You Like Me, You Really Like Me!

Ok, I wanted to slap Sally Fields when I first heard her say that years ago, so if you feel the same way about me, it’s all good. That said, I was bestowed with my very first ever, and who knows maybe the last, award! Yippee, go me! Sarah, who writes one of my fave blogs over at http://thegoodgirls.blogspot.com/, had a lapse in good taste and gave me this wonderful award. I accepted before she could change her mind. Yeah, me again! Sarah, you are the best and I sincerely thank you for this vote of confidence. I won’t let you down. Well, actually I will eventually, so deal with it.

The catch for this award is to tell seven things about me that people may not know. (I am not sure if they have to be true statements but that never stopped me before), so here goes:

1. I have seven children, three birth and four adopted. I cannot, however, remember which are which.

2. I took three years of piano and can only play one song … and not very well … at all.

3. I took three years of Spanish, got straight A’s and still cannot speak a word of Spanish to this very day. Do you see a pattern here?

4. I have been known to jump off the roof into the swimming pool in my younger years. I have since developed brains.

5. I love public speaking which is one of the top ten fears of most normal people. Keyword: normal.

6. I love to cook and host parties. I am especially entertaining after approximately 3 ounces of red wine.

7. I do not want to be rich or famous but I do want to write a book that others will read and beg for more. I suppose, I just want to be heard. I guess it really is all about me!

Now comes the hard part, passing this award to another deserving writer. There are so many great writers out there that choosing just one is not easy. I guess the best way to do this is to just do it….so, after much deliberation and 3 ounces of red wine, the new owner of this fabulous award is Monkey Man who writes a deep, funny, moving, thought-provoking, great blog over at http://petzoldspracticalprose.blogspot.com/. Be sure to check out his site. You’ll be glad you did. Congrats to you, Monkey Man!

Vomitus Enufftus Alreadycus

I was trying to remember how to say, “stop puking already” in Latin then I remembered, I don’t speak Latin. I was just sure with all the years I sat in the pews of Saint Helen’s, I would be able to speak Latin. Now that I think about it though, I am pretty sure Father Kelley never mentioned barfing, even in Latin.

I had a long conversation with my little sister yesterday. She has started her next round of chemo. I think that makes for round 13,471 or something pretty close to that. Seriously, the woman is amazing. I would have been dead ten years ago from just thinking about what they were going to put me through. Not her. She is rough, tough, mean and determined. When they told her people don’t survive long from this rare form of cancer, I could see, “Oh yeah! Just watch me!” all over her. She’ll do it just to tick them off. No, seriously! That’s one of the things I like about her. She’s a rebel.

So anyway, seems she decided to “change up” the way she was told to do her chemo, the way she has done her chemo successfully for the last few years, the way she KNOWS she is suppose to continue doing her chemo. That change sent her into what she described as “Exorcist vomiting”. Lovely mental picture, don’t you think? She was crying and wailing about being miserable, wanting to die, wanting mom, who is dead by the way, and other uplifting comments along those lines. Me being … well, me, I quickly sized up this animal and grabbed it by its gnarled horns.

“Listen up. If you were with mom you would be dead, get it. I can’t do another dead relative so soon, so knock it off. I need at least a year between dead people. One other thing, Einstein. YOU made this happen. Stop pretending you’re a doctor and messing with your chemo. Jut because you watch General Hospital doesn’t mean you can really write your own prescriptions, knucklehead. Take your chemo, in order given, by your doctor! Got it?”

That seemed to calm her down a little. Then, when I told her I had fallen and have a black eye and broken glasses, she really cheered up. When I told her I thought maybe the spirit of Dad … no, I don’t really believe in ghosts … had pushed me down because when I fell, I thought I heard my Dad say, “Blog about this and see how YOU like it!”, she laughed so hard she almost felt healed. Amazing how a knock upside the head seems to work miracles in our family.

Now, about fasting. I have a confession, sort of. We went to the show last night and I did eat popcorn. The great thing is, I felt ok because I did fast from dinner and spent that time seeking wisdom as I have determined to do. I can be such a black and white person that I often hold myself to very rigid rules. Then when I fail, as most people who are rigid with themselves do, I feel miserable and stupid and like a complete failure. Not last night. I felt great! I have gone three full days fasting from dinner and seeking the Lord regarding what He would have me do with my life, which is His. I can’t wait for what’s next!

