffic and more foreigners, it hit us. There was someone (or something) directing them where to go. Their GPS (Global Positioning System) was diverting them from the Interstate, over our ridge, down into the next valley and back onto Interstate 24 beyond the accident. Maybe an hour and a half out of their way, but better than sitting five hours on the Interstate!

I couldn’t help but compare the GPS in those cars to the GPS within me. That still small voice that guides me to be the person I’m supposed to be; that puts me in the right position at the right time; and keeps my system (body, mind, spirit) functioning at perfect speed so that I get where I’m supposed to get every day.

Keeping Lent - Ash Wednesday

Today marks the beginning of Lent, a time of preparation, fasting and prayer observed by the Western churches. The word Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for spring. The Lenten season lasts 40 days as a symbol of the Biblical traditions found in the Old and New Testaments of preparation and prayer before special occasions. There are six Sundays during Lent which are not counted in the season of Lent.

In the early Church ashes were sprinkled on the head of penitents as a token of repentance of sin. Repentance means denial and some people use the time of Lent to deny themselves of something. They say they are giving up “chocolate” for example for Lent. But for me it means a chance to remind myself that I am a child of God.

Lent is a time for me to put away negative thoughts and focus on the positive. Jesus said, “You are light for all the world.” (Matthew 5:14) Turning from the darkness and toward the light of God, I realize that I am strong, positive, powerful, wise, loving, fearless, free spirit, and the perfect child of God.

Keeping Lent this way will prepare me mentally, physically, and spiritually to rise out of the old and into the new. Each morning I plan to focus on this 40-day journey with prayer and meditation. Today I remind myself that the light of God surrounds me reflecting back into the lives of the people I touch as Jesus calls me to do, “As a lamp you must shed your light among your fellows….,” Matthew 5:16.

Highs and Lows

Yesterday was a day of ups and downs, or highs and lows, or good job Hayden and no, no, no Hayden. At almost a year-old, my grandson is experimenting with touch and tastes anything he can get his hands on. Yesterday, it was my philodendron plants, scattered throughout my house most on the floor or at his eye-level. The one in the hallway is almost bare now, thanks to Hayden’s pruning. But I’m grateful that only one leaf made into his mouth, but unfortunately I didn’t know it until he puked it up later. And you would think that would have stopped him from pulling the leaves off the plants but it was fun and he kept doing it and I kept saying, “no, no, no,” but he’d wrinkle up his eyebrows, pout his lips, and look at me with those big blue eyes and my heart would melt. But I can’t let him eat plants so, instead of battling him I moved all the plants out of his reach. (It was a learning experience for the both of us.)

As rewarding as it is – taking care of my grandson, that was not my high or low for the day. I would have to say that my high was getting not one but two telephone calls from strangers, one a local TV personality and the other a local businessman. Both wanted my help with two different things, but both wanted to pick my brain thanks to writing the history book on the Town of Signal Mountain. One is considering a book of his own and wanted my advice and the other wanted to know how I secured all the images used in our book and wanted suggestions on how he could secure some as well. It was sometime in late 2008, just after our book was published that a fellow author in the Chattanooga Writers Guild asked my advice and after a couple of hours over a cup of coffee (or two), she made a proposal to Arcadia and her book was published last month. (Maybe I should contact Arcadia Publishing and see if they want to hire me?)

And then there is my low for the day and this is hard to write. I arrived at my CWG general meeting which is held at the downtown library in Chattanooga to find two police cars and a couple of officers with two women standing over a homeless woman (I’m assuming that) in a wheel chair. The woman was obviously not mentally balanced and wanted to go to the hospital. However, the other two women were either trying to convince the officers to call an ambulance or vice versa. However, according to the off-duty officer working as a guard at the library, the ambulance would not come because the hospital refused her due to her “playing wolf.” The bottom line, I left the meeting and she is sitting outside, no coat, no hat, just a blanket wrapped around her and screaming, “M ‘am” over and over as I approach her.

I did not ignore her and said yes, but then she asked me to wheel her up to the door. I refused. That was my low. What possessed me to walk away from this woman? Of course I paid the price for it, with nightmares and waking with a terrible headache. Every morning I affirm that I am divinely inspired to right action. I knew that she could wheel herself up to the door and what she really wanted was my attention and yet I denied her of it. And it hit me this morning when I forgave myself for being selfish and ignoring her, that, isn’t that what we do every day to people in our own lives?

