It’s Supernatural!

I have had to just lie down on the floor twice this week already.

I am a funny kind of Christian. I pretty much see God in every little thing that happens. Really, it is a major precept in my faith. There is a lot of debate in intellectual circles about the role God plays in daily events in a single life.  My logic says not, but my EXPERIENCE says otherwise. So I live in expectation of drama, the result of God’s hand in everything. Sometimes I am disappointed. I expect, I believe, and then it doesn’t happen.

You can trust me when I say that this little quirk of mine has led me down some interesting rabbit trails and cost me emotionally and financially.

Other times God’s hand is clear and presents in dramatic ways. I’ve experienced enough of the drama to know God will show up, even when I don’t get to see it with my human eyes.

All that aside, the last several months are beyond the pale. God showing up in this strange, scary time.

I had a job interview this past week. It is for a job that I would like very much to have. It takes me back to my home base, it is financially logical, and I know and like the city itself, based on previous interactions. The pressure of the desire to win this one, the pressure of too much negative information assailing me from all directions, the exhaustion from interviewing and interviewing, declining and being declined, was building. Over arching all of that was the growing realization of just how hard it might be to get a job in this economy. By the time I made my hotel room I was overwhelmed. I felt like I would go into the interview the next morning unable to speak and unable to remember why I would make a great City Manager.

I had to lie on the floor and call out to God.

When I made it to bed I suddenly had such a flow of ideas and thoughts I had to write them all down. I filled page after page of a small notebook I carry, and decided that I would take that notebook into the interview and make sure I covered it all. Then there was such peace. I slept like a baby.

The next day I had what was easily, from my perspective, the best interview of my career. It was as good as it gets for me, win or lose. There is no doubt I was carried on God’s grace. I don’t know the outcome on that job yet, but my personal outcome was profound.

I later walked through my rent house in preparation for possibly moving back. It is evident I will have to spend some money to return it to its pre-rental condition. Over the next three days I became overwhelmed by the cost of the repairs and replacements, transitioning, two mortgages, and my usual monthly obligations, just as I am running out of money. I also realized I would have to spend money on that house whether or not I am moving back. Again, it was too much. I panicked.

I had to lie on the floor and call out to God.

That was this morning.

Today I decided to be productive so I did my taxes. I thought I would at least see what I could count on from a possible return.  I had sold my sister’s house at a loss and expended considerable funds in the process, but I just wasn’t sure what that would really net.

Well, it netted a refund FOUR TIMES my greatest expectation and hope.

It netted provision for months to come if I should happen NOT to get this job.

If I do get this job, it netted the funds I need to transition and fix my beautiful little cottage home. That miraculous, but very stressful and expensive overnight sale of my sister’s house two months ago turns out to be a far greater miracle than I first realized. Funny, God realized. Don’t try to tell me He isn’t involved in the minutia of daily life.

It is supernatural.

A Bon Jovi Moment

I went home this weekend.

By home I mean Montgomery County in east Texas, just north of Houston. This is where I lived for over 10 years, 28 years in the area. This is where I raised my children. This is where I had the best years of my life.

I had three homes in Montgomery County. There was the one we built when we moved there. This was a beautiful large Greek revival on three acres with over 200 feet of lake front. This was the dream home. The fantasy house. I expected to live there for the rest of my life. My daughter used to say she wanted this house when we died. It was that good. That is the home I walked away from when I left my marriage. A chapter closed.

My second home was just a couple of miles down the road. I found a less expensive, comfortable house, one I thought would continue to make my children feel at home, close to their Dad, and the least disruptive of their then high school schedules. It was a nice house, I am grateful for this place, for that transition, but it was never home. My youngest sister took over that house for the next six years, but we had to sell it this past December.

In the meantime I went to work for the City of Montgomery and I built a home there. It is a cozy little Victorian reproduction. It was a re-creation, in many ways, of my childhood home in Little Rock, Arkansas. It is a pretty little cottage with my signature stamped all over. It was, and is, the home most representative of my heart. When I left Montgomery for Austin I tried to sell, but wasn’t successful. So I still have that little house in historic Montgomery, walking distance from a beautiful park and main street shops and restaurants. It is leased right now, but I walked through it this weekend, and loved it all over again.

Cottage Home

My son, my mother, grandmother, sisters live in the Houston area. My children’s father is close by. Is this home?

Montgomery and Montgomery County welcomed me. I am known there, one of their own. I was able to see former co-workers and friends. They came out of the woodwork, with phone calls and meals, and a night on the town. I had lunch with my son. I had a blast. I even got a speeding ticket. That is so Montgomery County.

