A love letter

To my home...

Ten years ago my our world changed.  My fractured little family ceased to exist as I knew it.  Divorce is a wound that you think will eventually heal but, like most scars, you can still feel the echo of the pain many years later.  As divorces go, ours was amicable.  We supported each other, to the best of our abilities, and vowed to remain friends.  Many things would test that friendship.  Many.  The months that followed are something of a blur for me now but there was a great deal of rebuilding to be done.  I had allowed myself to get so lost that I didn't know where to start.  More loss would eventually bring us home, to Texas, to live with my parents.  After eleven years of living away from my family, coming home was as close to a sanctuary as anything could be.  My children remember those early days well.  It was exciting.  Trial and error being what it is, more tests would come.  College (again). Another marriage.  A pregnancy.  Another divorce while just six weeks pregnant.  New heartache.  New life.  New love.  A renewed love.  And a house.  This house.  Larry and I remarried here in the family room of this house that we live in now, that we are about to say good-bye to.  In the time that we have been here we have built a life together that we never knew we could have before.  That friendship that had been so tested grew into a great, great love.  These walls have comforted and amused and protected and sanctified our family in ways that we may not yet realize.

As I walk through each room I see so many moments.  Overflowing with memories and laughter.  Kids everywhere.  Family dinners.  Christmas.  Thanksgiving with my entire family spread across the kitchen, dining area and family room.  Birthday parties with magicians and princesses.  Sick children cuddled up in our room.  Lots of firsts...bicycles, baseball, lost teeth, wins and losses, birthdays, holidays, and so many nothing days that meant more than all of the holidays combined.  It was in those nothing days that our family thrived.

There were trying times as well, of course, but being home always made those times better.  We are taught a lot about making our homes sanctuaries...protection from outside influence...the place you want to be.  Without any real thought this house has become that.  Our children want to be here.  Their friends want to be here.  Family members want to be here.  It is a home that, in my opinion, is so filled with love that you can feel it when you are here.  I know it's not the walls or the roof or the structure that have created that.  It's the people that have filled this home with memories.  I also know that it is a feeling that will come in our new home.  But for this moment, as we pack up boxes and take down pictures and host one last holiday, I want to say thank you.  Thank you to a home that has provided love and stability.  I will forever be grateful for all the life that has been lived here and for the family that we are because of it.

A new young family will move in here and will, I hope, find the same love that we have.  I see their children playing and laughing, new memories, holidays and their own family gatherings.  May this home be for you what it has been for us.

Paula Deen and Russian law

I grew up in the deep South.  (generally speaking...we moved a lot) I am not ignorant to the racism that existed when I was a child and the racism that exists to this day.  I am sure that there is a whole lot more to this story than we are getting but all I can say is "Honey HUSH!" What in the world could she have said that would warrant all of this?  Even the publisher?  You'd think she fried small children or something.  Racism is and has always been a plague of ignorance.  We do what we know and was done before us.  I never considered myself a racist but I do remember a rather embarrassing moment at a dance a hundred years ago when a wonderful young black man asked me to dance.  I said yes...and then I didn't know what to do with myself.  I was nervous.  I ashamed to admit that but I was.  It was something I knew nothing about.  Racism in the deep South is categorically different than anywhere else in the country.  Family feuds and ancestral agendas have fueled ongoing racism and will likely never end.  Unless we can change the dialogue.  I don't know how nor do I pretend to but why are we skewering Paula Deen?

Meanwhile in another part of the world, leaders have decided to make being gay illegal.
Russia passes anti gay legislation

I know that I have had a lot to say on this subject as of late and all I can say is that it has really struck an emotional chord with me.  Like I said...I have no idea whatsoever what determines a person's sexual preference.  I can't begin to debate the science or the religion of it.  I can read things like THIS
and understand that mother's perspective.  I even understand how she got to the place she was in, believing that she was doing what God would want her to do.  I recently watched a documentary about Chely Wright that had an impact on me.  This girl knew who she was.  She kept it hidden and the thing she said that got me was that she hadn't come out for herself...she came out "for the 14 year old boy sitting on the edge of his bed with a pistol in his mouth".  Then I had to decide how I would feel if homosexuality might be addressed at school in a way that allowed kids to feel the freedom to be themselves and not hide.  Would I want my kids taught that it is totally normal to have feelings for people of the same sex?  My instinct is to say that I would not, that I would fear for the life that child would be signing himself up for.  I would be afraid of what others would do to him or her that would tear them down.  We are still killing each other over this same debate in 2013 with hate crimes still rampant.  Hate.  What is the opposite of hate?  Well, clearly it's love and if we walk the religious path then we can say that God is love too which can only mean that God loves us no matter what...and expects us to do the same.  Like the deal with Ms Paula Deen, I am confident that there is more to the story than I will ever know.  I hope that I can look at each of my children, and farther than that to their friends...and know that I would not flinch.  I don't need to understand all to get that my job is simply to love...unconditionally and without fear.  There was a time when I was too afraid of what people thought to allow myself that luxury.  In a time when we have children without families, families without homes, bellies without food, countries without freedom, I cannot understand why we still want to promote and sanctify hate.  If you don't want to understand, ok...but admit that you don't and move on.  If you think that your family will never be touched by the epidemic of hate that goes along with homosexuality then you are incredibly naive.  I know what I believe God says about families and about being gay but if you look to your scriptures you will find a whole lot more written about love than any other subject.  Why am I so tuned in to this discussion lately you wonder...I am not sure.  I will let you know when I do.  What I  can tell you is that every single person on the planet today, yesterday and tomorrow is endowed with the divine right to be loved.  Who are we to deny that?

In less important news...I am turning 40.  "When?"..."Someday".  (name that movie)