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Snowbirding and A hui hou…Until We Meet Again

We first moved to Alaska and I’d hear people talk about leaving during the winter. Snowbirds, they said. I was incredulous. Why would someone ever want to LEAVE Alaska?

We arrived to AK in 1997 at the height of summer, the season where Alaska shines her best, literally, —we covered our windows in aluminum foil just to have enough darkness to sleep at night—but after that never-dark summer, our first winter was almost magical.

Winter landscapes in Alaska are other-worldly. Fairy tale and history book, geography maps, and a coffee table tome, full-page landscape portfolios…all at the same time…that was Alaska winter…sheer magic.

So those “snowbirds”…I thought of them as fake Alaskans. Half-Cheechako, even as I, less than six months Alaskan, was a full-blooded Cheechako*.

But I thought I knew Alaska.

We’d come from snow country after all, mid-westerners…moonboots and snowmobiles part of our everyday life…soaking up summer before winter came on fast and furious.

What I didn’t know in my Cheechako state was that moonboots in Alaska won’t make it til November, snowmobiles are called snowmachines, and winter comes on faster and more furious, lasting wayyyy longer than I’d ever seen it last in my whole two-plus decades of being a born-and-bred lifelong Michigander. And don’t even get me started on the dark, even though we’d made one of the lightest places in this state our home.

But I learned quick that summer was the elixir that kept us all planted right here in Alaska, and that there is nothing, nothing, like high sun at 11 pm while a campfire burns and hotdogs are roasted for dinner. Or how waking at 5 am feels normal, coming with a full energy store for the day ahead. Or how the mountains look like they are in full rejoice mode from May on, flush with green and large arms raised to Heaven, trying to touch the sun who, in full summer flirtatiousness, never quite reaches low enough to grasp their fingertips.

I love you, Alaska. There is none like you.

But after spending thirty years as one of yours, I get it now.

I understand why people leave. Decades of trudging through your six-month winters—split up over the years, I’m shocked to say it’s been a decade and a half of my whole life that has been spent in your cold, winter months—I get it now.

I get why people snowbird.

Hauling water to troughs at twenty below…days-long power outages from high winds or heavy snow on electric lines…transformers blown because an old tree couldn’t stand up under the weight of it all…trudging through knee-high snow…cold bones.

Cold bones.

I get it now.

So, since that 2021 year that my beloved almost died, held hostage here by distance when the whole world went haywire…ever since, we’ve sought out the tropics to warm bones and melt the freeze of our Alaskan grit…just a little.

I get it.

Five years since that frigid time, we’ve come to this warm place we love, every year since, various clumps of us, each time thawing in different ways, and now, I just want to come here every year. Longer each time.

I want to be a snowbird.

My roots are in you deep, Alaska. You are part of me. My children hail from you. I am proud. You built us and strengthened us, and you’ve formed us into something more we ever would have imagined we would be. Or could be.

But this warm place has such a piece of my heart, and now, I can never go back to just belonging to Alaska all year long.

I can’t afford it on the island. We are blue-collar. We are not rich like the millionaires who have two homes and jet set across the ocean on a whim. It’s unreachable. We are just working to retire in peace someday and maybe leave a little to our kids.

But I just want to snowbird. I want to love my Alaska but also come to Kaua’i and soak up the beauty of this place. The history. The quiet. The aloha. The people. The warmth.

This place reminds me so much of our Alaska…rugged. Off the beaten path of the other 48 states. There is one road in Alaska, here too, on the island.

Try the Big Island. You’d love Oahu. Maui is our favorite. My Alaska friends advise me on all the best places, their favorite islands.

Why would I go anywhere else when I know how much I love it here?

It’s like someone telling me I should try to live somewhere other than the north road. Why would I? Our North Road is home.

And Kaua’i is home.

Our last day, just two short days ago, I buried the remainder of the little supply of my mama’s ashes I had taken over on the plane. Matt and I made a list: thirteen of her favorite places on Kaua’i. Just a little bit here, a little bit there.

Nothing intrusive or dramatic, she wouldn’t want that. But for one whole week, my brother, my kids and I, we all left little pinches of her earthly remains on this place she loved. Sometimes we did it sneaky like, other times I’d pinch some out of the window of the Jeep as we flew down the road —once forgetting there was a passenger behind me with the window open, that was a funny moment—but most times we’d just each take a casual turn with her urn and have a moment to think of her.

The second week of our time, just Matt and I, —having put everyone on a plane back north to jobs after an acceptable vacation—we stayed behind for a few days of quiet us older ones—her urn stayed with us in the cupholder or my pocket, and we crossed off three more of her favorite places before my little 1/2 cup or so supply was almost emptied. Our last day, I put what was left in the sand at the roots of one of the big trees at her favorite beach. When I’d finished and her urn was empty, I realized I will never travel to this island with my mama again.

I’m so thankful for the trips I took with her. We never had any money when I was a kid, but my mama would take my brother and I on little trips all of the time: to the zoo, to amusement parks, camping, to musicals…whatever she could afford…and what an honor it was as an adult, her in her sunset years, to take her to a place she fell in love with so immediately…head over heels in love to the point her favorite flavors became pineapple and coconut…and every single time she’d say…oh, it just tastes like Kaua’i.

She is part of that island now forever, and I can’t explain what that does to my soul. I cried a little when that urn was emptied, but as we traveled our final day, I felt the magnitude of it too, and now, on this first day back in our frozen north land, it makes me feel a little bit warmer to know there is part of her there forever.

And I need that, this first day back in which the snow is deep, and my feet slip into fuzzy Crocs and not the flip flops my feet prefer, those slippahs these toes wore for two weeks straight…the day that warm pants go on under the muumuu instead of just a swimsuit…

I want to be a snowbird. I want to live aloha and be hot at 8 am and watch the sunset at 6:10 pm and then see stars come out bright and not have to wrap up in a blanket to stand outside to see them. I want my bones to be warm and my skin to be tan and my nails to grow long because my body is making Vitamin D like it’s collecting an overtime paycheck. I want to go to sleep at 10 pm and wake up at 6 am feeling refreshed, ready for the day, no alarms, no waking up freezing or sweltering or being groggy when I know I’ve overslept but have no idea if it’s 8 am or 10 am because it is still pitch-black. My body thrives in the tropics. I told my husband, I don’t know what it is, but I feel 15 years younger in this place.

I love Kaua’i, and like Alaska, it holds my heart.

Sweet Ms. Melanie who made my lunch sandwiches…She works three jobs just to live there and help support her family in the Philippines. Aunty Nancy at the gas station, we’ve struck up a sweet little relationship over these few years, and even though she meets a million people from all over the world, we talk each time…she knows the cigars I like to grab with my Diet Coke and she says there is no way I am fifty-two or old enough to have four grown children. She had her first child at the age of thirty-eight and her silver hair is like a crown all combed back, looking like a Polynesian queen. I love her.