As God closed the door on Austin, amazingly the doors back in Montgomery County have begun to open. I was in town for a job interview. I do not know yet if I will be offered this job, but it is a promising opportunity; the stirring of desire.

In the words of Bon Jovi:

“Who says you can’t go home
There’s only one place they call me one of their own
Just a hometown boy, born a rolling stone, who says you can’t go home
Who says you can’t go back, been all around the world and as a matter of fact
There’s only one place left I want to go, who says you can’t go home.”

The Wait

I turned down a perfectly good job this past week.

I have wanted to write about the job search but haven’t. There is something scary about putting it down on paper, and possible repercussions. But, it deserves attention. It is brutal. It is fraught with hope and despair, fear and disappointment, hard work and exhaustion. A metaphor for life I suppose. You begin to think you won’t make it and your life truly might just derail. You get up, and then you get slapped back down.

Suddenly you find your age is a factor, even if you don’t feel or look your age. It is one of life’s cruel twists that just when you feel the most confident, and have the experience and fortitude to do the best work of your life, the world considers you less exciting than someone just out of braces. And, in this economy, you find you are competing against some of the best, a small fish in a big pond. You begin to doubt.

It is a continuous effort to stay positive, remembering your qualifications and abilities, and relying on an undying faith that God is in control, with no plans to harm you, but to prosper you. I have mostly stayed positive because I have lived long enough to experience God’s grace and protection. I believe because I know. It is an effort to hold on to that belief through the fire. I also know I have no room to complain. I have opportunities and options, and have only been in the fight for a few months. Others have endured months and months, even years, of discouragement.

So why would I turn down a perfectly good job offer? It is even a bigger question when it was probably my last chance to stay in Austin, a place I have grown to love, and a job that offered a good solid retirement down the road. Nearly everyone encouraged me to take it, with reasons ranging from my age, my future retirement, and the condition of the economy. They aren’t wrong.

I started this process with a focus to stay in Austin. By the end of my trip across the United States I felt that it was all about home. In that moment, home was about Austin. One step at a time, however, God has closed every door that would allow me to stay in this very fair city. He showed me His provision over and over. The first job I was offered, a job I would have loved, did not include His provision, at least not in a way I have come to expect. All of the pieces of the puzzle were not in place. My cumulative life experience has not led me to make decisions in fear or desperation. To accept this job would have meant spending the rest of my working years barely recovering from this unfortunate event in my life.

I decided to wait for the provision, to wait for the opportunity that was positive and blessed, and a move forward filled with promise and excitement. I am now excited about what lies ahead and where it will lead.

I decided to step out in faith and wait on the Lord.

Four Seasons

My daughter gave me a James Avery “Four Seasons” pendant for Christmas. It is a quarter size circle with emblems for each season; beautiful in its simplicity. It was symbolic for us. We are entering a new season in our relationship as she moves away to North Carolina. She wears a “Tree of Life” pendant.

That lovely pendant has taken on deeper meaning. In 2009,for the first time in over 30 years, I have unexpectedly experienced all four seasons in a rather extreme manner.

The year started with the usual idealic Texas spring. There is no better time to be in Texas than in the spring with its perfect temperature and large opportunities for outdoor activity. This is especially true in Austin. It was followed by the most extreme summer in my thirty years there. Temperatures stayed above 100 degrees for sixty straight days, with no rain. I mean no rain. The beautiful hill country lakes began to shrink to mud pits. It was during this time that my job began to dry up as well.

This was followed by my autumn road trip. I grew up in Arkansas so I once experienced, and summarily took for granted, the fall color changes. However, I have never witnessed the explosion of color that followed me across the United States this October. I will never forget the physical and emotional experience of this incredible natural wonder as presented in multiple forms across a variety of landscapes. This gift from God, like life, is literally here one day, gone the next. If you should be so lucky as to experience it, you have to enjoy it while you can. In Michigan, the color glowed on Sunday, dulled on Monday, and was gone to brown by Tuesday. I had to move on to find the color I sought.

I returned to Texas by November, just in time to experience an unusually cold and wet start to winter. It was not pleasant, but at least lent a little credibility to the holiday season. It made my tenure at the Christmas tree lot somewhat authentic. We actually got to wear sweaters and coats.

