Dream A Little Dream With Me

The dreams have troubled me a little. There are several different variations, wispy visions that have crawled into my somnolent psyche the past two weeks. They differ in content, but the theme is always the same. I am on my way to some destination, but I never reach this nebulous point; something always stops me. In the dreams I do my best to work my way through the continuous obstacles, but I wake up feeling oddly frustrated that I have not gotten “there,” wherever or whatever “there” is.

I feel a little too seasoned to still be suffering from “what is my purpose,” angst, yet I surmise this is what the dreams are all about. “Where do you want me to go, Lord, and when I get there, what do you want me to do?”

Dr. Tony Evans of the Urban Alternative asks the question, “How do you know when God is working in your life?” He then answers with this statement, “When things happen over which you have absolutely no control.” I have seen this intervention in my life, especially in the last few years, but rather than being content with God’s Providence (though I am thrilled with the path He seems to be laying out before me), I am still more than a little concerned about those matters that are still in a state of flux.

The Apostle Paul whispers in my ear: “Whatever state I am in, I have learned to be content.” How in the world does one learn to be content? Isn’t contentment a state of being rather than an act of the will? How do I chase away anxious stomach butterflies while I demand, “Donna be content”? What did Paul know that I have yet to learn?

I’m probably the last one to get this, but it seems to me, if I understand Paul at all, that contentment just has to be an act of the will through a life that is grounded in Christ (Galatians 2:20). I must choose to trust God in and through all my moments, good, bad or indifferent. This trust relies on His promises to never leave nor forsake me, that He has designed an intricate pattern for my life and I can rely on Him to bring me to that place of specificity. Anxiety can be overridden with prayer. Doubt can be trumped by faith. Fear can be vanquished with love. Purpose is founded in Christ. The dreams may persist, but since I know the Lord orders my steps, I will not fear.

“If God be for us, who [or what] can be against us?”

No one and nothing, not even our dreams.

Grandchildren Are the Best!

My telephone alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. I have not changed it from my school year wake-up alarm. I turn over to my left side and do my best to go back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later I look at the cable box on top of my television and note the time is now 5:45 a.m. (Does anyone use standard clocks anymore?) I lie on my back and mentally calculate how long I can stay in the bed (well, actually a pallet on the floor) and still have enough time to get my granddaughter (warmly ensconced in my daybed) and myself ready to catch the bus between 7:30 and 7:45 without too much stress. I decide 6:30 will work, especially since I put rollers in the back of my hair last night and will only have to curl the front. Smugly satisfied with 6:30, I fall asleep.

Have you ever made plans with a five year old in the house? This is exactly where I miscalculated my time calculation; I did not include any potential for a five year old with a Sister-Girlfriend ATTITUDE. No, she did not swivel her braided and beaded head at me, but she might as well have done so. This is our second week together. This is my first encounter with morning ATTITUDE. I am not pleased.

I wake her at 7:00 a.m. and she obligingly goes to the bathroom as I request.

“Come back and choose your clothes,” was my next directive, very proud of the fact that I have such an independent granddaughter.

I go into the bathroom to finish my morning ablutions. My electric curlers, the curlers that get hot enough for my coarse hair, have decided not to work. The little ON light keeps blinking its single red eye at me. The curlers remain cold. So much for a stylishly coiffed head of hair this morning.

Before I go downstairs to make a sandwich for my granddaughter's lunch and prepare her breakfast oatmeal, which she loves, I walk back into the bedroom to find her still in her pajamas reclining on the bedroom floor, leaning against my now rolled up pallet.

“Didn’t I tell you to get your clothes on?”

She looks up at me from under her eyes and does not move. It is as though I am speaking in tongues without a translator and she cannot receive my word of wisdom.

I sigh and encourage her again. “Put your clothes on.”

She diffidently does so, but I decide she needs a warmer top (the morning fog has chilled the air). When I pull the top over her head, she bursts into tears.

“My head hurts,” she wails as I do my best to talk her out of her cries. Her hair was just braided this past Saturday and her scalp is still tender.

“Shush, you’ll wake everyone up.”

She wails louder. I decide to ignore the wailing sobs. “Put your shoes on.”

I walk out of the bedroom. When I return, she has her flip-flops in her hands (the tears have stopped flowing).

“You can’t wear those to school; you won’t be able to play in them.”

The wails begin anew. “These sneakers are too tight!”

“Where are your other sneakers?”

“I don’t know,” is followed by a louder “Wahhhhhhhhhh.”

“I guess you left them at home.”

My stipulation to keeping her for three weeks to attend a get ready for kindergarten summer program in my city is that she spends the in-between weekends at home with her mom so I can recuperate from the energy drain. I toss clothes aside to get to the bottom of the suitcase. No white K-Swiss. Now I feel like wailing. Sensing my frustration, she raises the wailing volume a few decibels.

“Wahhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

“Put on your shoes and socks.” I pick up the too tight sneakers and hand them to her. She does so grudgingly, between sniffles and snorts.

“Put on your jacket.” I am just full of commands.

I hand her her lunch bag full of snacks and lunch and juice and everything I hope will keep her from eating me out of house and home when she returns this afternoon. I am hoping against hope. This petite five year old eats like two horses, leaving me to muse as I consider her lean frame, “Where is it going?”

My oldest daughter, her aunt, answered my befuddled question a few days ago, “Metabolism, Mama, she burns it all up.”

“ Button your jacket.”

“I don’t know how.”

So much for independence. Still, she somehow manages to button one button, the top button, a button, which I discover as we stand in front of the elevator, is in the wrong buttonhole.

“You have your jacket buttoned wrong.”

I juggle my purse, the bag that contains her nebulizer, the pouch that holds her Epipen and Benadryl and an interoffice envelope in my left hand as I reach down to unbutton and correct that top button. I manage to get two buttons done before we reach the lobby (did I mention asthma and a peanut allergy?).

We leave the house at 7:45 a.m. I am off my calculations by fifteen minutes. We are late. I hope the bus is late. It isn’t. We are halfway down the block when the bus crosses the intersection in front of us. The lights do not cooperate. I hesitate, then decide to cross against the light as an Asian woman on the sidewalk shouts encouragement, “Go, go, go.” We run for the bus (thank goodness there is a line of people waiting) as my granddaughter, her hand gripped firmly in mine, giggles all the way to the bus door as she makes up a theme song for our adventure:

“We’re running for the bus! We’re running for the bus!”

She thinks this is great fun. She has forgotten all the morning angst and is looking forward to the adventure of Today. She is not frazzled nor bedraggled or frustrated. The caterwauling is behind her. That was then; this is now.

“And a child shall lead them. . .”

Lead on, granddaughter, lead on.

Dodging Bullets

I woke up this morning at 4:00 a.m. I could not get back to sleep. There is something about the early morning darkness of a bedroom that lends itself to thoughts and thinking for which the busyness of daylight has no room. Sometimes the thoughts are as dark as the room.

I have spent most of my life dodging bullets, doing my best to make sure that I do not offend or anger anyone. Most of my life I have been reluctant to ask for the things I needed and to say “no” to those things I did not like. I was content to wait and hope that someone noticed my need or me. I am only sporadically assertive and somewhere in my formative years, I must have absorbed the idea that being assertive is almost an abomination. I have always needed more than I ever asked for and I never dared to look for more than what I received. I suppose, in some passive convoluted way of thinking, I believed I would be rewarded for taking the path of least resistance when it came to my needs and my wants. I was wrong. More people have forgotten me than I care to remember (no pun intended). I have forgotten about more people than I care to remember, names that come to me in moments of vague recollections.

I guess our brains are so chock full of our to-do lists that caring about someone else is relegated to the nether-regions of our hearts in spite of our good intentions. When the word comes to us that an individual has died, we wonder why we did not call or try to connect with them when that vague recollection flitted across our minds. I have wondered this very thing more often than I would like to admit.

I suppose some people can just walk away from us without a backward glance. The frightening thing about this act is not that people can walk away from us with impunity, but that it does not even occur to them that they might have broken a heart. When they run into you on the street, they act as though they never lost your place. They do not think about silent tears or rancid loneliness or vacant need. They may not even want to see any trace of pain during those random chance encounters as they run up to you swathed in broad smiles to express their delight at seeing you once again. A few years ago someone asked, “Do you feel like I/we/they abandoned you?” While every fiber of my being wanted to scream out “Yes, yes, yes!” I instead responded, “Well, abandoned is a strong word.” I still waffle, a lot, and have a hard time expressing what I want or need, what I expect and what is uncomfortable or not right for me. I tend to diminish myself in order that others will not feel uncomfortable or offended, even when it is uncomfortable for me.

I will still sit in a restaurant and tell the waiter everything is Okay even though the dressing for my salad is not what I ordered, and I still haven’t received my water and the entre I ordered is not what I expected and I don’t like it. I still say "I’m sorry" too often when I inadvertently do something that irritates a friend or family member. I feel guilty when I have to say “No.” I can’t tell people when I feel kicked to the curb and I feel guilty for feeling kicked to the curb. Not too long ago, I was picked up at an airport by a driver who seemed irritated he had missed me when I deplaned and had to find me in baggage claim even though he had been hired by the Conference to find me. I felt guilty for not being found. “I’m sorry,” I said. “My airplane was early.” He ignored me as he grabbed up my baggage and strode off towards the limousine, leaving me to scamper behind him, trying to keep up with his rapid step. The ride from the airport to the hotel, about forty-five minutes, was excruciating as rap music screamed at me through the audio speakers. I hated it, but could not bring myself to ask the driver to turn it off even as I considered the controls of the system right above my head.