Our Jeep guy…as long as he rents out Jeeps, I will never have a need for a private company…he hugs us all and sends lists of the things we need to do and places we need to explore…we bring him fish from Alaska my boy caught out of our wild oceans and his wife becomes an immediate sister to me, and I miss her already.

The sweet couple we met bowling, so fancy in their gear and their bowling stance and scores, realizing they know someone we do here in the 49th and that we could be on a league with them because we have developed a love of bowling like they did…and don’t get me started on Ms Rose at the airport who only wants to come to Alaska as a bucket list trip and go fishing, or Ms Krista at the property rental place who lived in Girdwood for ten years, or the sweet Aunty at the grocery store who once traveled too to Girdwood to promote Kaua’i and did the hula and came home with some walrus ivory…I could go on…the people…man, what a little island in the Pacific has in common with this crazy state way up here off the beaten path…It’s such a small world and I just want to live there, even a few months out of each year.

Just the hardest months.

I’m not an expensive traveler even. A couple lunches out, but mostly picnics at our favorite beach, grocery shopping for dinners in at our low-end condo overlooking the redneck end of the fancy golf course…that’s my kind of travel.

The backside of the fancy golf course was overgrown this year —budget cuts maybe?—and while my husband sleeps in each morning, I got to know who walked their dog early, who power-walks/combo-jogs the overgrown trail, and who sneaks off into the woods with a backpack full of beer, making the stash of empty cans Matt found when he went on an afternoon stroll to explore the little pond across the way that families came to fish out of. Tilapia maybe, and a catfish or two, but I wouldn’t eat anything out of that pond…I think it’s overflow like at the refinery back home. He’s an Alaskan salmon snob, you’ve spoiled us, Alaska.

We ‘d putter into town to grab lunch and take it down to the beach, maybe do some souvenir shopping or people watching, then come back for a lanai sunset and watch the 4:30 convoy of golf carts roll in —nine was the largest count, five the smallest, all in tandem— we surmised there is some sort of daily lesson that happens here on the hillbilly side of this golf course, maybe where they bring those who, like us, obviously have no business being on a world-class course and who would probably have more luck and more fun at the putt-putt course up the road, which we did, and which we loved. An afternoon well spent, full of memories.

Then, just as though they’d rehearsed it, twenty minutes later, they roll out, one right after, forming a single-file line, and just like that, they are gone until the next day’s 4:30 band of misfit golfers.

Shortly after them, almost like clockwork, we’d watch a fancy red quad cart roll up into the middle of the field, and a white-blonde dog would hop off the back seat as the man of the trio whizzed a ball from a Chuk-It —two times precisely— before the female would finish up on her cell phone and hop off the cart, bringing two baseball gloves with her.

The man and the woman would commence to tossing a baseball, —maybe a softball, we can’t tell from the lanai, and we kept forgetting there was a pair of old K-Mart binocs in the top drawer of the condo next to the fish scale—and they’d chat through the tossing…his mom, work, kids…and every now and then, they’d break the rhythm of tossing to heave a ball from the Chuk-It to the dog lying patiently in the grass. We learned after Day 2 the dog’s name was Boyd.

I’d sit lazy in the sun watching it all, plowing through the book I picked up at the little donation-only library at the outdoor mall when my babies were still with us the week before. My youngest, that tall, long-haired Alaskan, he gently helped me find the money box for books nailed to the wall, white and stained there with red dirt and salt water, and I slipped in the four dollar bills I had in my pocket.

That baby, not having his Real ID yet, just a paper copy, I put him on a plane with his big siblings and his uncle, and he’s never traveled without his parents…tall and broad-shouldered as he is, his mama worries nonetheless, so his big sister, that firstborn daughter, she stands on tiptoes inside TSA after they’ve all been through, and knowing with instinct my worry, she finds my face just outside the boundaries, and she gives a me a shaka wave, her in her Carhartt hoodie, sweating there in the tropics but preparing for cold. It’s only her third time here but she loves it like her mama does, and how precious is it that my Alaska babies slip so easily into island life, them with their flannel shirts and knee-length socks-with-crocs, bringing their ruggedness, familiar somehow with this place that is so different from all they’ve known, but so similar too in the and I-don’t-care-what-people-think, odd-man-out kind of way of not caring,

They left and it was just us for a week and I wrote. I wrote a lot. I wrote to the point my professor had to say it was okay for me to say he loved my grasp on the meaning of the literature we were reading as a class but that it was okay to stay within the word limit. My husband laughed at that one. He just doesn’t know you yet,

He chuckled, even after he spent a whole afternoon with me over one of our picnic lunches, giving me good ideas for the piece that was due, and listening to it over and over as I edited it to being just right. He knows how much I love this place and he knows how much I love to write.

He doesn’t even like the beach, but he was a little sad and grumpy our last day…just thinking about all that is waiting for me back home, he told me.

But I knew it was this place. He’s come to love it too.

I’m not ashamed to say I’ve gotten soft. About this Alaska, Kaua’i.

Re-entry has me whining —every single time— and my kids roll their eyes, those tough ones. Rugged, they are. And Matt, knowing how tough I really am down deep, he just lets me go on and moan about him bringing me to this frozen wasteland and choosing it for us, even though we both know it was me prodding him to follow his dreams and drag me along all those years ago.

And I know what a blessing it is to even be able to take a vacation. And how entitled it sounds to be sad and whiny when it’s over. It’s not lost on me that the kids Matt and I once were —still are, most days in our hearts—could have never ever dreamed of taking an actual vacation, especially one to the tropics…completely out of our realm of possibilities, and once the kids came along, forget about it.

Our vacation was packing up all their 4-H animals to spend the weekend at the fair. Precious memories for sure, but it wasn’t until he almost died and the kids were all late-teens and he had a hefty work bonus on the table and he said, You know what? We’ve never taken an actual vacation and they are almost grown now and this life is short and I think we should go somewhere and show them something outside of Alaska.

We packed them all up and my mama too, and we came to this place I’d come to so many years before, without him and before them, and they all loved it every bit as much as I did those two decades before, and my children slipped into island life like they were born for it and my mama felt like a tropical princess, and it became our home-away-from-home, and now I slip every bit of extra I can find into the place I reserve in my heart and our bank account for…this island that fills our tanks.

It’s not lost on me what a blessing it is. To have vacation time. To have a little extra each payday. To have grown children who can fund themselves now, and who like spending time with their parents, their siblings. To make it a priority. I don’t take one bit of it for granted.

But I learned this trip that somehow, someway, I need to find a way to make this regular. I’m a slow learner when it comes to me, and six trips to Kaua’i and laying a little bit of my mama to rest there has made me realize that this place is such a part of me that I need to be there more than what I am now.

I’ve learned it’s okay to want to be a snowbird. That there are folks who seek out the sun…that just NEED the warmth.

I met a mama at the airport on the way home; she’s from Idaho and had her brood with her. Everyone was tan and happy, but she was sad to be going home. We talked long about how getting cold gets harder as we get older and how our spirits just crave the warmth in order to function at full capacity. She gave me the term: solar-powered.

