The devastation that suicide leaves behind is tremendous. Loved ones are wracked with guilt, and wondering “Why? Why didn’t I see this coming?” In the case of someone who suicided out of anger, the emotional trauma is even worse to loved ones left behind, because the person wanted to punish them. They’re already going to wonder what they could have done, or think that the event was their fault. Reading an angry note left behind saying “This is all your fault” just makes the situation even more painful, and it’s cruel.

My great-grandfather committed suicide in 1920, I think it was. Upon doing more research, I discovered the reason. He had fallen off a windmill a year earlier. His physical pain must have been tremendous. There was no pain management in those days. He checked out because he could no longer endure the pain. He was found hanging in the barn by a grandchild. This is the problem with the aftermath of suicide. Someone has to find the the deceased. Someone has to suffer the trauma of  being the first person on the scene and seeing the results of the person’s final act.  Physical pain drives many people to end their lives. So does emotional pain.

When someone comes home from battle, and the war is always with them, they see their present world through the glasses of their former world, the war. They have learned behavior to  cope with the danger they were formerly in. Upon hearing a loud noise, some people may dive to the floor. Others many grab for a weapon, any weapon to save themselves. However, upon returning home, the responses that may very well have saved  a person’s life  in war will hinder  their functioning back at home. The self preserving behavior that was formerly so useful has now got to be unlearned. The problem is that by now, the behavior is second nature. It’s unconscious. When the person says “I can’t control it, it just happens, ” he or she is being honest. What few people tell them is that with a lot of work, a lot of the innate behavior can be unlearned and weeded out. It won’t happen overnight. This much I can tell you from personal experience. I have never been to war. I do have PTSD from a painful childhood ruled over by an angry authoritarian father.

It wasn’t unusual  for my sister and I to be awakened at 2 in the morning because Dad had found a speck on a fork or a plate. Dad would burst through our bedroom door screaming at the top of his lungs, and the next thing we knew, my sister and I would be standing sleepily at the sink cleaning every dish and piece of silverware in the house.  To this day I startle at the least bit of noise, and it wears me out when I’m in a situation where I am constantly exposed to unexpected noise.   Dad is long gone, but my body is still waiting for him to come screaming through the door.

This is just one of my PTSD reactions. Let’s continue about PTSD in a military person returned from war. The person suffering will relive the horrors of the things they saw. He or she will constantly find themselves reliving events long past. The current reality fades and they are once again in a convoy, fighting for their lives, seeing, smelling and hearing death. How can you not be tormented by watching your buddy die? Or seeing dead civilians or children?  Or they’ll be fine and suddenly read or hear about someone in the same exact place or situation that they were in, and the war comes back to them. Thoughts and feelings run the gamut to “It could have been me, Why wasn’t it me?” to “Why am I here when my buddy isn’t? ” The person may feel that they don’t deserve to be alive. Not many professionals know how to deal with PTSD. Few people who have not been to war understand what it’s like to still be living in a war you’re no longer fighting, except, yes, you are still fighting it. You’re fighting it in your head, and you need help getting the war out of your head and moving on.

Physical pain from illnesses or accidents, are easier to deal with than they were in 1920, but even now some people come to the point where the pain has taken over their very being and they can get no relief.  Some people may look ahead to where they see that their disease is going to progress to, and not be willing to get to that point in their lives. They want to spare themselves the indignity of helplessness and unbearable pain down the line and spare their families from the stress of care taking.

Depression is an insidious disease that often leads to suicide. The feelings of emotional pain become too much to bear. The toll of day after day of being immobilized by emotional pain and bombarding one’s self with thoughts of things like : “I’ll never get better, I’m worthless, I’m stupid, I hate myself/everyone hates me” become too much in the sufferer’s opinion to bear any longer. Depression is also acerbated by a person not forgiving themselves for mistakes, major or minor and moving on. They may try therapy and not like the therapist and decide after looking for others that therapy isn’t for them. If I could say anything I would say “If you’ve found ten that haven’t worked, keep trying. There’s more than just ten people in the profession.”

The person may feel worthless or in the way, and all the evidence the person sees only backs up the person’s warped view of reality.

In my case I often think that the lives of those around me would be easier if I wasn’t here, because I often feel that all I do is take up space, cost money and distract people who do enjoy life from living their lives. I often feel like I’m in the way and that I do not belong here. I watch people around me live their lives and I feel like I’m looking through a window. I get so frustrated with myself because it seems like I am constantly failing. How hard is it to keep a house clean? It shouldn’t be that hard. Apparently for me it is. And so I let this failure help me define my self worth. I’m told that’s wrong.