Notes To Self When Fasting

~ Do not go grocery shopping at 5:45 pm at a SuperCenter Wal Mart. Even the dog food aisle is not safe.

~ Do remember dryer lint, even when it is pink, does not taste like cotton candy.

~ Do not bite people’s heads off just because you think you are hungry. That is cannibalism, which is highly frowned upon in Oklahoma.

~ Do remember why you are fasting in the first place which was …

~ Do not hope you will at least drop 30 pounds this week. That is not why you are doing this.

~ Do not waste time arguing with yourself. That only proves your sisters are right and you really are crazy.

~ Do remember to be thankful for all the valuable lessons you are learning from this experience, like learning to trust God with the details of life.

Food For Thought

I have a black eye. No, Bob did not hit me although I am sure, after living with me for thirty-three years, it has crossed his mind a time or two. Believe it or not, I ran into a wall. Isn't that what they all say? Seriously, I did. It was about midnight and everyone had gone to bed. I was locking doors, checking the fireplace and listening to my stomach growl. As usual, my mind was running a million miles a minute as I walked down the hall. Somehow, I managed to forget how to walk, tripped over my own clodhoppers and fell face first into the wall. I broke my glasses, bruised my hands and knees and got a black eye. My parents must be so proud of me right about now!

Now about the fast. Yesterday was much easier than I thought it would be. I did have an "aha" moment however. For breakfast I had two eggs, toast and coffee, yogurt for a snack and a sandwich for lunch. No, I did not eat a 12 inch Subway sandwich, just a normal, homegrown kind of sandwich at my kitchen table. Later that evening, I made a great dinner for the family and even sat down and had coffee with them while they ate dessert. It really wasn't hard at all.

Like I said, I had an "aha" moment earlier in the day that put things in perspective for me. About three in the afternoon, as I was planning out dinner, I started to stress a bit over not eating with the family. Monday nights are family night with the girls and grandkids. How was I going to not eat? That's when it hit me like a lightening bolt. My breakfast and lunch added up nutritionally in one day to more than billions of people get in an entire week. All of a sudden, not eating dinner felt like a simple sacrifice to gain this new understanding. Thanks, God!

Do you mind if I talk about eating for a minute? Eating, for me, is about more than feeding my body. Eating means love. That sounds really bizarre but it is the truth. In my family, people did not say, “I love you” when I was growing up. They did love you but you just had to figure that out for yourself. You had a nice house to live in, toys to play with, private school, new clothes, vacations and food. What more did you need? Well, I needed to hear it. I love you. Would it have killed you people to say it once in awhile? I think I may be slipping into the anger stage of grief again.

So what does this have to do with my torrid affair with food? Food meant happiness, love, good times, laughing, and family. My mother loved to cook. No wait. I think my mother really liked to cook. What she loved, was feeding people. My aunts were the same way. They could have just told you to go to hell, but then they were going to make you sit and feed you until you were ready to explode. I guess being forced into a food induced stupor made you forget you were sentenced to hell per your aunt’s request. Many of my favorite childhood memories are of sitting under the table with my cousins and sister at my parent’s home or at one of my aunts homes, listening to the adults argue and curse at one another, as an aunt or uncle slipped another piece of salami to the bottom dwellers.

It only got worse as I got older. When my heart was breaking, my mother fed me pie. When I was angry, she took me out to lunch. When I was a major disappointment to her, she wouldn’t speak to me for weeks. She would however show up at my house with ten bags of groceries including ding dongs, frosted flakes and ice cream. She may not have liked me, blankedy blank blank, but she sure as hell was going to make sure I ate. Does this make my family sound like evil, hard people? Well, they weren’t. They were the best. They were everything I am and more. They even learned to actually say I love you in later years.

I am hoping and praying I will learn a lot this week from fasting. I am hoping I will care more for the hungry people of this world. I am hoping I will learn to feed my own soul in some new ways. I am hoping for no more black eyes. A person can hope ~

50 Ways To Be A Good Neighbor

Here is the full list, just to keep me honest.