So I’ve become one of those Alaskans now. Who want to leave.

Who would forsake this magical, majestic northern place for a fraction of each year just to recharge her solar station and keep all systems operational.

I am solar-powered.

We flew through the night, and we met fellow travelers, and I counted up that it takes nineteen hours to get to the warm place I love, and nineteen hours to get back to the cold place I I still love.

When we left Michigan in 1997, it was 4000 miles to get to the land where we decided to put down roots. When we began taking our family to Kaua’i in 2022, it took 4400 miles to get to that land my heart yearns for. It is 4400 miles from Kaua’i to our home start in Michigan. A perfect triangle of miles, 12,800 in all. The place that started us; the place where we raised our family; and now the place that holds my heart.

I am a simple girl and don’t need much. I work from home, diligently and faithfully. I pour into my job, my community, the families I serve; all as I keep watch over mine and the farm they’ve placed under my care. I pluck away at the college courses I’ve handpicked to serve me as a writer; to make my family proud of me and accomplish the goal I set for myself thirty-five years ago.

I love my community and I wouldn’t change one thing about the decisions my husband and I have made since sinking ourselves in here almost three decades ago. I wouldn’t change one thing.

But now, I want to be a snowbird.

I love you, Alaska, but I want to be a snowbird.

Alaska, you have my heart and my soul forever. But so does Kaua’i.

And now, I get it. You’re not a fake Alaskan if you’re solar-powered.

You just get older and this cold place wears you down, chills your bones after years and years of winter, and all of a sudden, you need the warmth of warmer places to recharge and operate and to keep on.

You don’t want to leave. You would never dream of leaving a place that is so much a part of you. You just want to be warm. You just want to be a snowbird.

Our Jeep buddy, Brent, he taught Poppy and I the first year we traveled there as a family and had to leave…he’d hugged us all at the airport and made us feel as though we were ohana (family). We shook hands after hugs all around and kisses on the cheek, he said a hui hou. I smiled and said thank you. He said, you know what that means? And he held my hand and said it slow for me: a hui hou…ah hooey hoh…it means, until we meet again.

And now, each time I leave my beloved Kaua’i, I say it to him, to whichever house we stay, to whichever beach we leave, whichever tree I leave my mama’s ashes under.

a hui hou.

All the time, and I love my Alaska, but my winter bones and my winter heart are there where you hold me warm.

I miss you, Boyd.

I miss you, Kaua’i.

Until we meet again…

A hui hou.

*Cheechako is a term for newcomer, tenderfoot, or greenhorn in Alaska or the Yukon, specifically referring to someone who has not yet survived a winter there. Originating from Chinook jargon during the Klondike Gold Rush (c. 1897), it distinguishes inexperienced arrivals from seasoned “sourdoughs”.

Pieces of Poppy and Alaska is on the Island Tonight

A Place of Your Own

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I spent years working away at my kitchen table, steering the ship of my job and house while homeschooling my bouncy bunch of four bright-minded students, letting my laptop slip into sleep as I’d answer math questions or teach how to count out change or correct grammar on book reports, all through the late mornings after we’d read from the Bible and our current chapter book while their mouths were busy eating breakfast.

We’d curl up later after lunch with yet another stack of books, full of history and astronomy and earth science and how babies are born. The littlest of them would play with K’Nex on his reading blanket and our time would draw out as we’d learn and learn, and then they’d have a quiet time in their rooms where they’d listen to good stories and classical music on CD’s, played on their very own little portable stereo that reminded me of the boom box I used to carry around back in fourth grade. Minus the CD player, of course.

Sometimes I’d rest too, but most times I’d work some more on the laptop, or I’d write before it was time to start thinking of dinner.

We shared our days.

Every day.

I wouldn’t change those years or that time for all of the money in the world.

For twenty years my space was their space, and that was my life mission without me even realizing it. I was their lifeline and they were mine, and those years make up our family history and legacy and are the etchings of who I am and who they are.

Before them, I used to share space with a shift full of men and women in gun belts and turnout gear. I’d send them on calls where their life was in danger, or a citizen was under threat, and I’d answer routine phone traffic mixed in with a 911 here and there, and I’d keep track of where each and every one of them were, who they were with, and what the danger level was, the status of the house fire, or had the traffic stop yet cleared…all while intermittently typing up a report before I clocked out. And I’d do it all while running background checks and gun permit info and driver’s license statuses and maybe microwaving up a late lunch before the next call came in or putting on a pot of fresh coffee before the lieutenant rolled up to the station for day shift. If I had an issue in my space, I’d hit the big red button and gun belts would jangle urgently up the hall and the fire department door would fly open, and my family-of-that-season would come running to my rescue. They were my lifeline like I was theirs and those years are part of my legacy and are etchings of who I am and who they are.

Since 1993 I’ve shared space with my beloved and it’s been an upstairs apartment with slanted ceilings and floors, and then the space we yearned to buy, a single-wide trailer-house on a quarter acre on the ghetto side of a swanky lake community where we thought we’d arrived; man I loved that place…and then the wide-open space of this Alaska, this land where there’s a place and a space for all who dream to put a stake in the cold, dark ground… and that space was shared with me and with him, and all those who’ve come around us protectively in love, and they were our lifeline and I like to think, I hope to think, that in some way, we’ve been theirs too because oh, how we love them. They are part of the legacy of the two of us and they are etched on our hearts and on who we are.

Our Alaska spaces and places have been friends’ houses, our first rented house, the beaches, the tundra, the first house we ever owned —that one we busted open a bottle of champagne upon, right there on the corner of the concrete block foundation– this smaller one now that looks fancier but that had us cashing in part of our retirement fund in order to secure the land it sits on so that our children would have a countrified, free-range life…this place that maybe we’ll die on and leave to them someday…

…and then there’s Kodiak Island where he spent so much time working and I used to take the ferry over when our first two were babies and I was swollen with our third…we’d walk the beaches and oh, don’t I still have jars full of beach treasurers…and then almost twenty years later I took the kids and their friends, and that one I carried in my belly those earlier trips walked beside me as a near-on adult and it was precious…

…Denali National Park where we’ve driven our band of family and friends through four times now across that wild terrain…big field trips for our little homeschool and I’d read out loud for hours and hours while he drove us safely through the frost heaves and alien landscape…

…Captain Cook State Park where we’ve dreamed of children —and maybe even conceived one all those years ago— and it’s been the close place that seems faraway, where we can escape up the road for a few days or an afternoon, flying kites and camping and building fires and finding agates and ourselves again…

…all the many beautiful lakes, rivers, islands, inlands, glaciers, campgrounds, forests, and backroads of this land that swallowed us whole and made us her own…

…The farm our kids dragged us into…

…The place family comes to ooh and ahh over and sometimes comes back more than once or sometimes even comes to settle because we are here…

Alaska places and spaces have been our lifeline—where we found the LORD…or maybe where He found us—and it will be part of our legacy; it is etched deeply—so deeply—on our hearts and is such a big and beautiful part of who we are.