Then we heard of the sudden and tragic loss of my nephew Chris in an automobile accident on New Year’s Day. This is the son of my older sister, Kaye, the sister I spent every day of my life with until she married at eighteen. Our only thought was to get to her and her family in Kentucky as soon as possible. Chris was only twenty eight years old. Like the fall colors, he came in a burst of color and glory, and departed from us before we were ready. Chris was laid to rest on a beautiful rolling hill in Kentucky bluegrass country, just before the skies let loose with an icy white winter blast.

We are now snowbound in Kentucky after two days of continuous snow fall. It is gloriously beautiful, especially to my Texas dry eyes.

My sister’s home is alive with the sounds of life even in the shadow of death. Chris’s son is six years old. Her eldest daughter, Cynthia, has two sons, age six and two. Her second daughter, Catherine, has two daughters, ages four and ten months. They are cheering us with the pitter patter of feet running through the house, their peals of laughter, and tears of frustration. We are blessed to be given this proof of life.

Vicky and Hannah

Faith and hope are being restored afresh by watching these children play in the snow. There is the scary ride down the hill, screaming and laughing all the way. There is the occasional bump in the road, with everyone tossed unceremoniously out onto the ground. There are tears.

But, there is nothing as delightful and inspiring as a two year old toting his own sled back up that hill. No effort is too great to insure that he gets another run at the hill. He wanted to do it for himself. 

No effort is too great to make another run at the great adventure. God shows us every day in the simple circle of life, in the change of seasons, in the laughter of the children.

You Gotta Believe

It has been a difficult few weeks, difficult enough to make my friends worry about me. As I told one long time Arkansas friend, no one has ever really worried about me, or felt the need to offer real help (as she did).  I have been surrounded by supportive friends and family forever, but this was the “I am worried” kind of help.  It was a very odd feeling, and probably brought me to my senses. 

Then there was the tragic death of my nephew Chris. That will bring your priorities and concerns sharply into focus. There is no room for self pity when your sister’s family is hurting in a way that can’t be fixed with time or money. My losses, my troubles, will find a way to resolution. Their loss will be with them for a lifetime, especially for the six year old son left behind. Actually, there is no especially. Every member of his family is separated from him until eternity. Time will grant a measure of relief from fresh grief, but the loss will remain.

 

So my heart is with them, and my family will gather with them in Kentucky this week.

It has caused me to think a great deal about God’s promise of provision. I believe God will provide for Chris’s family because I have lived long enough to witness this in other lives and other families. I believe God will provide for me because He already has, not just in the past, but in the past three months. Not just in the past three months, but in the past two days. And today.

I actually, for once, mean this literally. I have been debating a particular decision. Threaded through my concern was this amazing provision. As I said before, all along this journey I have had what I needed when I needed it for no good reason, and in ways I could never have contemplated. As I have said it feels like fishes and loaves and includes everything from selling a rent house in 24 hours, to working at the Christmas tree lot.

Lately I have wondered if I was a little crazy. And I am; I am crazy like a Southern Baptist preacher’s daughter. I’ve been crazy enough to believe that if I took certain risks that things would work out. I can tell you that over the years I have felt the crushing devastation when situations have NOT worked out even though I believed. I am not naïve. But I hold onto this promise like a baby holds onto its blankie—for dear life. I hold onto belief, even in moments of disbelief, because of what I have experienced in my life.

Here’s the crazy. I, fool that I am, asked for a sign. The minute I did this foolish, crazy thing, people, friends, relatives, and preacher’s came out of the wood work affirming me, supporting me, praying for me, and telling me, Vicky, you can be a little crazy, for just a little while longer. And if I was, maybe, just maybe, God would show me the next step in the great adventure.

Here’s even crazier. Yesterday my daughter and I stopped and picked up the mail. I told her I needed to pick it up in case there was a check in it, like maybe I won the lottery. Ha! Ha! I didn’t open that mail until just now, Sunday night.

Yes, there was a check in the mail, a check related to the sale of my rent house. A check not anticipated; a check out of nowhere; a check just right for making a mortgage payment.

Crazy ain’t it?

God’s provision. You gotta believe.

For Chris

I am sad to share that my nephew Chris, 28-years-old, was killed in an automobile accident New Year’s morning around three a.m. eastern time after leaving a New Year’s Eve Party.  He was a beautiful boy, much loved by his mother and father and his sisters, and especially his six year old son, along with his large extended family.  So much loss and sadness this past few months.  Pray for us as we try to keep our eye on the blessings. God is with us.  Please say a prayer for his mother, dad, sisters and brothers-in-law, and his son.  A tough year has just begun for them.

 

 

 

Singing My Life

I cried all the way through the movie, “It’s Complicated.” I know. It is supposed to be a romantic comedy. And yes, I laughed out loud several times, but it isn’t that funny when you see, right there on the screen, your life.