Maybe I learned to be passive, how not to make too many waves, as a child, so to compensate I became that proverbial overachiever, the hopeful people pleaser. Maybe childhood is where it happened for most of us passive personality people. It might have been that our voices were not recognized and our independence was squelched by angry and frustrated responses. Perhaps affirmation and value was not reflected back to us enough so now we spend the balance of our lives doing our utmost to make ourselves acceptable and people pleasing when the real goal is to recognize our own value. Or maybe I’m just afraid I will be rejected if I insert me into the equation. But it seems to me that this has happened anyway, even as I’ve done my best to keep me, myself and I a non-threat to the person and place of others.

Let’s face it. The majority of the people whose lives have intersected with ours in the past may never take the time to recall our name or even remember that they ever professed a care for us. And, yes, we may spend the rest of our lives trying to assert ourselves without any of that nasty concomitant guilt and repressed anger. Our family and friends may even balk when we begin to take our own needs and concerns into consideration before we acquiesce to their requests. I am not talking about selfishness or vanity, but about building healthier relationships that can only begin with an emotionally healthier me. From my view, I think that when we begin to recognize and appreciate our own worth and all that we bring to the table of life, our relationships will begin to improve exponentially, a blessing for which none of us will ever need to apologize.

The Old Gray Mare, She Ain't What She Used To Be

Getting older is an interesting journey. When we are young, we spend our time dreaming about getting older; when we get older, we spend our time dreaming about being young. Are we ever satisfied with any age?

Yes, this getting older thing is an interesting journey. My roots are gray, but only my hairdresser knows for sure and my knees always hurt right before it rains. I tell the same stories over and over again to any and everyone, which makes me subject to the exasperated, “You told me already.” Now I have to ask, “Did I tell you this?” I never thought about the day when I would have anxiety attacks about missing eyeglasses. When I walk down the street, young men no longer do a double-take (they don’t do a single-take either). Still, old men do smile broadly at me on the bus or as I pass them on the street (I suppose I could count that blessing). They do their best to grab my attention as they try to whisper a word to me ("Get at me" is how the young people say it) because in their eyes (I think), I am a young woman. I talk too much about “back when I was a girl,” and sometimes I sound just like my mother (Yikes!). I just found out that older women who dare to connect with younger men are called cougars and certain colors are no longer my friends. Fashion designers and celebrity stylists want to tell me what I should and should not wear and of course I will always look much younger with short hair.

Every morning, as I get ready for work, I listen to the Channel 2 News. One morning a very toothy and animated anchor relayed a story about an older woman who was assaulted in a near-by town. As he closed out his story he referred to the woman as “the elderly woman.” What!!!! That woman and I are the same age. When did I become elderly? While it is true that I have passed certain age plateaus, does this now mean that I should go quietly into that dark night without a whimper or a sigh? Am I now consigned to the last seat in the back row of life simply because my thighs now have more jiggle than Jell-O and my upper arms have turned into wings, or that the decades are passing by a lot faster than I ever imagined? When did the mirror become my archenemy?

In spite of my rapidly passing years, or maybe because of them, I have learned a few things. After spending too many years of noticing my imperfections, I have learned to live with them. They make me who I am. There is not another me like me and I like all of me. I like my too loud laugh and my crazy sense of humor. I like that I care about people and want to make them laugh. I like what I wear and I no longer worry about what others think about me and my skinny jeans or my stiletto heels or my jangly jewelry. I mourn the loss of family and friends and look forward to seeing them in heaven. I cherish the moments I have and am blissfully astonished that I can still fall in love. I do my best to watch what I eat but I will enjoy that thick slice of double fudge chocolate cake without guilt. My grandchildren are God’s wonderful gift to me and my eyes (as they used to say in the South) are not big enough to see them. Life, in spite of my challenges and losses, has been good to me and I am not going to spend any time complaining about old age and the cruel jokes it plays on mankind.

Shoot! I still believe I can fly!

Walking Tall

Womanish: African American colloquialism (mostly in the South) for a young girl who is acting too grown; a designation usually given by the elder women in the community who predict that such a young girl will soon become the town’s next wild woman.