It’s funny how when you get older places become engraved on us —our memories and our hearts—and get right down into the cells of us.

Mayo Clinic where they saved my husband’s life and gave him back to me; I can hear my shoes squeaking on their immaculate floors as I walk to his room and I can feel on my palm the smooth and delicate strong grip of the heart surgeon, an angel on earth who held my husband’s heart with his two miraculous hands that day, then hours later held my two trembling hands and told me my man was strong.

My soul sister’s kitchen table polished in tears and a couple red wine stains from when we use laughter to add to the warm, worn patina of her tabletop, that meeting place that draws us all to the center of her home and her heart.

Those church chairs, stackable and mauve, chosen carefully by good stewards to hold the growing body of bodies; I always smile when I find one with a little rip that’s been carefully stitched together, and how many times have my people gathered in them, all six or eight or ten of us, singing and listening and opening our Bibles and learning and lighting candles on Christmas Eve?

That faraway island we’ve come to love, come to run to when the bones get cold and the wanderlust gets loud…that place where we celebrated a life still with us, and now many trips later, where we’ll mourn one gone from us…

All the other places that are tied up in our work, some of it decades long, and all of it swirling our family and our schedules and when we celebrate holidays and when Daddy’s off, and when Mom has to spend a day away from her home desk and be at the office desk…all this work our hands have nourished, and the livelihood he’s provided that allowed me to be right here with them all these years, feeding and teaching and being as productive as I could as I pecked away at my littler job, —the paycheck part, not the raising kids part, we both know what a high-value position I held, even as I was still learning it— this job that nourishes kids and clubs and communities while we grew ours up right along with all of the extra workload.

The electric man and the 4-H lady…these jobs have been our places for many years, and they are etched on us and our family forever, and even those will one day be part of our legacy.

I could go on and on, and I have probably…but if you’re with me still yet, where is your place?

Where have you built stories and legacies and what places are etched on your life and your history and your heart?

It used to be I wasn’t as attached to places as I am now that I’m over the crest of the hill of my life, but even as a younger woman there were a few places that molded me…my granny’s house…the beach of my childhood…the little white church where Matt and I were married…

But really, it only came about as I aged a bit that places began to etch their significance upon my heart.

And that I learned that the lesson is, that it usually isn’t even the place so much, but the people with whom you share it that makes a place so precious.

The days and the hours and the years and the minutes…the work and the love and the sweet talks and the hard discussions…the tears, the growing, the learning, the laughter…

…but mostly just the time.

Those are my favorite places.

The places where I’ve spent the time.

And in a world so rife with troubles right now, so much division, so much ugliness, so much uncertainty…don’t we all need a place?

Is that a state? A friend’s table? Your church family? A lake or a library? The four walls in which you dwell?

I hope my friend, that you have a place you love and feel loved.

Where the work of your hands and the love in your heart is safe, and honored, and something you are proud of.

Where you are someone’s lifeline like they are yours.

Where your time there becomes etched on your heart and the history of who you are.

My hope is that you have a place where your heart is heard, and that the heartbeat of your creator is felt.

He has a place for you, and I hope He is welcome and embraced in your place.

I hope you are loved, and I hope that every place you are blessed to be in touches you in ways known only to you and the LORD and your people, and that always, it is etched on your heart and becomes part of your legacy.

This piece is dedicated to my mama. I miss her so during this changing of the seasons, and I am so thankful for the time and the places I shared with her. They are etched forever on my heart and my history. I love you, Mommy.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. Abraham Lincoln

The Lemons and Me and This Season

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I found a patch of fireweed last week that was in full fuzz, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

How are we here so quickly?

How are we six weeks out from winter now, with the Sockeye gone and the Coho here, and with those Silvers running, the feeling of frost each morning has rushed in too, and the need for a reset each night lingers?

Oh, it’s been a year. And it’s just August.

I think every single person close to me feels the same.

It’s been a year.

It was supposed to be the year when we all finally…FINALLY threw off the bad memories of the pandemic…when we all had a fresh start…when it was just going to be a page-turner and a chapter-changer.

But man, it’s been a year.

And this time of year, this particular season, it always has me yearning for a new planner.

A fresh start.

College classes start back up, a fresh new year begins in my job, my babies crank up their schooling…

It’s a natural start to new beginnings, and some years are happy and others are reflective…

but this one…this one has been a little sad.

Oh I still want a new planner. I’ve chosen my 2026 version, I’ve got the stickers ordered, I’ve got a PLAN for the planner.

That’s just because I’m looking to rein some things in, though.

Looking for some sense in the sadness…some methodical for the melancholy.

Because the older I get, the harder it comes, this changing-of-the-seasons.

And as I take stock in the state of things here in this bottom quarter of 2025, I feel the weight of it all.

This season that has a nation divided. Once again, here we are divided, this time uglier somehow.

This season that has me facing the rest of my life without my mama by my side.

This season that has our family walking the line of being empty-nesters while still having children living at home.

This season that has our farm downsizing as the kids grow up and out of their childhoods, and the animals begin to age out and leave us.

This season that has my body saying her child-bearing years are through, and it’s time to transition into menopause.

This season that is seeing friendships change and morph and fall off or grow deeper.

This season that has me wondering what I’m going to do with the remainder of the years that I have left on this earth.

This season…

Man, this season.

They don’t tell you when the babies are young that THIS season will be the hardest one yet.

That this season will grow you, flex you, bend you, break you, form you, mold you…in ways you never knew you’d be stretched or forced into before.

This season that has graves dug and cremains sitting on the bar in a fancy box, and thyroid medication-refill calls on speed dial, and the last year of high school plans saved in .pdf format after decades of making them.

That this season will have you on the brink of divorce one moment, to clinging in the next to your spouse like he’s the last person on the planet.

Hysterical and heartbreaking.

All at once.

That’s this season.

They don’t tell you that part.

They don’t tell you that your heart will break and you will be angry on a whim and that your bullshit threshold will be so thin that you can barely deal with people anymore.

They don’t tell you that you will feel all the years of your life that have passed and that you will just sit on your porch and ponder how many decades are to come and that you’ll reconsider all of your life’s decisions while holding so fast and tightly to all the ones you’ve made because they’ve all, every one, formed you into a person you wish you’d known when you were a younger woman.

They don’t tell you that the friendships you have will be lifelines or that your spouse who’s loved you almost two-thirds of your life will be the most cherished possession you’ve ever held, or that you’ll marvel when the adults who look like you and who were delivered out of your body will all-of-a-sudden become your closest confidants and that there is no greater joy than having them all together within the same walls you’ve all worn down together with dirt and blood and hearts and handprints.

This season.

They don’t tell you that you’ll care for aging parents and that once you finally, finally get used to that shock of an adjustment, you’ll be too soon saying goodbye and finding yourself an orphan even as you sit there mature and grown and feeling like a twelve-year-old searching.