I’m not talking about the funny part where she has an affair with her former husband after ten years apart. It had its moments, but whatever it was that supposedly made them get back together did not ring true to me. I couldn’t feel any real chemistry between them. It seemed pathetic.

I am talking about the mother played by Meryl Streep. I’m talking about her children. I’m talking about their life after divorce. There is a line from the song, “Killing Me Softly,” that says, “singing my life with his words.” That is exactly how this movie felt. It hurt to watch this woman who, after 19 years of marriage and three children and a divorce, slowly built a life and home for herself and her children. She did it alone. In spite of match.com and all the people who, on the day after their divorce, find a new person to love, most of us, women especially, go it alone. It hurt to watch the antics of the father and his classic younger woman heartbreak. That is not my story, but there is no denying that some of it hit home.

It hurt to watch the tears in the eyes of her adult children. They were so full of love, life, hope, and pain as they watched their parents interact, as they watched their parents act out their own drama. One daughter said, “We are still trying to get over the divorce.” In one scene all three of these adult children, a young man and his sisters, huddle in bed together, crying over the state of their family. Ten years later.

It was profoundly sad to me to find this part of my life a cliché. It is sad to me that this is the new American family.

Meryl Streep had a line that said it all. I paraphrase, but she said it took her years of being lonely to get used to being alone. Then she said I don’t feel alone anymore. I just feel normal.

There you go, Meryl, singing my life with your words.

AH HA!

Here at the cusp of a new year I am revelating. Instead of UH OH, it is AH HA.

I have been struggling with the meaning of the last several months. I was, nine months ago, working very hard for a great little city. The Mayor and City Council were pleased with my work and gave me their full support. I had a dream staff. It was a love fest. We cared about each other and supported each other. I had the support of the community. In March I had the best performance review of my career. I have, throughout my adulthood, always been, in my work, a fair haired child in spite of my significant brunette tresses.

Then in May, like a bolt of lightning, it all changed. A new majority was elected to Council and it became evident that all would not go forward as planned. I was gone. Just like that.

Then I made the “What’s it all about ROAD TRIP.”

Since my return I have been busy dealing with various issues and applying for jobs, with moderate success. But something hasn’t been right. My focus keeps shifting. First, I felt I must stay in Austin, that it was my much sought after home. Lately it has shifted to survival; a job, any job, anywhere. Financial survival.

The big picture has somehow been forgotten.

Just tonight, after a long talk with a wise confidant and sage friend, I realized that I must not just make meaning of the last few months, I must make meaning of the last few years; even the last thirty years.

I must remember who I am, where I have been, and where I am going. I am a person who has never taken the easy road. I have constantly had my eye on the next bend, the next curve, wondering what is beyond.

I am the person who has taken great risks. Not all of those risks have paid off. Some were disasters. Let’s say many were disasters. I have made bad decisions with ongoing consequences. But, there have been moments of extreme accomplishment and joy. If I left this world today I know that God has allowed me to touch people and communities in ways I could never have hoped for or anticipated. I’ve had a calling.

But, I am a person whose story is constantly unfolding. My life has not been safe or predictable. I am drawn to the challenging and the exciting. I am a woman who takes a major road trip across the country by herself to see what she can see.

It has been tempting to fall back on “the age” I am now. At 55 must I look for security and comfort? Should I protect myself from the coming discrimination against the aging worker? Do I play it safe, finding now my final resting place and hunkering down for the last race?

Or am I just trying to submerge, push down, and extinguish the fire that has burned inside, lighting my somewhat crooked path?

My friend nailed me tonight.

She said I am tortured because I feel guilty for loving this life on the edge, for loving the drama that sometimes surrounds me. She knows I am having trouble accepting my possible fate; that fate being to settle for something safe. To settle for something that does not, for whatever reason, meet the criteria for the next big adventure.

There lies the big picture. God made ME this way. I have tried to honor that in most moments of my life, and as a result, I have been hugely blessed.

Whatever comes next, however painful or scary, it must be true. I don’t want to overlook or turn my back on God’s provision for me, but I know tonight that it must be true. It probably won’t be what many would expect, or even advise me to do. It might even look disastrous.

But, it will be good, whatever it is, because I will be living the dream. I just know it.

Free to Fly

My daughter told me over Christmas that I was free to fly.

I was telling her that I wasn’t sure where I would land at the end of this current cataclysmic change. I was concerned because she is embarking on her own journey, headed to North Carolina to live miles away from her family for the first time. She is going to work with troubled children in a wilderness camp program. I am so proud of her.

