A Brite Understanding

Walking through the hallways of my middle school was never any fun. It was primarily brown brick and white, the residue of dingy architecture and design of the 1970's. Perhaps partially to blame for these kids nasty tempers was the fact windows were not appreciated in post disco decor.

At some point they included a courtyard -- a centrally located, glassed in courtyard that never once did I ever see anyone in.  You couldn't even get into it.  It had glass lined hallways on three sides and on the fourth,the cafeteria. One day at lunch, in an act of Breakfast Club inspired defiance (although I did not have any pixie sticks), I threw a piece of cheese from my hamburger on the window and there it stuck for nearly two weeks before someone found it.

Other than that, the one thing I remember about that courtyard was walking around it the year I discovered fiction -- and what a joy it was to escape people, especially mean people. People were mean and outright hateful to me. In that same cafeteria, my sister, eight years my senior, suffered through the same kind of outright abuse-- and sometimes, she'd get to leave high school to have lunch with me. I'm sure when she came to eat with me, despite the fact I felt special and so cool, inside, she probably relived the torture of her teenage years, torture inflicted on her even by those she called 'friend.'


There were those who were kind, but most of what little I remember is never pleasant or positive.  I remember the days walking through the hallways, literally reading and navigating a sea of mean people, ignoring every last one of them, as I swam through the muck amongst the ever so rhythmic and descriptive tide of Poppy Z. Brite's writing.

That was the year I read Lost Souls. I still remember walking the dank hallways between classes, and being able to smell-- literally smell-- the magnolias described on the very first page.  I was enthralled.  It seemed magical.

I too, was lost.

There was a guy named Jeremy. I thought he was cute. I ran into him a while back and I asked him what he thought of me back in the day, when plaid, combat boots and Nirvana were popular with the misfits.  Being on the outside of that group, I clung to myself in my dark and desperate longing that I thought  was private and was nightly satiated by the sounds of Depeche Mode and the Cure.

His response was sobering. He said that everyday he felt inclined to ask how I was, with what little power or influence any sixth grade boy could have, because he just never knew if he'd see me the next day.  He knew about the cuts -- fresh from the night before or those a week old whose scabs would sometimes catch the sleeves that covered them.  Even he thought I'd be dead.

After Lost Souls, I moved on to the Anne Rice novels, in particular, the Vampire Chronicles.  I simply fell in love with Marius, my favorite, the oldest vampire, a Roman citizen, friend of Botticelli, oh boy did he appeal to my then budding, Humanist heart.

When my mother would force me to church with her --on the front row-- I would read my vampire novel of choice, which was obviously my quiet way of stomping my teenage and pissed off, hurting feet.

 You see, even in the midst of all that pain, He was at work.  He wired me a certain way, and one of those ways was to have the verbage to explain to others the change in me-- and without my past love of Vampire novels, I do not know if I would simply have the words.

In the few weeks following my salvation, constantly I was reminded of Claudia.

And then I remembered the Lord used Anne Rice specifically to get my attention in the weeks just before my salvation.  That, my friends, is how intimately God is involved in us, our passions, even when we want nothing to do with Him.

The fella I had been dating was away in Georgia for a family funeral.  His uncle was finally called home after a long battle with cancer.  While he was away, I simply, for some strange reason could not get enough of Anne Rice novels. 

Now, I hadn't read any of them since I was in Italy. But all of a sudden, man -- I had a need for them. Voraciously I devoured these books and I did it so quickly I ran out of the few books I had in my own collection, and so to feed this absolute need, I went to the library.

Their collection was sad, to say the least.  I checked out the three books they had, none of which I was particularly enthralled to read, but again, I almost can't describe it -- I needed to read these books.  Two of them were vampire novels, and the third novel was Christ the Lord.


Go figure.  Guess which of three books I didn't read?

I wasn't ready yet.  I stared at Christ the Lord, doubtfully, out of the corner of my eye -- kind of like my bread maker I desperately wanted one year for my birthday.

This was one month before God himself marched into my living room and picked up my heart, and is why in one of the many  instances in my conversion story, this song gets stuck in my head.

You see, shortly after I came to Christ, I described the change in me -- how it seemed even that I saw things, everything, differently.  I cannot even watch kid's movies without getting inlaid messages in them I never ever saw before.  You simply see through different lenses.

Some people ask me why I cut myself.  Well, the blood is the life, right?  My life sucked, and I wanted that pain out of me.  And when the cuts would begin to heal, they hurt, which reminded me, in a twisted way, that I could, in fact, still feel.