They don’t tell you that your siblings, that bloodline, that will suddenly become something precious and opposite of what was once disregarded and taken for granted because it was something you were thrown into by chance.

They don’t tell you that friends won’t always be loyal and that what you thought was solid might just be flimsy, or that we live in a time when believing differently from someone might just be the reason they write you off as not-worthy.

They don’t tell you that others may just cling to you like their old age depends upon it, and that one day you’ll realize they’re right, and you’ll cling to them too and look forward to those grey years of laughing and love, and that you’ll hold onto them like a precious jewel because that’s what they are.

They don’t tell you that your faith will change.

That your friends will change.

That your family will change.

And that through it all, you’ll still be expected to be the same.

This season.

I sit on my porch and I work and I think and I ponder it all…

and sometimes I read my Bible, and I remember the fig tree and how it withered, and I cry because I don’t want to wither.

I don’t want to be without fruit.

I don’t want Him to look at me and say I’ve just spent all this time withering and have Him cast me away.

Because I’m not.

I’m not worthless.

I’m not withering.

I’m growing.

I’m budding.

I’m trying.

I’m striving for the Son and I’m trying to grow fruit, and just like my five lemon plants, those precious babies of mine forced to grow in this cold, cold land even though they’d much prefer the warm, tropical home we hijacked them from…

I reach.

My leaves curl, and sometimes they even die and fall off.

But I keep reaching for the Son just like they keep reaching for my windows, and slowly, ever slowly…they grow, and even though it’s not always seen until the sun shines again, I think maybe I am too.

That one, oh, he’s so crooked and curled and lopsided, and isn’t that just like me in this season?

LORD, isn’t that just like me?

Trying. Reaching. I hate this season, I can’t stand this climate, I yearn for the warmer times…

I long for when they were babies and I wish for when things weren’t so politically divisive, and I crave for times when they were simpler…

But I’m gonna keep growing through.

I’m gonna keep reaching.

I’m gonna keep stretching out my limbs and praising and looking for the sun in the dark, dark seasons…

When the hormones make it miserable, or when I’m stuck between peace and the plan, or when the bureauracy of the job hits hard, or when days change so fast I have to turn on a dime, or when the weight of the way forward needs more energy than what I have to bring, or when You may have to install a grow light to help me get through the days when all I see is the darkness…

I will keep growing.

I will remember grace. And mercy. And lessons.

The family I’ve borne and all the years we’ve been given.

The husband who has loved me faithfully and would give his breath to see me happy and safe.

The people who have given their lives so that I may have freedom.

The friendships that are threads in the quilt of my life.

I will remember goodness and love.

Like my lemons, I will reach through the chill of the changing of seasons and the darkness that lingers more and more each day.

I won’t succumb to the cold or the bleak or the uncertainty of what is to come.

I will grow.

I will remember there was One who gave up everything He had so that I might live this life He gave.

I will remember that every day here is a blessing and a gift.

I will remember that not everyone knows yet the freedom I have, the salvation that’s been laid out for all to find.

I will remember.

And on the days I forget, I will cling to the hope and the reminders that are there in the everyday blessings of this life…these ones given to me, those friends and family…those words in the ancient writings that continue to etch their truths into my heart.

I will remember.

And I will grow.

Cheesecake and Dying

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I came across an old journal today as I was hunting for a new planner for the upcoming season —Autumn always makes my planner side jittery and searching for something fresh— and it took me two reads of the page to realize the scrawl I saw was my mama’s and not mine.

She’s been gone now three and a half months, but sometimes it still feels like she’s here, and when I realized the chicken scratching was her writing —done in my book from that weekend in the passenger seat where she took notes while I drove—it stopped me in my tracks for a moment because I remembered when she wrote that, and it seemed like just last week.

It was her sixty-ninth birthday, and I’d taken her away to my favorite getaway, “our” cabin in nearby Homer, the place my husband and I have taken our kids and ourselves for over twenty years of getaways.

So many breaks: celebrating mid-winter with the February birthday of our firstborn; taking an annual anniversary break in October or whenever we could squeeze it in, just me and Matt; taking family down when they came in from out of state…somehow, my mama and I had never been, just the two of us.

So that year, that year before she began her serious decline, but after she’d begun to rely upon me more by becoming an Alaskan and my neighbor, I took my mama to my favorite getaway. We splurged on a birthday dinner at the best steakhouse in Alaska, and we took in the hot tub, and we started a book that someday I may just write.

“Cheesecake Conisseurs: The Story of a Mother, a Daughter, and their Quest for the Perfect Cheesecake.”

It started at the steakhouse on Day One (Cheesecake #1) and ended at the pizza joint on Day Two (Cheesecake #2).

It sounds trivial, this cheesecake quest, but you have to understand, at this point in our relationship, my mama had had a stroke and was well on her way into full-blown dementia, me on my way into full-blown caregiving.

We just didn’t know it then…what was to come.

Because then, she was still in her apartment, just three miles from me around the corner, and driving herself to her doctor’s appointments —fully independent but no denying the fact that she’d sold her precious home four thousand miles away to relocate to be near to me where she remained on a waitlist at our nearby senior center to live out the rest of her life.

We had all come to terms with that change of seasons.

But in the cheesecake season, she was cooking, cleaning, driving herself, tracking her appointments and coming over for dinners, enjoying her visits from grandbabies, Sunday church time, outings with friends, and all her field trips for my job…giving all the help and love where she knew how to give it and fitting into the life here in her new state just like a glove.

At that point, it was just us who had to adjust. And I say that selfishly because she sure made her adjustments, too. She had sold up her precious little house in the woods that she loved so much and she said goodbye to best friends and neighbors she knew well, and she plopped herself into a state where she had to establish residency and find new doctors and a new church family…and her self-reliance took a backseat to depending on the family she knew well and loved to be part of, but who she also knew was busy and active and spinning in circles where she knew she’d have to become part of the orbit.

She was brave.

Even in her dependence upon me, upon us, she was brave.

So I tried to make her birthday special because even though our family may celebrate birthdays sporadically or when the oilfield shifts allow, a mama only turns 69 once in her life, and my mama didn’t always know special.

And those two slices of cheesecake the waitress brought out (on the house) made my mama feel like a princess.

She ooh’d and she ahh’d, and you would have thought it was the best cheesecake in the whole wide world.

Because it was.

We talked about how creamy it was.

We delighted in how delectable it was.

We talked about how it literally was the best cheesecake either of us had ever had in our whole lives.

And then the next day, on our way out of town, we hit the fancy pizza joint and enjoyed lunch, and of course, we ordered cheesecake for dessert, because it was a birthday weekend after all, and birthdays in our family are always meant to be extended.

The waitress at the pizza joint also happened to work weekends at the steakhouse, and when we told her about THE most delicious cheesecake we’d ever had, she mused that the cheesecake at her other place of employment was just cheesecake shipped in from Costco and accentuated with strawberry sauce made fresh at the restaurant.