I   used to be horrified at the thought of suicide and felt bad for the survivors. I still feel bad for the people that are left behind and are hurting because they lost a loved one. Unfortunately,as of late I have began to understand why the person who took his or her own life did so, and I can no longer criticize them for their choice. Some times I’m almost envious. And this is what bothers me. So far what has kept me has been my fear of pain and dying and not wanting to cause my husband pain. I hope that this will continue to be the thing that holds me back. In the meantime, my prayers are with everyone who suffers from emotional pain, or mental illness of any kind.

   My family, like many had estrangements, divorces and the like. I had three siblings at my wedding, but only had two come. The other one was too far away It’s a shame. It would have been the only time since I was a toddler that my mother would have had all four of her children together.  The next time we four were together was when my oldest sister was dying.

   I was  denied the presence of a niece and nephew because my sister was separated from her husband and they were with him. He refused to let them come. That did cause me pain. I adored them.

 But, let’s move on. At the time, I had not seen my dad’s brother and sister in five years, since my grandmother died. I greatly loved my aunt and uncle. I knew that Dad was NOT speaking to his brother and there had almost been legal action between them. I actually have the letters passed between lawyers in which they threatened each other.

   As far as I was concerned, this did NOT affect me. I heard that later, my dad had glumly said when he found out that his brother had been invited was “It’s HER wedding. She can invite whoever she wants.”

   Graciously, my aunt and uncle and their spouses came. Two cousins came as well. I was thrilled. My dad’s branch of the family was willing to be there because I wanted them there despite the bad blood between my dad and uncle.

To this day, I am touched. It was a big thing to have them there, and they did NOT disappoint me.

 Another person I invited was my sister in law, who was divorced from my brother. I loved my brother, but I also loved my sister in law.

I wanted her there. So I invited her. My parents had wanted her there, too. So, she came, with my niece and nephew in tow. I was thrilled that she had thought enough of me to come despite being divorced from my brother.

  Twenty-seven years later, I have begun to realize the unusualness of people going to a wedding knowing that their ex spouses or estranged family members were also invited.

   This year is a sad year. My husband and I are not together this day.

His father passed away this week, and my husband has gone back home for the memorial service. While I am sad that we didn’t celebrate our anniversary today, I know that he is where he needs to be.

Because of his military career, there haven’t been many anniversaries that we have had together. In recent years, we’ve been fortunate.

Today, I am torn. I miss my husband, but I am sad about my father in law. He had Alzheimer’s. In his last years, we had a special bond, and even when he was out of it most of the time, when he did come to, he would say one thing to my husband when he would fly to California and visit his dad in the nursing home : “Tell Judy that I love her.”

By then, I am sure that he had no idea about the events that had transpired to make us close, but one thing he DID know. He loved me. Because of this, he made sure my husband knew and told me.

 In the end, isn’t that what life is about? Love?

My life has had lots of pain where family is involved. But one thing I do know. I have family members that love me enough that they overlooked resentments, childish behavior and wrong doing to be at my wedding for me. This is what stands out to me the most of all.

  May I live up to their example.

  I’ve drawn on some of my friends more than others. If you recognize yourself, you may very well be right. But let’s get to my topic:

                   Things Of This World:

This refers to something that can’t POSSIBLY be of God. If something is Of The World, you don’t want it. It leads to hell.

 The worst things “Of The World” always lead to fornication…which is the worse sin next to the unpardonable sin.  Nobody knows what the unpardonable sin actually is. But fornication is it’s runner up. Fornication is a scar that follows you for the rest of your life. You can be forgiven by God and Saved, By Grace, but you won’t be pure.

 . You can’t change your status. You are either a Godless fornicator, or a “Forgiven” ex-fornicator. That’s why it follows you. You can’t escape the word.  It’s just how it is. You’ll be loved by your fellow Christians if you’ve repented, but they’ll remember that you’re not pure. What category they personally fall in is neither here nor there. It’s YOU they’re concerned with.  They’ll conveniently forget the forgiven part if you date their son or daughter unless they are Liberals. Liberals think they are Christians. They’re not because they don’t believe in the devil, sin, or hell. Because they don’t believe in hell, that’s where they’re going. But here is the list of what leads to fornication and hell.

A. Psychology

. Psychology, along with Movies, Dancing and Rock makes the top four on the “Of The World” list. Psychology ranks up there with much of the faithful to be possibly more dangerous than drug addiction. See movies for clarification as to which sends you to hell faster.