1. Fast for the 2 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.

2. Contact your local crisis pregnancy center and invite a pregnant woman to live with your family.

3. Ask your pastor if someone on your church’s sick list would like a visit.

4. Join an open AA meeting and befriend someone there.

5. Adopt a child.

6. Mow your neighbor’s grass.

7. Volunteer to tutor a kid at your local elementary school. (Try to get to know the kid’s family.)

8. Grow your own tomatoes–and share them.

9. Ask a small group in your community to meet regularly for intercessory prayer.

10. Build a wheel chair ramp for someone who is homebound.

11. Read the newspaper to someone at your local nursing home.

12. Plant a tree.

13. Look up the closest registered sex offender in your neighborhood and try to befriend him.

14. Throw a birthday party for a prostitute.

15. When you pay your water bill, pay your neighbor’s too (they’ll let you… really).

16. Invest money in a micro-lending bank.

17. Ask the next person who asks you to spare some change to join you for dinner.

18. Leave a random tip for someone who’s cleaning the streets or a public restroom.

19. Write one CEO a month this year. Affirm or critique the ethics of their company (you may need to do a little research first).

20. Start tithing (giving 10%) of all your income directly to the poor.

21. Connect with a group of migrant workers or farmers who grow your food and visit their farm. Maybe even pick some veggies with them. Ask what they get paid.

22. Give your winter coat away to someone who is colder than you and go to a thrift store to get a new one.

23. Write only paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or who you should say “I’m sorry” to.

24. Go TV free for a year. Or turn your TV into a pot where flowers grow.

25. Laugh at advertisements, especially ones that teach you that you can buy happiness.

26. Organize a prayer vigil for peace outside a weapons manufacturer such as Lockheed Martin. Read the Sermon on the Mount out loud. For extra credit, do it every week for a year.

27. Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.

28. Write to one social justice organizer or leader each month just to encourage them.

29. Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of the clothing being sold.

30. Experiment with creation-care by going fuel free for a week – ride a bike, carpool, or walk.

31. Try only reading books written by females or people of color for a year.

32. Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don´t get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read the bible together, or play board games.

33. Track to its source one item of food you eat regularly. Then, each time you eat that food, pray for those folks who helped make it possible for you to eat it.

34. Create a Jubilee fund in your Church congregation, matching dollar for dollar every dollar you spend internally with a dollar externally. If you have a building fund, create a fund to match it to give away and by mosquito nets or dig wells for folks dying in poverty.

35. Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.

36. Give your car away to a stranger.

37. Convert your car to run off waste vegetable oil.

38. Try recycling your water from the washer or sink to flush your toilet. Remember the 1.2 billion folks who don´t have clean water.

39. Wash your clothes by hand, or dry them by hanging to remember those without electricity or running water. Remember the 1.6 billion people who do not have electricity.

40. Buy only used clothes for a year.

41. Cover up all brand names, or at least the ones that do not reflect the upside-down economics of God’s Kingdom. Commit to only being branded by the cross.

42. Learn to sew or start making your own clothes to remember the invisible faces behind what we wear. Take your kids to pick cotton so they can see what that is like (and then read James).

43. Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week to remember those who do that for most of their life (take a multivitamin). Remember the 30,000 people who die each day of poverty and malnutrition.

44. Begin creating a scholarship fund so that for every one of your own children you send to college you can create a scholarship for an at-risk youth. Get to know their family and learn from each other.

45. Visit a worship service where you will be a minority. Invite someone to dinner at your house or have dinner with someone there if they invite you.

46. Help your church congregation create a Peacemaker Scholarship and give it away to a young person trying to avoid the economic draft, who would like to go to college but sees no other way than the military.

47. Eat with someone who does not look like you. Learn from them.

48. Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask them to pray for you.

49. Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back and eat or sleep in the shelter and allow yourself to be served.

50. Join a Yokefellows ministry at a prison close to you. Remember that Jesus said he would meet you there (Matt. 25).

List Authors: Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Hartgrove

Week One vs Weak One

Well, I haven’t even started and already the drama has begun. Seems my husband is in major freak out mode. He is just positive I am going to do something stupid and get myself capped in the ass. Thanks for having faith in me, honey.

In the spirit of fairness, I will admit to having done a few things, ok, more than a few, in the past that made him go, “Hmmmm?” Like the time he came home and I had moved a woman and her baby into our house. We didn’t really know them but her “husband” was beating her up and she had nowhere to go. I was pretty sure my husband wouldn’t beat me up, even for moving a stranger and her baby into our house without asking. Then there was the time I picked up the homeless guy and brought him to our house. In my defense, it was raining, the guy was cold and hungry and I really felt in my heart it was what I was suppose to do. It’s not like I let him move in.