Because don’t you know that Costco has the best cheesecake in the whole state of Alaska?

She thought everyone knew that.

My mama and I didn’t know that —not being Costco cardholders, how would we?—and as we slowly enjoyed that Day Two slice of mango cheesecake at the pizza joint on our day two of her birthday celebration, we mused about how ironic it was that a nationwide wholesale company was in the business of producing the best cheesecake in the state, and what does it take to be THE best cheesecake in the whole nation?

The creaminess of the mango at the pizza place and the subtle tropical flavor made a stiff comparison to the denseness of the New York style we’d enjoyed the night before.

Day Two Cheesecake wasn’t as thick, wasn’t as traditional, but it brought a freshness and a newness to cheesecake that Day One Cheesecake didn’t have, and what about that crust?

We were soon on our way, mid-afternoon, mid-January in Alaska, growing dark with an hour and a half of drive time ahead, and there we were, on the highway in my SUV, still comparing cheesecakes and their denseness and creaminess and richness and what it would take to be declared the best cheesecake in the country.

We could write it down, Mom!

YES!

We could travel around and compare cheesecakes and be just like the fancy restaurant critics, but just for cheesecakes!

YES!

Everywhere we go, we could order the cheesecake and write up a review, and then we could write a book about it and include recipes and photos…and squished into all of it, we could talk about it all from the perspective of an aging mother and her adult daughter.

YES!

Write it down, Mom.

And she fished out of my bag the planner-journal book I haul around everywhere I go, and even though it always made her carsick to read or write in a moving vehicle, and even though in her generation it was a cardinal sin to turn on the dome light when someone was driving, she did both, and she scrawled it out in my book and later that night after I’d dropped her off, I started a shared file with her for our iPhone Notes app, and we’d add to that list over the next few days, ideas of our little book to-be, The Cheesecake Connoisseurs.

And I didn’t think anything more of it until I went flipping through the pages of that planner today, two years old now, my mama gone from me now almost four months.

The scrawl of my mama…it could have been mistaken for mine, just spread out sloppy on the page…but as I came to those two pages while flipping through my books, I remembered that weekend and, looking twice, I snapped a photo of that spread and set that book aside.

Because how precious was that weekend?

And how many weekends since had I watched my mama decline, losing more and more of her memory and her function, having more and more medical issues creep into her life until she had to give up living independently, moving into her precious cabin on our property, until one day she just slipped away to leave this earth and be with Jesus?

I didn’t know on our cheesecake weekend that I would very soon become my mama’s lifeline.

I didn’t know how quickly old age and underlying medical issues and dementia would take over a body and age a person so fast that the doctors could only chase down what was happening on any given day.

I didn’t know that we’d never have the chance to compare more cheesecake.

I didn’t know that less than two years after our cheesecake weekend she’d be gone.

It’s easy to take the cheesecake story and think the message is to just eat the cheesecake.

That is part of the sentiment, yes.

But what isn’t there is the journey between the cheesecake weekend and my mama leaving us.

How we celebrated her next birthday —her seventieth— on Kauai, her favorite place other than Alaska, with just her, me, and her granddaughters, one of whom was turning eighteen.

How that trip was so very special for her, for us all, and how she soaked up the sun on the island she’d come to love because of traveling with her Alaska family that she held so very precious.

Or how she came to immerse herself into a church family, feeling a sense of belonging she’d never felt in all her life amongst believers in Christ. She spoke of them as she spoke of family, remembering their names when sometimes she couldn’t even remember common words.

Or how she delighted in the fact that she was finally going to see her lifelong dream come true, owning her very own cabin in the woods…only it wasn’t going to be in the woods of Tennessee like she’d always imagined; it was going to be even better, her cabin in the woods was going to be in Alaska.

Or how she still got to work with children, her lifelong mission…serving as a volunteer, side-by-side with her family in the local 4-H program, altering her involvement each year to her capabilities, still always useful and helpful and always, always with a servant’s heart.

Or how she was brave and made new friends, even through her insecurities and anxieties, traveling by driver when she could no longer drive herself to the local senior center, forging bonds with her drivers and those she shared lunches and crafty afternoons with.

Or how our family adjusted our orbit to bring her into its swirling, always-going, fast-circling movement, and how she just rolled with it all, only asking for a strong elbow to walk her across the driveway in the dark to her abode 300 feet away.

There was so much in between.

So, yes.

Order the cheesecake.

Eat the cheesecake.

But write a book about it.

Write a book about the days and the weekends and the months and the years of you and your loved ones…and especially your mama.

Because one day, you’ll find her writing and you’ll smile.

You’ll remember what she once was.

When you were young, but when she was old.

You’ll remember.

You’ll remember her voice.

You’ll remember her writing.

You’ll remember the times you had with her.

The good, the bad, the hard, the challenging, the precious, the frustrating, the beautiful, the growing-up years, the growing-old years…

You’ll remember.

And you’ll miss her.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Psalm 139:16

When Your Mama Loves Your Writing…

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It’s a weird thing, this writing your mama’s obituary.

It’s not the writing it part that’s odd…the older I get, the more obituaries I’ve been honored to write. It always went without saying that I’d write hers too.

The writing it part was easy.

What’s strange is that her obituary is the first big thing I’ve written that she won’t read.

Aside from the volume of letters to my husband, and those embarrassing junior high journals that have long since gone up in ash, in my fifty-one years, my mother has read almost every single word I have written, and smiled and said, “I like that, honey.”

Because don’t our mamas love our words?

She taught me to talk, she taught me to wrap my chubby little fingers around a pencil and scratch out my letters, and then she taught me how to make those same letters into sounds and how to follow those sounds across a page and grow into someone who loves words and books and reading and stringing sentences together…

She always loved what I wrote.

In school, I’d ask her to review my research papers.

Once it became evident English and writing were going to be my jam, she’d have ME look over HER research papers as she pursued her teaching degree, and she loved the little comments and notations I’d scribble in the margins of her handwritten pages before she’d type it all up and print if off on our old dot matrix printer.

During my college classes, I’d read my pieces to her over the phone, and she’d offer suggestions and tidbits on what worked and what might be changed.

When my kids were young, I kept a family blog about our farm adventures and the growing up years.

She loved that little blog.

She’d tell her teacher friends about it and they’d follow our shenanigans, and she’d post sweet little comments on my page, even adopting one of my taglines: “It’s always an adventure!”

She’d pull our page up on her old computer in her classroom and let our soundtrack play on…those songs became her favorite.

We had a book we were going to write together: The Cheesecake Connoisseurs. We developed that plan on her 69th birthday, traveling to our favorite cabin and eating dinner at our favorite steakhouse where they served her up a complimentary slice of cheesecake with a birthday card, and we determined it was the best cheesecake we’d ever had as we gave it a restaurant-critic infused review, marveling at its creaminess and perfect amount of richness. We changed our tune the next day though, when lunch brought another slice of cheesecake, and we determined that that one might indeed be the best slice of cheesecake we’d ever enjoyed. On the two-hour trip home, we had the outline of our book hammered out in our shared iPhone notes, and a plan to travel around the country and do reviews of all the cheesecake we’d sample.