B . Movies

Movies are definitely of the world. We learn many of our bad habits from movies and psychologists. Movies are, however more fun because attending them is considered downright sinful. They can lead to fornication. Psychology isn’t as much fun and it costs more. You’re more likely to be prayed for because you are “misguided”. It won’t send you to hell. At least not right away. It takes a while for psychology to send you to Hell. It’s not an instantaneous process. It takes a while for the doctor to convince you of the joys of fornication…

C. Dancing

Dancing will send you to hell as fast as attending a movie. It’s a given that if you are involved in dancing, you’re enslaved to rock music. See Rock music for clarification. Dancing is a horror. You’re (gasp) TOUCHING a member of the opposite sex, and it’s most likely with someone you are NOT married to. That’s bad. Touching leads to fornication. The only exception is if you are holding hands while praying. That’s because your eyes are closed. You’re not looking at anybody’s skin.

  King David danced in his underwear. It’s Ok. King David was one of God’s chosen people. They’re allowed to dance. There’s a song I learned in the charismatic churches that mentions that “when the Spirit of God moves in my heart, I will dance like David danced.” That song always alarmed me because the thought of 2,000 people stripping to their underwear in church was un-nerving.

D. Rock music.

  Rock music is anything that involves an electric guitar and drums. It’s just a straight prayer to the devil asking him to enslave you. It’s a given that if you’re a slave to the devil, you are also a fornicator.

 E. Drugs

This is easier to deal with than rock music or dancing.

 Sometimes all you need is prayer. If you are taking illegal drugs, you’re going to hell. Prescription drugs in your name are fine, unless they’re psych drugs. Those send you to hell. Psychiatrists are just as bad as psychologists, because they both work in hand in hand to enslave you to the devil. The drugs that the psychiatrists prescribe make it easier for the psychologist to convince you that fornication isn’t a sin, and God is a figment of your imagination.

F. Alcohol

It only became a sin after the temperance movement. Before the temperance movement, it didn’t send you to hell. Then after marching through the streets and pouring the beer in the gutters the temperance people rewrote the rules so it would send you to hell. It’s a good thing that the Temperance Movement wasn’t around when Jesus turned the water into wine. They would have sent Him to hell long before the Sanhedrin got a hold of Him.

G. Tobacco.

This is also a victim of the temperance movement, which involved a rule rewrite. It didn’t used to be a sin in the olden days. At my husband’s seminary they have a portrait of the Seminary’s founder with his hand in his pocket. Only it isn’t really a pocket. They were forced to paint over his hand holding his cigar after tobacco became a sin leading to hell. The only exception to the tobacco rule is if you’re a tithing Baptist in a tobacco growing state. Then it’s required because tobacco pays your rent and fills the offering plate.

H. Living in a Co-ed dorm if you are a college student.

If you live in a college dorm that is co-ed, you will become a fornicator. You can’t help it. You’re surrounded with rooms of people the opposite sex from you. These rooms contain beds. You+opposite sex+dorm rooms containing beds=fornication. You can’t help it. It’s animal instinct. You have absolutely no control, because simply by moving into a co-ed dorm, you’ve given yourself to the devil. God can’t possibly be with you if you live in a co-ed dorm.

I. Long Hair On Men

 Long hair for women is considered their “crowning glory” as the Bible describes it, so it’s ok.  Long hair on men sends you to hell because it’s a symbol of rebellion. Nobody notices that Jesus has long hair in all the pictures painted of him….nor did they notice how long Billy Graham’s hair got when he was doing his crusades. I think God gave him special permission. His son Franklin however has short hair. He doesn’t have permission.

   There are two other exceptions to the long hair on men rule. Charismatic preachers are allowed to have it long in the back as long as it’s short in front.  Christian musicians are allowed to do whatever they want with their hair because otherwise they’ll stray into rock music.

J. Short hair on women

Most Christians don’t pay attention to a woman’s hair unless they are Pentecostal or Texans. The Bible says that a woman’s hair is her crowning glory, if you’re in some Pentecostal groups; you go to hell if your crowning glory is cut. You can repent and save yourself from hell, and restore yourself to God’s favor, but the fact that your hair doesn’t either hit the floor or brush against the top of the door frame will be a constant reminder of your past sin. In Texas, women wear their hair in these big helmets known as ‘Big Hair’. Not having big hair isn’t a sin but it tells them right away that you’re not from Texas.

K.  Pants on women.

If you belong to certain Pentecostal groups, you do NOT wear pants because that would mean that you would be mistaken for a man, so it’s a sin that will send you to hell unless you repent.  You cover up your knees and your arms above the elbow to show that you are a Godly, chaste women and to keep men from lusting in their hearts.  You can wear shoes like a stripper and it’s ok. You’ve just got to wear that dress.