What I find most endearing about this time of my life is simply this:  He was there, the entire time.  My bedroom at one point housed about fifty paintings, about half of which were eyeballs-- bleeding eyeballs.  I love eyes, I always have.  Still to this day when idle, in a class or lecture, I will still draw eyes-- plain, very pretty, (non bleeding) eyes.

Eyes are the window into the soul.   As a matter of fact, that phrase is biblical.  The eye is also a symbol of an all seeing God.  He was there, the entire time, in my bedroom at 2am, hating myself, wishing I were dead, and cutting furiously on my wrists.  He was there, and why this song, one of the first I heard at the Village had me in complete tears.  That's a Godwink.  He loved me enough to let me sit in my own mess, just like any good Dad does.  He loved my mom enough to teach her to depend on him through her suffering, to show her he had me in His care, which far surpassed any she could ever give.

Christ gave His blood for me.

I left the dark to walk in the light.  You die to the world. You die to the law. You live on forever.  Seriously, right from the get go, people -- all kinds of people, Christian and non Christian, young and old, educated and not-- every one of them noticed I even looked different.  Just like Claudia.  How do you explain that?

I mean, the comparisons could go on an on.  I somehow found the strength to literally end a co-dependant cycle raging in my home, which threw me into absolute, life changing, never before felt poverty, that God used --you see because he uses everything-- to show me just how He provides, how He can do anything.  All kinds of things that in my own cunning never happened, but God!  Well, He just has orchestrated all kinds of events and people in my life since July 14 2011, and much to my amazement, people like Diane and Robert, Jarrett, Matt and Mark,  Jard and James who were wired in, placed before, and planned for me -- as a part of His pursuit of me.

I have been saved, yes I have.  I am no longer a part of any of that darkness, yet, it is so much a part of my story.  As I explained this new vision I have in a vampiric vernacular to someone recently, she knew-- she understood-- what it was I was feebly attempting to describe to her, and it was all she could do to control the tears welling up in her eyes. She was wanted that, wanting every last bit of what I was illuminating, but still was too proud to accept.

Guess what?  He's in that, too.
 

A Gentle Woman for a Gentle Man.

Rhonda Ruth was the surviving twin, and the very last of sixteen children, born in 1918.  She was kept alive with a homemade incubator made of glass jars and fed with an eyedropper.  Her crib was a dresser drawer, and her brothers were responsible for heating up the blankets in the fire that swaddled her to keep her warm.  When asked about her chances of survival, the doctor replied she would not live to see one year -- boy was that man wrong.

She went on her first date with her neighbor, Marvin Ray Taylor around Christmas, and the two later married, living a life together full of ups and downs, seeing things I can only imagine.  Papaw's first car was a Model T Ford and when they came home from their honeymoon in  Turner Falls, Oklahoma, she returned with a major sunburn, and he with an aching back from lifting the luggage and a nickel-- literally a nickel in his pocket-- to his name.  Understand this is the generation that saw electricity become available to all, the telephone, and  (technically) two world wars -- my grandfather was released from WWII Christmas Eve, 1945, to a wife, my Aunt Norma Jean who was  a toddler, and my father, whom he had not yet met, then six months old.

He came home to a quaint house in Oak Cliff, then  a neighborhood of  South Dallas for the upper middle class.  Their $5,000 home still stands.  It was lined with rosebushes and by all accounts their kitchen was precious:  their monogram was inlaid with little red and white tiles in the center of the floor, a detail I would treasure when I am fortunate enough to marry. 

I know this only because the last time I saw him alive Thanksgiving Day 2007, my sturdy yet gentle grandfather looked frail, his eyes kept weeping.  As I leaned over and wiped away a tear he didn't feel, I caught a glimpse of my grandmother, a shell of her former self, a woman who designed interiors for Neiman Marcus himself, now reduced to fervently clipping paper ads, to curb her creative, yet failing heart.  She sat happily sitting in a corner seat, knitting I think, her legs swollen from congestive heart failure, and "weeping" -- literally leaking water-- because her heart was not strong enough to function properly. In that moment I felt the urge to begin a conversation we had never had, and he told me about this home.

Come to think of it, I know that was also God, because there was such peace in that conversation, despite the sadness of seeing them both look so incredibly frail. I remember feeling such love for him, not only as my grandfather, but also as a Patriarch.  Truly I believe the seed for considering what lies in a legacy was planted in that last, sweet moment with Papaw, this side of Heaven -- a Heaven at that point in my life, I didn't think I would ever see.  