I might still write that one. We sure did love us some cheesecake.

She adored my book, Annie Spruce, not only because she and her dog Ribsy were such central figures in Annie’s story, but because that book gave her the opportunity to tell everyone she knew that ya knowwww, my daughter is a published author. She carried my little author cards around in her wallet, and one day I caught her passing one across the fabric cutting table to the nice lady at JoAnn Fabrics.

My mama was my biggest fan.

My mama believed in me and was proud of everything I did.

Well, maybe not always…we had some bumpy years along the way, but the thing about my mama is she never let the bumps ruin the ride.

She let the bumps be part of the journey and sometimes, oftentimes, we’d relive them and laugh.

Like the time we drove from Michigan to Alaska together, way back when her only daughter was moving four thousand miles away from her. We had one big fight, we almost killed my dog accidentally with his sedatives, we narrowly averted a tornado, and we nearly dropped the suspension on my Olds Achieva by not knowing how to navigate the frost heaves between Tok and Glennallen. She was miserable in all those moments and I’m sure she may have regretted her decision many times those six days to come along for the ride.

But do you know that over the next two and a half decades, every time we’d talk about that trip, we’d marvel at how HUGE the Canadian Rockies were to a couple flatlanders like us; how it was other worldly to encounter large game right alongside the highways; and we’d always, every single time, laugh about all those bumps and tears and frost heaves.

We were both better for having had that adventure.

These past several years have been full of bumps and heaves and some rocky road too, but to my mama, it was just part of her journey.

She smiled, she laughed, she may not have liked the road sometimes, but she was always along for the ride.

And always, she loved to read what I wrote.

As daughters, don’t the words of our mothers always linger in our ears and on our hearts?

Her eyes would tear up and she’d smile and say, “Yeah. I like that. I like that a lot, honey.”

So I read her obituary one more time this morning after it was published, drinking coffee from one of her favorite mugs, and I sat outside and told the LORD that I am thankful He is taking care of her now. That I am thankful her streets are no longer riddled with potholes but are gleaming and golden.

That I have so much peace she got to bypass all of the congested and ugly traffic jams she knew were just up the road and instead just had an easy exit and was Home.

And that even though she wouldn’t read what I had written about her this last time, that I hoped my words, and my life, and my time with her —bumps and all, that I hoped she knew that I was glad that all these years, I got to be along for the ride.

*

“Someday when the pages of my life end, I know that you will be one of the most beautiful chapters.” —Unknown

“This is the day that the LORD has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24
In honor of Poppy. 1954 – 2025

The Leveling

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I haven’t written since Beau.

At all.

Well, a couple bursts of Facebook posts here and there, but this is the first time I’ve come back to this place I love so much.

That horse did something to my heart.

It’s only been a month since he died but it seems like a year and then at night, when I wake up for my normal 3 a.m. insomnia check…it’s last week all over again.

As with any death I suppose, I think of “if only”. If only we would’ve caught it sooner. If only we would’ve known he was compromised. If only we would’ve…

And I go round and round and while I know a horse is a horse and not a human, I still grieve. We are still quiet when we speak of him.

But I know this:

Life is fragile and life is precious and sometimes life is too short. But life is a joy and a push and an embrace and sometimes you have to pause but you can never stop.

So I’m here.

I’m here and I’m yearning to write and my heart spills over now with words needing saying and letters needing typed, and this is where I want to be.

Because when God put a pen in the heart, there’s never any stopping it.

There might be a pause.

But today, again, I write.

A word-stringer might slow and her tears might flow, and her words might cease, and her heart might twist…

but after it all settles and that grief smooths some…

a writer will write.

My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king…Psalm 45:1

SCORRRRE!

2 Replies

You guys.

One of the hardest things I’ve found as an emerging author is promoting your story without sounding like you’re tooting your own horn.

Publishing is SO MUCH promotion and marketing and that is the area that is hard for me, timewise, and modesty wise.

I’ve just been content to let Annie’s story speak for itself without a lot of hubub from me.

And that is probably why I haven’t sold a lot of books. ❤

BUT.

This was in my inbox today.

I know you all love me and you love Annie too.

So I had to share:

Judge’s Commentary, 23rd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition

“Books are evaluated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “needs improvement” and 5 meaning “outstanding”. This scale is strictly to provide a point of reference, it is not a cumulative score and does not reflect ranking. Our system only recognizes numerals during this portion of logging evaluations. As a result, a “0” is used in place of “N/A” when the particular portion of the evaluation simply does not apply to the particular entry, based on the entry genre. For example, a book of poetry or a how to manual, would not necessarily have a “Plot and Story Appeal and may therefore receive a “0”.

Structure, Organization, and Pacing: 5

Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar: 5

Production Quality and Cover Design: 5

Plot and Story Appeal: 5

Character Appeal and Development: 5

Voice and Writing Style: 5

Judge’s Commentary*:

I found it surprising to read with so much interest about one dog, Barley, only to realize that this book focuses on another dog, Annie. The author skill in engaging the reader is that good! The family that adopts both dogs is clearly a dog family, people who understand that dogs are God’s creatures—the smartest and loyal creatures humans could ask for. So while Barley won my heart right off with his adamant chewing of all walls, wood and obstacles that prevented him from being on road trips with the family, Annie’s incredible stoicism and heart had me shaking my head in wonder. I like the author’s voice, for she knows how to introduce elements into a scene and transition from one moment to the next in such a way as to get the most impact. I was distressed that Barley was not tolerated by Annie when she became pregnant, but I loved what Rankin’s young son said about that. The author has a gift for finding exactly the right amount of tenderness or humor, oftentimes both, in the way she words her sentences. It was hard to read about Tessie/Annie’s owner being in jail and then reconnecting with the Rankin family and Annie without crying. There are dog people who will love this book, and it should be marketed in places where they will discover it.

-Judge, 23rd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards.

I don’t think I won the contest.

But this sure was good to read today.

It made me proud.

And I think it makes Annie pretty proud too.

Have a great weekend friends. I hope you receive some good news today too!

❤

One Hour and a Glass of Red – 100 Word Challenge

Get Used to It

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So I finished writing a little book yesterday.

Actually, I finished it back in October, but yesterday I finished finished it. I finished my edits and proofreading and cuts and adds and rewrote that dreaded twelfth chapter and I got it to the point where it’s finished enough that I’m excited for other eyeballs to see it.

That kind of finish.

If it’s going to go anywhere other than the top drawer of my filing cabinet, there will be more finishing I know. Little changes that I had completely missed in the editing were flying off the page and crash landing on my eyeballs last night in the printing.

So really, it’s not finished but…yesterday, in my mind, I finished my little book.

And it felt kinda weird.