What was the real reason Hayden was picking off all the leaves of my philodendrons? To get his Mimi’s attention. That’s what we all want in life - to have someone notice us, need us, protect us, watch over us, but most of all love us.

Life is a Gift

During this holiday season I am reminded that life is a gift – a wonderful gift. Waking up each morning I realize that it is a new day and I have been given this precious gift of life and the best part is I can choose to use this gift any way I want.

My first thoughts turn to gratitude in being alive and able to have another day to celebrate my life. Being grateful for each breath I take and each opportunity I will have to be the person I’m meant to be is the first thing I do each morning. And then I ask myself, “How will you live this day?”

Knowing that I’ve been given the opportunity to lead a life centered in Christ, my life should be an example of that gift. In what place to I stand when given the opportunity to choose how I live? Will it be in joy, in love, in compassion, and lovingkindness? Can I be the person I am called to be? Can I walk-the-walk reflecting the light of God to all I meet? Will I accept this gift in the manner in which it was given – with wholeness and holiness?

First I must learn to accept that everything I do is a reflection of God’s love for me. I have life so the Living God can have life. Over the past ten months my life has been a journey of renewal in many ways, but one has been the commitment to lose weight. Someone recently commented on the change in my appearance and I gave them my usual spill, that I took a look at myself and did not like what I saw. I told them it was a God thing. She looked at me and I went on to say that I told God, “If I live so you can live then we better lose this weight so we both can have fun and be healthy.” My friend blinked a couple of times and then said, “Beautiful; just beautiful.” Twenty-four pounds later, both God and I are happy, healthier, and enjoying the gift of life.

“This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” ~ Psalm 118:24

The Christmas Wish

Shawna was thirteen, overweight, and precocious, but she had a sweet heart and only one wish for Christmas. Shawna wanted a family. The oldest child in her foster home and the only African American made the odds of her being adopted by Christmas pretty slim. But that didn’t stop her from wishing it, even if it was the same wish year after year.

This year was going to be different, Shawna told herself; this year, the TV station was spotlighting her so that all the viewers could see what a great addition she would make to any family. Her foster mom had found a pretty red dress with a black sweater, black tights and black Mary Jane shoes with flat heels. At five foot two, she was already full size but she didn’t want to appear older than she was. She’d never get adopted that way, she was told.

The day came for her to be interviewed by the nice lady who anchored the news for the local TV station. She was pretty and smiled a lot and asked Shawna lots of questions. And while they walked around the Mall during the interview a camera followed them around. She asked and Shawna answered, but Shawn couldn’t remember what she asked later and when the actual interview was on TV, Shawna became embarrassed and walked out of the living room at her foster home.

Eleanor was sitting on the couch in the den watching her two children as they attempted to decorate the Christmas tree. She had managed to drag the box with the artificial tree down from the attic, and then she had stood it up in the corner of the den in front of the window as her children insisted. It was a beautiful tree at almost seven feet tall, and the fact that it came with the lights made decorating it that much easier. Carrying the box with all the ornaments had been harder for Eleanor as it was bulky and most of the ornaments were breakable. However, once the box was down the stairs her children eagerly began decorating the tree. Their goal was to get it done as fast as possible before their mother changed her mind as she had done the past three years.

The twins were nine years old; Jeremy and Janice. Handsome and beautiful children, both had blond hair and blue eyes, like their mother, Eleanor. They attended public school and enjoyed sharing the same fourth grade class at the school down the road. Now that they were on Christmas break, the twins spent all their time together and although writing a letter to Santa seemed a bit immature for nine year olds, their teacher had used it as a writing exercise the last day of school asking his students to write a paper describing one Christmas wish. Later the twins shared their letters with each other and realized that their Christmas wishes were the same – to be a family again.

After her children had gone to bed, Eleanor fixed herself a cup of hot tea and continued to sit on the couch staring at the twinkling lights. As she did her mind wandered to years past and other Christmas trees in her home when life was good and her family was whole. She saw her husband John kneeling on the floor holding the fresh fir tree trying to steady it while Eleanor directed him to lean it this way or that way. In the end it was always crooked but always perfect. And she could see their beautiful daughter Emily standing on the step stool placing the angel on the top of the tree. The oldest of their three children, it was Emily’s job to place the angel they had gotten when she was born on Christmas Day thirteen years ago.

And then Eleanor’s mind wandered to the present day and she focused her eyes searching for John and Emily. Expecting them to walk through the door just in from the store, it still took Eleanor by surprise when she realized this was not going to happen. Then she remembered over and over that horrible day when a drunk driver ran through a stop sign and crashed into John’s car killing both him and Emily who had insisted she go with her father to the store.