    If you are non-Pentecostal, meaning that you have no problem for the most part with pants, but you are “Saved”, you leave those pants at home. You’ve got to wear dresses and hose if you’re a Godly woman.

Pants in church won’t send you to hell because saved women can wear pants everywhere else. It’s just that if you wear pants in church they might mistake you for a Liberal, and think that you are “NOT SAVED,” so they’ll be very concerned.

 ….And another slight variation:

Things of man or Things of Men.

 This is a cousin to things “Of the World”

   Things of man or things of men are never good. They’re religion and religious customs invented by man. If you don’t like someone’s liturgy, or religious customs, you can just disdainfully consign what they do to “Things of Man”. You would never, ever do anything religious that was “of men” instead of God, so you personally are safe. You don’t practice man made religion. Other people however do. They’ll pay for it, too because they are leading people to hell.

    Since Frieda spent so much time passed out belly up, Steve and I used to take advantage of this by amusing ourselves at her expense. Since this involved food, she didn’t object. Otherwise we would have been treated to a show of gorgeous, perfectly white, straight and deadly set of teeth. She did NOT like being laughed at. Her teeth were big for her size, and she could have been an understudy for “The Big Bad Wolf” in the book Little Red Riding Hood.

   We’d get a tiny dog biscuit and we’d wave it back and forth over the underside of her nose, which was facing up. Eventually, the nose would start to twitch. Then, like a trap door, the snout would slowly open. We’d drop the dog biscuit in the open trap, and then it would close. Then, barely perceptible, you would see a slight movement of the jaws as she chewed, making me think of gears on a drawbridge. Otherwise, nothing else moved. The only thing on her that appeared to wake up was the nose and the trap door she opened to receive the dog biscuit. Everything else stayed perfectly still. The eyes never once opened.  We were never entirely sure just exactly what on this dog woke up, because otherwise she was perfectly still. It was amazing. We never got tired of doing this because it was so funny to watch, and as long as there was something in it for her, Frieda was always willing to comply. Frieda’s goal was always to get the maximum amount of gain for the least amount of effort.  She succeeded, for the most part, admirably. She took laziness to an art form.

  It’s been years since Frieda passed on. I think of her often, because my computer’s wallpaper is a drawing of her in a major sulk.

    I miss her moodiness. I miss her inflated ego, and extreme sense of entitlement. I miss the power fights in which neither of us would back down, sometimes forcing me to find a muzzle. But I also miss the hysterical lengths she would go to keep from exerting one more muscle than necessary. And then in my mind’s eye, I see a nose twitch, the jaws slowly open, and then close over a dog biscuit. I see the barely perceptible chewing, and somehow she doesn’t seem so absent.  She could make me angry, and often I would be in tears. She also made me laugh.  They were the best of times, as they say, and the worst of times. I’m glad I was there for every minute of it.

But this I don’t get.  Why, WHY do Christians check their brains at the door when they pray the sinner’s prayer? Why do they give up every last shred of self esteem and sense of self worth? Why DO they check their common sense at the door?

  There was an acronym when I was growing up that went like this: JOY Jesus first, Others   second, Yourself last. I have a problem with this. It encourages you to run yourself to the ground, and ignore your own needs, and desires. It encourages you to let others take to take advantage of you and to submit yourself to manipulative churches.

 How do Christians throw their common sense away? The argument for this is “God’s ways are NOT our ways”. Well, that’s true. We’re NOT God.  But I hear things like “Well, we’re waiting on God”.  Or, “I know God has a special purpose for me”, or “I know that God has a person for my life” in reference to a spouse.  So, knowing that God is going to do all of this for them, they sit, waiting. They do nothing.

Or, they need money or employment. They wait on God for that, too. It never occurs to them to go job hunting or ask someone for money. God, you see, will do it all for them.

I don’t think that Jesus calls for us to live a life of passivity and dependency, but activity.

Paul says to “pray without ceasing”. It’s a good idea. But some people mean that to beg God to decide every mundane detail of their lives, going so far as to consulting God on their every move from what to eat, what to wear, to even helping them pick out their underwear.

   They devalue themselves to be so worthless as to be unable to even pick out their own spouse. They’re so stupid, you see, that they’ll mess it up if they do it themselves. Guess what? Christians have the same divorce rate as the rest of the word. If you divorce “the person God has for you” does that mean that God made a mistake? Or are you going to explain it away by saying that you veered away from God’s will? The only way you’ll meet your spouse is to circulate. If you see the same boring people every day, and are interested in none of them and see nobody else, how is this going to happen? Is someone supposed to show up on your doorstep and announce “I’m the person God has for you”?