I consider myself to be fairly conservative, and though I have often admired the stylish flair other women seem to naturally possess, my wardrobe has always been safe and quiet, a classic look (I think). Or so it was until that historic and fateful day when I walked into Macy’s Department Store and a pair of anything other than quiet shoes fairly shrieked out my name. I did not equivocate when they called. I did not falter. I rushed to buy those shoes before my sensible side kicked in. I had to possess them (or did they possess me?). Those shoes were bold and brash and very self-assertive. This was the beginning of my love affair with what I now call my WOMANISH! Shoes.

Those black pointy-toed four-inch heel kick the door in look out world I’m coming through shoes took hold of my soul. Every time I slipped my feet into those shoes and pulled those leather straps up and across my insteps (just a whisper above bewitching ankles) to unite them with the tasteful silver buckles that hovered over sensual bare-naked heels, my feet arched and a deep throated baritone whispered in my ear, “Oooo Baby, they look good on you!”

In those shoes I was no longer a rather dumpy rolling down the hill towards senior citizen land woman. Instead I was a thirty-something (twenty-something is too young for these shoes) self-assured Diva, whose mere entree into any room turned all the men into blithering idiots (whatever a blither is) while the women who were all Cinderella before I walked through the door turned into pumpkins as I made my magnificent arrival.

Those shoes made the ring around my waist disappear; they elongated my neck, and the curves of my youth that had acquiesced to gravity years ago immediately snapped back into place with alacrity and panache. In a flash I was smart and tres chic, a stylish, witty and brilliant female bon vivant whom everyone wanted to know.

My WOMANISH! Shoes turned my everyday much too loud and common laugh into a head thrown back scintillating sparkle that trilled its way past dazzling white teeth through slightly open and slightly moist, red glazed lips. Those shoes made me want to throw my head from side to side while I danced, hollered and “shook a groove thing.”

I bought my first pair of WOMANISH! Shoes before my husband, who was a pastor, died. The first Sunday I wore them, I walked into church just a little self-conscious. As I slipped quietly into the pew, a good deacon walked over to me. He looked at my feet, raised his eyebrows and smiled rather suggestively (I thought). I had barely recovered from that unexpected reaction when another well-behaved brother walked by, nodded at my feet and said, with a glint in his eye (I thought), “Nice shoes.” That is when the reality of WOMANISH! Shoes hit me:

“These shoes have as much power for me as that old geezer’s red sports car with the young trophy wife in the passenger seat has for him. Not only do these shoes have power, they empower the wearer to the point where confidence overrides any insecurity and the wearer walks just a little bit taller."

Still, since I was a married woman back then, whenever anyone commented on my shoes (mostly men), I would do my best to smile demurely, say “thank-you” and pretend that I was not even aware of the fact that they were WOMANISH! Shoes.

After my husband died, I upped the ante on the shoes. I went WOMANISH! Shoe shopping with a vengeance, which may have been a by-product of my grief. Today, whenever I wear a pair from my collection, I make sure that the people who knew me when my husband was alive (during my conservative heyday) know now that I bought my very first pair before my he died, especially since it is now mostly women who comment and say “my, how you’ve changed.” Yes, one just has to stop those shoe rumors before they start . . .sometimes.

SOME THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT WOMANISH! SHOES

WOMANISH! Shoes never lack for confidence.
WOMANISH! Shoes make a $10 grab bag dress look like “haughty” couture.
WOMANISH! Shoes take life’s challenges one step at a time.
WOMANISH! Shoes can praise God standing up.
WOMANISH! Shoes know the way.
WOMANISH! Shoes mean what they say, but they are never mean.
WOMANISH! Shoes are never self-conscious.
WOMANISH! Shoes may have attitude, but they are never vain.
WOMANISH! Shoes always know what to say and how and when to say it.
WOMANISH! Shoes never give up.
WOMANISH! Shoes can walk the red carpet without thinking they are "the bomb."
WOMANISH! Shoes are always ready to dance.
WOMANISH! Shoes never worry about their age.
WOMANISH! Shoes walk by faith.
WOMANISH! Shoes can be worn by a woman who can delight in the Lord
and
still know her stilettos look good on her.

It is so true. I was never a shoe person back in the day. Until my shoe epiphany, my shoe wardrobe consisted of sensible black shoes, shoes that all looked the same, boring black shoes that were comfortable and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I did not want, or covet, the attention WOMANISH! Shoes brought to the wearer of said shoes. I have always been too concerned about what people thought of me. But today, I am most definitely a WOMANISH! Shoe wearer and I am constantly on the hunt for the next pair (think cheetah design with a four or five inch black heel; let me know if you see them out there). Besides, it doesn’t hurt to keep my public wondering. After all, wonderful and marvelous things do happen in me when I slip into those WOMANISH! Shoes.

This I do swear and so affirm, so help me Macy’s, Nordstrom’s, and all those purveyors of those wonderful and glorious WOMANISH! Shoes.