Shawna had thrown herself on her bed in the room she shared with two other girls and was crying her heart out when her foster mom came into the room. Putting her hand on Shawna’s back, she rubbed her gently comforting the young girl. Shawna knew that the things she said during the interview would make people laugh at her; that they would see her as crazy for thinking someone could love her or would want her as part of their family. Had she actually said she wanted a single mom? Did she really want a brother and sister? And did she say she wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up because she liked to argue? She didn’t mean to say these things; they just came out when the nice lady interviewed her. But Shawna knew the truth. Who would want to adopt a thirteen year old black girl whose mother died of a drug overdose and whose father got drunk for the hundredth time and killed a man and his little girl?

Christmas Eve morning arrived. The twins came downstairs and found their mother asleep on the couch in the den. Most of the time their mother was fairly normal acting, but each year at this time of year she fell into a depression that they could do nothing to help her but tiptoe around her and stay to themselves. There were no presents under the tree which was not a surprise to the twins. Santa would come as he did each year even after the accident three years ago, and their grandparents would drive in from the country and bring gifts, but there were no presents from their mother. Jeremy and Janice looked at the beautiful tree and especially the angel on top and saw that it was glowing like a bright light bulb.

Eleanor heard the children come down the stairs and sat up stretching her arms high above her head. She had not meant to fall asleep on the couch again, but feeling the loss of her husband was more than she could bear. So she remained on the couch where she could bury her sadness under the crocheted afghan her mother had made her when she was a child. Eleanor looked at her precious twins and saw their faces glowing, a reflection of the light coming from the tree she thought. And then she looked at the tree, and she too saw the angel on top shining brightly. Made of straw and calico cotton, and without electric power, the angel’s glow was shining from within radiating out into the room.

Then the angel spoke to them saying, “Your family is whole; your Christmas wishes are granted.” And suddenly the glow from the angel spread throughout the room filling it with a brilliant blue and yellow light swirling and swirling around the family of three. And when the light went out, Eleanor found that she was holding her children in her arms clinging to them. And even odder, the television set was on. Eleanor didn’t remember turning the set on or leaving it on the night before. The three of them turned toward the TV set and saw a beautiful young girl being interviewed and making her Christmas wish to have a family. She was thirteen, talented, funny, and a good student. She was well-liked by her friends and respected by her teachers. She wanted a single mom and a brother and sister for Christmas – a family who would love her as she loved them back. Eleanor looked at her children and they looked at their mother whose eyes were twinkling with happiness along with her pink cheeks and a smile on her beautiful lips. And she said to her children, “Let’s go bring Shawna home.” To which they responded, “Let’s go be a family!”



Merry Christmas from the Shartle family:

Happy Birthday Mama

Yesterday was my mother’s birthday; born December 6, 1928, she would have been 81 if she were alive today. She was 63 when she died in 1991. Her favorite story to tell was sitting in the movie theater in Baton Rouge on Third Street with several of her girl friends who gathered to celebrate her 13th birthday, December 7, 1941, sixty-eight years ago. In the middle of the movie, that afternoon, the manager stopped the movie and told the audience that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. Later President Roosevelt called that day, “A date which will live in infamy.”

For my mother, it did, as she never celebrated her birthday again without remembering the attack on Pearl Harbor the next day. In fact, what became even stranger was that we often made her birthday celebration a two-day event. She always felt cheated that they couldn’t finish the movie and so my father would make a special dinner for us or take my mother out to dinner on December 6th and then on December 7th we kids would bake and decorate a cake for her and give her presents. We hoped it would make up for her missing that birthday party in 1941.

It was a little thing and when you think about it now, kind of stupid for her to hold such a grudge, but you would have to understand this woman, my mother, who lived a charmed life as a child; pretty, smart, pampered, popular, and loved by all. Then once she became an adult and felt her life was not worth living, she spent the majority of it inside the bottle of cheap whiskey trying to will her life away. And we as her children along with our father who adored her used any mechanism we could find to bring the happy, healthy and whole Anna Marie back to life.

So if celebrating her birthday for two days worked, we did it. Not to say, we didn’t mourn the loss of so many Americans that fateful day, but saving our mother was more important at the time and so in honor of those men and women who lost their lives in the attack on Pearl Harbor, I say thank you for giving your lives for your country. And to my dear mother, I say Happy Birthday….the cake’s in the oven.