 I’m not saying that God is uninterested in our lives. But, either He gave us free will or he didn’t.

Either we are puppets unable to think for ourselves, or we’re not. To me, there IS no middle ground.

If any of your utilities go off, you call the utility company in question to get it turned on, unless it’s a bad storm and you know why it’s off.  Even then, a lot of us still call to find out just when it will come on.

You don’t sit there and pray for it to come on if you didn’t pay the bill.  Not normally. If you didn’t pay the bill, you either pay it, or beg, borrow or steal the money. You don’t sit there and hope that it will come on like magic.   God should NOT be reduced to magic. Can God do things instantly? Yes. He can. He does. Those are called miracles. Miracles, despite what the “name it, claim it” people will tell you, do NOT happen every day. That, to quote my husband, is “Why they call them miracles”.

Have I see miracles? Yes. I have had them happen to me. I got healed of a serious, painful illness when a group of people across town, unbeknownst to me, prayed for me . I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t have “faith” that I would be healed. I didn’t even know I was being prayed for. Did I expect it? No. Am I grateful? Oh yes!

  A dear friend of mine was diagnosed a few years ago with a slow acting form of cancer.  We were all horrified. None of us wanted to believe it. People visited him in the hospital and told him what he wanted to hear: that God was going to heal him, and that he wasn’t going to die from it. His pastor told him that, too. Because he was told that God was going to heal him, he made no plans for his wife.  He did nothing to put his affairs in order. He died. His wife was left destitute.  I was heartbroken to the point where I could not go to the funeral because I couldn’t stop crying loud, heaving sobs.  To this day I am SO angry. I was devastated when our friend died, although I was expecting it. I was angry that a man with his amount of common sense heard what he wanted to hear and made no plans “just in case”.

I don’t believe that he died because of a lack of faith. He died because people get diseases, and they die. God doesn’t always heal. I don’t know why I was healed of a serious illness and this man was not. Certainly this man was more holy, and a valuable resource to his community. I’m not going to say that I don’t question God. There are a lot of times when I yell skyward :”What in HELL are you doing?” But God doesn’t have to answer to me. I’m ok with that.

I find the tendency of Christians to use God as an excuse to keep from doing something as troubling. People who will see doctors when they break their leg, or are in some kind of pain, suddenly throw up a wall when it comes to anything having to do with the mind.  They’ll blame depression, sadness and insanity on spiritual problems, or the sins of their fathers. They’ll do elaborate rituals and go through hours of prayer to keep from doing the sensible thing: which namely is: “See a mental health professional and get help”.

I believe in the power of prayer. I find it healing and soothing. I find it troubling, however when I see people using prayer and God to keep from doing things that they can do to make them own selves healthier, physically and mentally, and to keep from taking on responsibility for themselves.

 I’m not likely to sway many people to my way of thinking. When you feel that God has called you to be a doormat to let others take advantage of you and drain you, your energy and resource dry,  you’re not going to listen to me.

  But I am a firm believer in the fact that God gave me a brain, and created this world for me to livei n. If God created me in his own image, why in fact am I truly worthless?  Do I believe that I sin? Oh, yes. I KNOW I sin. But I also know this: God gave me free will to make choices. He did NOT make me a door mat. He gave me the sense to trust Him, and to use my common sense to make decisions. He did not make me to lay in wait for manna to fall from Heaven and to sit there awaiting his grand master plan for me to unfold and put my brain in neutral while I wait for him to do everything for me.

Every Christmas eve as a child I had to listen to Gene Autry’s Christmas record. It wasn’t Christmas even until I listened to it. The fact that I got most of the words wrong because I couldn’t hear didn’t matter. I loved his voice.

One of my best memories  is outside in near freezing weather on Christmas day trying out my new pogo stick. I never got very good, because I have bad balance. But I loved that pogo stick.

    My painful memories involve my family. My parents often fought. I had two older sisters and a brother. I seldom saw my brother since he was 15 yrs older. My oldest sister was out of state from the time I was 1o until I was in high school. The sister closest in age is 5 yrs older. She left home as soon as she could, not that she had a choice. Dad threw everyone out when they turned 18….except for me, because if he did, Mom was going, too.  

Christmas dinner had everyone at the table, and I dreaded dinner. There was one family member who never tired of reducing me to tears by telling my most embarrassing moment to everyone who would listen.I wanted to die of embarrassment. Why this humiliation was allowed to contine every Christmas, (Thanksgiving, too), I don’t know. It was the one thing I knew would happen every year and it did without fail, until I got married, moved to Germany and never went home for Christmas again.