Anyway, we went to bed less than snuggly last night. I believe my last words to him were, “I said I won’t do the stupid list, so drop it already will ya!!!!” Well, I lied. I have to do this stupid list. I can’t really explain it but I just have to. So sue me for divorce. I won’t fight you. Just remember, you get everything … including all seven kids.

Now about the list. I fretted all weekend over this. You would think I was having brain surgery. Maybe, in some weird way, I am. That’s my hope anyway. That by doing this list, something in my brain will change and you know what they say. The brain bones connected to the heart bone … or something like that. I played mind games with myself all weekend about where to start, what I could get out of without you knowing and other devious ploys. Here is what I decided. First, I am posting the list so you will know if I am cheating myself out of one of the opportunities to change. Please feel free to smack me if I even try this. Second, I am going to start at the beginning and go down the line as much as is humanly possible. I may not do every one exactly to the letter of the law however I will do what the Spirit of it intends. Ready? Set? Then let’s go!

1. Fast for the 2 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.

Here is how this is going to work. I am going to fast every night for a week. This means nothing to eat after lunch. No dinner, no snacks, no nothing but water or tea. No, I am not going to carb load from morning until noon. Ok, the thought had occurred to me but I decided to be honest. I’ll also put $5 into a jar for every meal I fast from. I know this will only be $35 at the end of a week but I plan on doing something crazy with that money. Something that hopefully will make a difference for someone. More on that later. In the evenings, when I would normally be eating or snacking on popcorn with the family, my goal is to be praying and searching for how I can make a difference for those that are hungry.

My mom use to get so mad at me for doing these kinds of things. She was always telling me, “Marla, you can’t change the world.” I found out she is right, I can’t. But I learned I can change the world for one person at a time, if I try.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:10

One Order Of Crazy, Coming Right Up

Yesterday, as my sisters, family and friends, gathered in California to bury my dad, I got ready to go out and listen to GUM, a great band and one of my new favorites. Right before I left last night, I got a call from Char and Kelly. I was told how hard it was not having me there and that they really had needed me to be there. I sort of went ballistic, letting them know they didn’t get to say that to me. I really am evil, I’m afraid.

I use to be a nice person. I think I was anyway. Maybe not. Anyway, I am pretty sure I have changed, and not for the better, since my dad died. I can go from teary-eyed to raging lunatic in under sixty seconds. God, help those who have contact with me in the days to come and please heal those who have been so unfortunate as to have crossed my path in the last few weeks. I need some serious penance to happen.

A week ago, I received an amazing posting on my Facebook page. It was about fifty ways to love your neighbor. It came from XXXChurch, which has an awesome ministry to the porn community. For those of you who are still reading after that bit of information, let me explain. This church doesn’t judge people, they love them right where they are. What a concept! I know it is radical and crazy and probably a bit dangerous but I like it. I am ready for real. Real people, real life, real experiences with a real God. Is that asking too much?

So, here is the deal. I don’t want to write about dead people forever. I can’t promise that I will never write about dead people again because I probably will now and then but I am ready to move on to breathing people. It’s still about butts and ashes, loving people from end to end. Just breathing ones, for now anyway.

I am going to go through all fifty ways to love your neighbor, one a week for the next year, with two freebies obviously. My plan is to actually DO each thing suggested. It won’t be easy, I am scared and I may fail miserably. But what if I don’t? What if I actually make it through this ridiculously crazy list of fifty freeing, bizarre ideas? Will it change me? I can only hope!

Why do I really want to do this? I have asked myself that, repeatedly. Here is all I can come up with:

~ I need to make a difference in this world and it has to be with something that matters in the long run.

~ I want to leave my children something of value when I die. Since there won’t be any money, I figure acts of integrity in Jesus' name might work for something.

~ Crazy seems to make sense to me. Are you surprised?

Last night, at the concert, there was a little gal drawing henna designs on people. She gives the money she makes to the poor of this world. I sat and watched her and thought, “Why not?”

This is Chinese for courage. That's what I was told anyway.

I hope it doesn't actually mean crazy and yet I wouldn't be completely shocked.

If any of this interests you, check back on Monday. That's when I will be attempting the first way to love my neighbor. One order of crazy, coming right up ...