Kinda sweet and sorrowful and fulfilling and grown up and juvenile… all at the same time.

Because who hasn’t wanted to write a book right?

Since high school I’ve wanted to write one. Since being married I’ve wanted to write one. Since moving to Alaska I’ve wanted to write one. Since being a mama I’ve wanted to write one. Since becoming a Christian I’ve wanted to write one. Since people tell me to I’ve wanted to write one and then doesn’t a woman just get busy in the days of growing and loving and raising up a life and a family?

But if you’re like me, having a mind that constantly yearns to write, you think in blank pages and the thoughts you think form in lines, sometimes tidy and sometimes flung but always, always that white page with words. It waits ready on the backdrop of the brain.

Even in the busy, the writing is always there.

My husband doesn’t share my love for words. The page in his brain has grids and lines and drawings and things solid. His page holds work and touch and nature, and reading is okay for a day or so…but let’s put the book down and get back to real life now.

He has a lot to say but he would probably never set out to write a book. His mind mixes the letters and mixes the words and writing me a card is a beautiful finish for his writing hand. Oh he’s smart. And he has a lot of words. He just likes to whisper them soft or laugh them together.

Not everyone knows how to organize and compartmentalize their words. Sometimes when you are one who puts down words, you forget, not everyone is. Sometimes words don’t always have to be written. Sometimes they just need to be lived.

So when he reads mine and doesn’t have a lot to say but his eyes water tender, I know that means the words I put down are good words. I know he loves them. I know he loves me.

And when the world wants to go and tear down a woman for doing marriage and life the way she believes best, haven’t we forgotten? Forgotten that sometimes, the way of this world, this culture, is not always the best way but that there’s a page and there’s a Word and it is compartmentalized and it is organized and it is grace…and it is good.

But we’ve taken those words and we’ve made them bad and we’ve used them to stifle and degrade and make ugly what He wrote beautiful when He said For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

How could that ever be oppressive? How could the beauty of two souls uniting in flesh and being seen as one unit of two individuals before the maker of this universe ever be scorn worthy?

Or is it the submit part that causes the ruckus?

Maybe this one: Everyone must submit to governing authorities. Can’t we agree though, that there needs to be submission to the authorities? Don’t we appreciate the organized and compartmentalized word of the speed limit that keeps, if not all of us, most of us, traveling along safely together and collision free?

Or maybe it’s this one that causes all the trouble: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Is it because we think the other person should be doing it all that this one offends? Any person married more than a year understands that marriage is a two-way street. There is no My Way or the Highway in a healthy marriage. There just can’t be. So why would we have such a hard time with the idea of submitting to one another?

Maybe those aren’t the submission verses that get everyone in a twist and make normally nice people turn into name-calling, mud-slinging opinion ranters.

I betcha it’s this one: Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.

Ah, yes. There’s the issue.

We women don’t like to hear that we’re not the boss. That we don’t wear the pants. That we don’t keep him on a short string. That our roar isn’t as loud as we think it is, that our You’ve Come a Long Way baby might mean something different than what we want it to mean. We might not even know exactly what it means, but we don’t.like.the.word.s-u-b-m-i-t.

Period.

One little word will get this nation in an uproar.

So what if I didn’t? Submit. What if I didn’t voluntarily place myself under the leadership of my husband? What if I didn’t want to play by the rules and I wanted to scorn those women who read the words and love the Word and are an example to this world of how to live it out?

What if instead of letting my team captain be the team captain and my coach be the coach, what if I went gang busters unsubmissive and decided I didn’t want to do MY job of being on the team and building up the team and leading the team right from where I was positioned? What would happen then?

Submitting doesn’t mean we’re just sitting on the bench, folks.

And us Christians? Those of us who follow what the Bible says about marriage right there all through the New Testament? We understand that if it’s not your belief too, you won’t understand what it means to be on this team and so you’re certainly not going to follow the Playbook. But we don’t hold it against you, because really, we look forward to the day when you’re on our team too. We want you on our team. We love the coach and we know how much he loves you and spends this season recruiting you as one of his best players.

But if you decide in your mind that the game’s just that, a game, a made up bunch of scrimmages, well, that’s okay. Because we’re gonna keep at it anyway. We’re gonna run the race and we’re gonna play the plays and we’re gonna use it all up for that coach and our team because it’s not just a game.

And those husbands he puts on our team? Those leaders he gives us, each wife her own team captain? Guess what their job is?

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

There’s a whole lot of words in that job description. But we forget that part sometimes don’t we? The coach tells husbands to be just like Jesus. And what did Jesus do for his church? He died. He thought so much of his bride that He made himself little and he died for her in order to make her beautiful and blemish-free.

I can get behind a leader like that can’t you?

Wives, our husbands are the team captain, the lead player, the ball kicker and the quarter back of the family. If the team is going to take a hit, he’s to be the one to take it. If someone’s body is to be bruised, he’s the one to withstand it. He’s to take his big and his strong and make sure his team is safe and able to play well and that they’re all doing what the coach wants them to do.

And as his woman, we’re to be right there beside him. Running with him, ready to take over a play should he need a rest, willing to take the field should the team need it, helping him determine exactly what it is the coach said, and always, always to be a cheerleader and encourager to him and the rest of the family team.

That’s submit. Simple. Not ugly. Not oppressive. Not door mat. It’s the breakdown of the team and everyone has a job and when everyone’s doing that job it’s like a dance on the field and it makes sense and it works. It works because the words in the Word says it will work.

And when my husband, my non-word loving husband who has come to cherish the words of his coach and has come to quietly love the words his wife puts down and call her his wordsmith in secret, when he hears that the little book I’ve been working so hard on all these months is finally finished, he has some words for me.

He tells me congratulations.

He pauses and picks them carefully. He knows this is a time for some words. He has learned that a writer heart needs more than “fine” and “good” and that when a piece of that heart is splayed open out there on the page, a soul can squirm until it hears just the words it needs to know that it really is finished. He has learned to put his words together and whisper what his word lover needs to hear.

“How does it feel honey?”

I tell him the feeling is odd, finishing something you always wanted to do. Taking paths different than the ones you originally thought you’d take. Having it be done.

“It’s a weird feeling, finishing a book” I tell him, ready now to move it off the desk and get on with the day and just let it sit awhile, this heart still a little squirmy and insecure with the idea of feeling like a writer, doubtful at the thought of maybe even being a writer.

He’s not done with his words though. He’s the captain and now he’s the cheerleader and he may not love words like I love words but he loves his wordsmith and he knows his job is to help make her feel radiant and make her be radiant so he simply says “Well babe,”

“…You better get used to it.”

I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. Song of Songs 6:3

OCTOBER 2013 012

Scriptures cited: Genesis 2:24, (Romans 13:1-2) (Ephesians 5:21) Ephesians 5:22-24 Ephesians 5:25-28

Cassandra Rankin

Life is Messy and Things Aren't Always Little on this Crazy Little Farm

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