     My good memories are of church, and of the times spent with my two best friends, Maria, and Tootsie.  My mother began a tradition  of having them over for breakfast on Christmas morning, and Mom, Dad, and we three girls looked forward to it every year. Mom would cook a big breakfast, and we would all exchange gifts. We did this until I got married and moved to Germany, and Tootsie went by herself one year.

   I loved Christmas eve at church. I went to a little Presbyterian church that was my lifeline. On Christmas eve, we always had a service of Lessons and Carols. You read scripture, and then you sing. I loved it. I became close to two young women that were older than me when I was in junior high. Martha was 6 years older, and Angie was 5 years older, the same age as my sister. It was because of them that I joined the choir. Angie played the piano and the organ and until I grew up and got married was what I wished my sister had been. We looked so much alike that people thought we were related. Wed do share the same ethnic background. We’re both descended from a group of people that are called Germans from Russia.  My husband thought we were sisters, even though he had never seen us in the same place. How he explained to himself why my last name was Keiser and hers Richert,  I don’t know. But I lived for Christmas eve when Angie and I would exchange gifts.  I adored Angie.She could do no wrong. I know I had to have been a big annoyance. But she was patient with me, and very good to me I was her shadow. However, we are no longer in touch, and as I think about her this Christmas, it pains me. The break was over my husband and my choice of churches. The fact that I am now Catholic would probaby be considered even worse. But I miss her. It hurts and in the last year especially I have shed many tears over this estrangement. There is much I would love to tell her. Before I could read music, I used to annoy her by picking up when she made a mistake on the organ. No one else in the church would have heard it. But I did. How I could do that with a severe hearing loss and worthless hearing aids is beyond me.  Since our estrangement, I have discovered that I can sight read enough to save my life when I don’t know a song, and that I can play the melody to almost anything I can think of by ear on the guitar. I’d love to tell her how her encouraging me to join the choir at the age of 13 impacted my life and that I have sung in choirs ever since.  But I can’t. I don’t know where she is, and she doesn’t want contact with me. Neither does my sister, who is the same age. But I don’t grieve over that. It’s a relief. I don’t know where she is, but I do know one thing. She can no longer hurt me, and that is good.

   After I got married, we lived in Germany for 3 years. My favorite time of year in Germany is Advent and Christmas,, There are Christmas markets during Advent, and much to eat, drink, and buy. I lived to buy Christmas ornaments. I’ve missed it ever since, and the three times I have been back to Germany have all been during Advent.

   I used to be very lonely at Christmas, because I missed the the Lessons and Carols service and the breakfasts with my parents and Maria and Tootsie.

   Now it’s just me, my husband and the dog, and that’s enough.  I sing with my church choir for Christmas eve, and we come home and unwrap our gifts. The dog gets really excited and unwraps her gifts, and that’s fun. She loves to play with toys and she knows that if we hand her a wrapped gift, that there’s a toy for her, and she tears it open as fast as she can to get her toy. It’s a lot of fun.,

 On Christmas day, for the past 10 years, we’ve gone over to Christmas dinner at the house of some very good friends. They have two boys, and I have greatly enjoyed watching them grow up.  I’m grateful for the ten years of good memories, and hopefully more to come. 

  So this year I ache for the painful memories, and for friendship lost. I’m grateful that the abuse that I suffered in long over.

I’m grateful for  good friends, a loving husband, a funny dog, and the blessings of not only having all of my needs met, but almost all of my wants, too.   I couldn’t ask for more, other than this one thing. Angie, wherever you are, I miss you terribly.

Our church, like all Presbyterian churches are run by a group of people called The Session. The Session consisted of twelve elders. To be on the Session, you had to be ordained as an elder.  Our elders had a lot of power. Those on the Session made decisions and all of them served communion on Communion Sundays. We had Communion every six weeks, and they were my favorite times. In the Presbyterian church, you sit in the pews, and the elders walk down the aisles and pass these big silver trays of  “the elements” as our pastor called them. First they would serve the bread, and then go back and serve the grape juice. There was time before communion for private reflection. Since serving communion took a long time, we sang. We would sing the same songs over and over again in a worshipful manner. They were  serious,solemn, holy and peaceful times. I loved them. I very rarely had the attention span to remember sermons, but I did remember music. I soaked up all the old hymns on Sunday mornings and old camp meeting type songs on Sunday nights. We often sang spirituals both Sunday morning and evening. We had an African American choir director named Percy Smith, and he had the choir sing spirituals for some of our anthems. Some of the anthems had copyright dates like 1902 and I hated some of them. But I loved the spirituals. The choir didn’t just sing them. I learned them at every age growing up. Percy wasn’t everywhere. But for some reason, this little, mostly but not completely white Presbyterian church included a lot of spirituals in their worship. In the youth group, we didn’t sing hymns. We sang praise and worship songs. We also sang spirituals.