That's when it hit me:  She ultimately found her twin.  She and Papaw were married so long their bodies reacted to one another.  If she fell, he fell.  Her legs began to weep to such a degree she could no longer wear shoes, and then Papaw's eyes started to weep too.  But I also think he knew something I would learn in a few weeks time.

Coming home from work on December 18th, I was asked to sit down and was told Papaw was dead.  Like my father, he as getting dressed in the morning and simply up and died, except he was eighty-eight, lived a long full life, and died with a huge smile on his face.  The closest person to my father, was dead.  

Now, I had just "quit" smoking, and while running errands the next day, I tried to push back the urge to smoke and stopped at Target to distract myself and do a little Christmas shopping.  While  looking at a red radio flyer trike for my child, I got a call from my mother that we needed to get to Mamaw.  She was dying.  Somehow I could manage the news of one death, but two?  I smoked on the way, like that somehow made my pain manageable.

We arrived and she was not coherent, the air was heavy.  It reminded me of the Grandma's Molasses syrup that was always present on her table when she made biscuits on the morning of July 4th, when she would blast everyone awake by playing John Phillips Souza.   She was told Papaw had died that morning and about every ten minutes she would sit up and beg someone to help her die.  Mamaw was sweet and precious, but she was  also very stubborn.  Finally, I came close to her, and said, "Rhonda Ruth!  Papaw is in the darned Chariot!  He is waiting for you.  Would you hurry up and get in?!"  That's when she looked at me.  She saw me.  She spoke to me and then she finally got in the chariot a few hours later and rode Home with her Hunny.

They spent sixty nine and a half years living together as one flesh, a concept our modern minds struggle to perceive, yet desire so badly we try to force it.  Theirs was a love that lasted, because it was centered well.  Theirs was the last generation of men who were not Boys Who Can Shave.

A true leader, he died first, and she followed, twenty-two hours later.  Papaw said their entire marriage, he would be the one to drive the chariot home, and he did.

                                   http://marshill.com/media/real-marriage/new-marriage-same-spouse


 We buried them both, together on December 22, 2007.  At their funeral, I noticed even then, the theme of Christmas in their story, which was made even more endearing by a personally recorded letter on a 45 record we had just found.   Recording this in her neighbor's studio, my Grandmother talks of the goings on of the house and you hear her nudge my Aunt Norma to say hello to her Daddy who was away in the South Pacific, and my infant father, whom he had not yet met.  She ultimately recorded this -- this beaten up 45 record none of us had ever seen before -- to wish my grandfather a Merry Christmas. (audio soon to be uploaded)



Here's the thing about God I have recently learned:  He is far greater than I ever could be, and He is a fella you simply cannot escape, because He has already chosen you -- like it or not, and He will meet you where you are.  He had already chosen my Grandparents' story to lure me to His love, for theirs was a love that modeled Christ's love for the Church, Christ's love for me, and Christ's love for you.

I knew that-- I mean, Mamaw was a Sunday school teacher for sixty years!  But I knew I could have what they had, even then as a non believer,  I could make that happen, simply because I was that good.   I wanted to skirt that issue and make it real, make it my own, without all the God part.  That simply I could not swallow.  God? No, thanks.  I never asked for it.

Two years ago I was at my Aunt Norma's for Christmas, and in my lap was a little, grey, plastic box, and on it was my Grandmother's handwriting.  I froze, and the deluge began.  How could this be?  They are dead.  Inside that box is the most cherished possession I own, a gift intended to be given to me the Christmas my Grandparents died.

It was a nail from my Grandfather's ship in WWII that was hit by a kamikaze he fashioned into a ring.

Had he not survived that, I would not be here.


A longtime friend wrote me on Facebook recently in response to my surprise at her being happy for the success of this blog and the change she sees in me.  This is a woman who has known me since I first smoked a cigarette with her on the curb in front of her house when I was no more than fourteen, and she was probably eighteen.  This is what she wrote:




Are you really surprised that I am happy for you?

 After so many years of knowing you, watching you      suffer both up close AND from a distance, I believe that this path is right for you. I watched your video the very first time you posted it; and I was so touched by how instantly your torment was transformed into peace. you are such a remarkable lady, dear; and you are destined for such great joy. I think that finding your peace and sharing it with others is going to be such an amazing journey--for you, as well as those whose lives you touch every day.

That peace was quite simply, given to me, and it can be given to you and you and you, too.  He found me. 

And no matter how much you want to reject this notion, of His love, His plan, and His purpose for you,  I would wager you will find yourself, curious about my next entry.  Because really He's already got you.  

And I'm probably gonna talk about Vampires.