I was worried about my own role in this. When I left Arkansas at 22 (Lydia is 23) the one overriding loss I experienced was the sense of home. My parents had just divorced. My mother moved from the one place I might have called home even though I lived there only two years. I don’t even remember where my Dad lived. I can’t remember visiting his home until some years later when he remarried. In Oklahoma, then later Texas, there was nowhere to call home beyond a small apartment where I lived alone, away from my family. It wasn’t until I married and established my own home, at 29, that I felt centered again. That feeling of homelessness marked much of my 20s.

I have unbelievably created the same environment for my own children; divorced just as they reached young adulthood. Both of them, like their parents before them, haven chosen not to marry young, but to strike out on their own. And here I am, a moving target of a mother, embarking on new ventures, floating from place to place. This is very disturbing considering my dogged determination to avoid that very situation. It is a spiritual truth that we visit our emotional histories on our children despite our best efforts. It seems we can’t help ourselves.

My precious daughter informed me that should I end up somewhere completely new and foreign that it would be a gift to her. It would be a gift in the sense that when she came to me, wherever I might be, that it would be time together undisturbed by the demands of the family and friends surrounding our Texas home base. No need to divide her short visits between me and the others she loved and wanted to see. When she came to me it would be about us, mother and daughter.

She thinks I have sacrificed much for my family all these years. I don’t agree completely. It has been so beautiful to have them around me, my children, my sisters, my mother, my grandmother, and even the father of my children for our 19 years as a family.

My daughter says she knows who I am and I should continue to walk toward that person. This heavy, self imposed burden to provide something for them I am powerless to provide, has been lifted.

“It is time to fly
I can see beyond the door
To horizons far and wide
I could chose any
And I would
Even through the fear

The journey to this place
Had its moments of beauty
But it was not always kind
I glimpse greater beauty beyond
The places I must fly
Yet I cannot embrace them

Still the door is closed
Against me
I do not know why
Or maybe I do
And will not acknowledge
That it is not a door
But a wall

But I do not recognize this wall
As I press my hands, my face
Against it
I do not recognize this door
As one of my making
And I do not have the key

Yet still
I beat my wings

So I can fly”

(Excerpts from “FLY” by Vicky Rudy)

I think I see now the mystery of the wall. I think I know why the door has been unyielding.

I think I have just been given the key.

It changes everything.

UH OH

Writer Leonard Pitts, Jr. wrote a column recently bidding farewell to the Ohs. He meant the decade of the 2000s, as we move to double digits. As in 2010. He called this decade the Uh-Ohs. Time Magazine calls it the decade from hell.

I get it. On the national stage the country was in crisis for the entire decade. That turmoil has led to personal turmoil for individuals and families across the country. I myself have had a great decade overall, but I’m living the Uh-Oh right now. So is my extended family.

I have to say my little family did a pretty good job of having a wonderful Christmas. Somehow just being together can make that happen. Love is like that. In spite of my bad starter attitude, love happened and it was a wonderful Christmas Day. It didn’t match my fantasy of the family Christmas. Things are different now, but different can be good. It’s all about letting go of the fantasy and focusing on the blessings. We found our Merry after all. 

We are like a lot of families though. Behind the Merry Christmas, behind the blessings, are the personal tragedies and desperate situations we deal with on a daily basis. For my close and extended family it goes beyond joblessness and change. It is mental illness. It is not the kind of illness you will notice right away. It doesn’t present itself that way. What seems, on the surface, to be a fairly normal existence, begins to crumble and break apart. It wears away at a life over the years, doing its silent or not so silent damage, first on the mentally ill, then on those who love them and try to support them.

Mental illness can permanently alter the relationships in a family, sometimes with tragic results.

My daughter made a wise observation. She noted that individual members of my family are at difficult places of their own right now. On top of that, we are trying to find the resources to help a family member deep in a mental illness crisis. The crisis is exponentially worsening because of joblessness and the resulting inability to get proper medications and care; the proverbial vicious cycle.

For the first time in its history my family lacks the financial and emotional resources to slap a bandaid on it. It is hard on me. I’m the fixer.

I can’t fix this.

UH-OH.

So now we go on faith and prayer. Funny how we have to get to this point before we let go and let God. We wait until we can’t fix it. We wait until we are out of bandaids.

And, as Leonard Pitts, Jr. said it, “We are people of an astounding capacity for resilience, redemption, renewal, reinvention. Change is our birthright…So this era of hardship is finite by definition. This too shall pass away.”