I had a lot of angst as a teenager, and a hard head. I realized one time that you could tell me until you were blue in the face that God loves me, and I would blow you off. However, sing it to me, and I’ll listen to the message.  For me, my spiritual and church life has always been about the music.   So I absorbed the music I heard in both morning and evening church. And I absorbed the songs our youth group sang. We would often sing our praise and worship music an hour at a time.

Years passed. I went away to college, and sang in a church choir there. I learned more music. I came home to be married in my dear home church and then went to Germany for three years. We came back reluctantly, and settled in San Antonio.  Eventually we left San Antonio for the Dallas-Fort Worth area, so my husband could attend seminary. These were some hard, hard, times. The churches we attended played mostly praise and worship music, and we continued to learn them as new ones came out. Music comforted me when it felt like life should be over. I clung to the comfort of God’s love that those songs threw to me.

If you play music now for me that I have known for many years, my mind will go back to where I was when I learned the song, or sang it regularly.  My memories are all tied up in the  music that we sang.

It’s been 30 years since I went to East Side Presbyterian church. I miss the solemn, holy times and the majestic hymns. I miss the worshipful spirituals. Play any of them, and suddenly I am 14 years old sitting in church, singing, and quietly reflecting about my relationship with God.

Recently, East Side Presbyterian Church has come back to me. It hasn’t come back to me literally, but its music has.

My husband Steve recently met Fr. John, who is the pastor of St. James Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, Virginia. Steve met Fr. John when Fr John came to the Navy Hospital to visit a very sick parishioner.  They started talking and became friends. Fr. John invited Steve to church. It’s small church with a small congregation. It is very historic. It is THE historic church that the Episcopal African American population in Portsmouth have gone to since 1890, when the church has founded. The congregation has doctors and lawyers, professional people and retired  military people You see people from all walks of life. There’s a lot of history there. It’s a warm, loving congregation and you feel enveloped with love and welcomed when you go. Steve fell in love with St James, because it reminded him of his family’s church in West Virginia. I had liked the WV church for the same reason, that I had liked East Side.

Eventually I visited St James.  It had the homey feel that I missed, and the solemness, serious worship that I’d grown up with. The music was and is the exact same type of music that I grew up with. I was unprepared for this and  was suddenly transported back 30 years in time.  I wept. I wept for the memories of the good times, and the worshipful times. I wept because those times are no more and I can’t recreate them. And then I wept because I was finally hearing and singing the old songs after 30 years.

When I can, I accompany my husband to St James. I haven’t gone very many times, but I plan to keep going with him.  Every time I go, I’m suddenly whisked back 30 years in time, and my heart breaks. I cry, and I cry hard. I cry for the friendships now lapsed, and I cry in remembrance.  Sing the old song “Break thou the bread of life, dear Lord to me, as thou didst break the bread besides the sea” as we did today at St James and it’s 1974 . I am 15 years old. I’m caught up in worship and lost in the song as we sing it over and over and over again. I see Elder Herschel Schaefer pass out communion. I see my old Sunday school teacher, another elder, passing out the trays as well. I’m there. And then suddenly I’m not. I’m sitting in a pew at St James in Portsmouth Virginia. It’s the year 2009 and this year I will be 50 years old. And the tears are pouring down my checks uncontrollably, as my memories take me  back to where I was with almost every song.  I love hearing the old hymns.  I really, really do.  But they’re painful, because they remind me that what I had is no longer and I can not go back.  But at St James Episcopal Church, in Portsmouth Virginia, I come awfully close.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, my husband hoards those little ketchup packets. You know, the ones that come with fast food. There are tons of them. It does me no good to toss them, because more of them appear.

Steve is a sensible man. I can’t imagine why he hoards these things, unless he knows something I don’t.

He’s been to the Army Medical Service Corps basic course, the Army Chaplain basic course, the Army  Chaplain advanced course, and the Navy Chaplain basic course. He’s got the Marine Command and Staff college under his belt. He took a chemical and biological warfare class when he was in the Army and we’d returned from Germany. He’s finishing up a second masters’ degree in military history.

All I can think of is that eventually the dollar will devalue to the point where people burn it, use it for toilet paper, or paper their walls, and that we’ll need all these annoying little packets of ketchup…causing our own variation of what happened in Germany during the Weimar Republic.  I don’t know for sure. I do know that since Steve has hoarded ketchup packages for years,  that he doesn’t tie this with the current administration.  I keep imagining that as their military instructors are lecturing them, in military schools across the country, that the one constant in all of these classes is the admonition to hoard ketchup so they can survive when the dollar collapse.  He won’t confirm or deny this to me. However, he has a security clearance. He can’t tell me everything he knows.

All I know is that he hoards ketchup. I wonder. Will we have to pay for things in person with packages of ketchup, or will you be able to transfer it electronically like we do with our current currency? Will the government replace ketchup packages that have been emptied or destroyed, or will we be out of luck?

Will ketchup stains replace the red dye packets that explode in money that’s taken when people rob banks? What’s the logistics of carrying this stuff in purses and wallets?

I had a government job once. I didn’t have a security clearance. I did, however, have to sign something that said that I would not disclose information that I knew through my job. That was as far as it went. I didn’t have a real security clearance, so that may be why I don’t know anything. I was never privy to any real sensitive information, other than the fact, that because I worked for the organization that paid all of the Army’s commissary bills in the Midwestern US, that I knew that Oscar Mayer, at least in the late ‘80’s owned Jello. I used to make myself ill trying to figure out the WHYS of that possibility.  It still bothers me when I think about it. But now I’m concerned about more important things.  Will our world economy eventually run on the ketchup standard? And do we have enough ketchup packets to support us in our twilight years? If you’re another civilian, you won’t know, and if you’re a government employee I know you can’t tell me, or you’ll have to jail me for giving away state secrets. I understand completely. But that still doesn’t keep me from wondering.  So, every time those annoying little things fall on me, I dutifully stuff them back in. And I wait…wondering….

Hearing aid technology makes leaps and bounds so fast that the technology that they had even two or three years ago become obsolete very quickly.

I have, what experts in the speech and hearing field refer to as a senory neural hearing loss that is prelingual. In plain english, it means that I have nerve deafness, and that it occurred before I had the opportunity to learn to talk.

I have little hearing in the high frequencies. If you don’t know what a high frequency is, think birds and smoke detectors. I can’t hear those. Nor can I hear an s sound. Or an sh. Nor always a ch. You can’t say what you don’t hear, so I had to be taught to say those sounds. God Bless Betty Oswald, my first speech therapist, who taught me to speak at least clearly enough for people to understand. The first letter I remember her teaching me was a “T”. For some reason I couldn’t say “table”. It came out as “cable”. I remember Betty saying a “T” and showing me how to say it, and from then on, I had no problem with the letter “T”.  I remember spending hours hissing in front of a mirror, and I remember her teaching me the difference between an S and a Z. She spent four days a week with me from second to fourth grade, and I thought my young life was over when she left speech therapy to teach deaf children. She was my oasis. The kids were constantly ridiculing me because I talked funny, and school was a living hell academically for me, too. Home was no better. I was abused by a sibling and terrorized by my father. Betty was the only positive constant for me, so I had good reason to be devastated when she left.

I had more speech therapy as the years went by, and even had it as recently as a couple of years ago. I’ve been complimented all my life on my good speech, and I’ve been proud because I’ve worked so hard. But, people could always tell. When I got asked in a fabric store if I signed or read lips, and threw a temper tantrum when I was finally alone in the car, I realized that if it bothered me, it was my problem. So I startes speech therapy, and it was a lot of work. I finally learned the mechanics of saying the S sound. You curl your tongue behind your teeth and you hiss. I finally nailed down the CH, and I improved the quality of my voice.

Despite difficulty hearing, I have always been passionate about music. My parents refused me music lessons because I would fail. However, it never occurred to them that it was odd that not only could I sing, I could sing on pitch.

I was at least allowed to sing in the church choir when I was old enough. By junior high, my parents weakened. I wanted to play the piano, and my grandmother gave me hers, which was in such bad shape, it was only fit for the trash heap. My sister in law gave me a guitar, which was too big for me.  My mother scraped up enough money to get me a 3/4 sized guitar, and I took lessons until my teacher moved. Frankly, I hated the guitar. But, I learned how to tune beautifully, and I learned to read music. When I started dating, I kept my boyfriend’s guitar in tune because he was and is, since he’s now my husband, tone deaf.

I continued to sing in choirs, and after I got married, got new hearing aids from the Army when my husband was active duty Army, a set later from the state of Texas, and later when my husband went back on active duty in the Navy.

I found a good audiologist when I moved to Virginia, who has learned to ignore what most people would see as my limitations and go by the way I function. She’s recommended coclear implants for people with my hearing loss that do NOT do well.  I push the boundaries to the max when it comes to technology. I can tell when someone changes key in a song if I’m either familiar with the song or looking at the music, and I can tell by looking at the music if someone veers away from the way it is written.

A c