​I didn’t get to honor my Father last week, and I so enjoyed seeing so many posts honoring your dads.  I believe we can never use our words enough to honor people while they are alive.  My father is very ill, eaten up with cancer, and so I know I will not have another Father’s Day to be with him.  He is getting weaker every day, but still such a good storyteller and in his right mind.  We enjoyed hearing a story about him trying to get a bat out of the basement several years ago last week, and that led to more stories….
 
Kim always said that Dad told us he loved us by changing our oil.  When she went through a divorce, Dad would stop at her house almost every day to see if she needed something, would check her car out and her lawnmower and all the things he was good at.  Sometimes he wasn’t so good with long, wordy, emotional conversations, but he was phenomenal with the hands-on stuff.  Although when he got saved, he became much more emotional and would hug us often and tell us how he felt.  We’d laugh because for a while, as he was transitioning into the “new” him, he would say, “I appreciate you.”  It took him a while to work up to the “I love you.”  Last Sunday, as we left, he hugged me and said, “I love you, honey – you will never, never know how much.”  We both just cried and cried, as we know these days of voices in your ear are soon going to transition to him waiting with Jesus until I arrive to hear him say those words again.
 
My father taught us how to live by his actions, not so much his words.  One of my best/worst memories was when we were headed to Myrtle Beach with three other families when I was a teenager.  We had a truck camper, one of those little campers that slides on the bed of a truck, and it served us well – all four of us could fit in that tiny thing, and we thought it was a palace.  I especially loved it because I could ride up on the bed that was over the cab and read when we went places and didn’t have to sit in the car with everyone else.  Growing up on the farm, with lots of chores to be done, reading was a guilty pleasure, and I’d hide to do it any time I could.  As we were headed to the beach, having left early, in Charleston, we came across this car that was broken down on the interstate.  I feel the truck start to slow, and I look out the window and see this car along the side of the road.  I instantly began to seethe, thinking that I could NOT believe that Dad was stopping.  WE WERE ON VACATION!  What in the world?  Not only did he stop, but we stayed there for hours, him tinkering on that car, getting parts, just totally dropping what we had going to help this family.  As the hours went on, the madder I got.  And yes, I admit, I was thinking bratty, selfish teenage thoughts:  If only we’d passed by, someone else would have helped; my friends were already there and would have hours of fun without me; how selfish could Dad be when he was only thinking of others and not his own family….you get the drift.  It wasn’t pretty.
 
But my dad showed me then – and he continued to show me throughout my life – that other people are just as important as we are, and when we have trouble, we are to be there for each other – and that our Father God does not go on vacation, so if we are His servants, how dare WE go on vacation.  It has been shown to me time and time and time again, and never was Dad put in danger when he picked up a hitchhiker or invited someone into his home or went into their home.  He is a lover of people, and if there is an ounce of strength left in his body, he will help you.  One day, he returned home from radiation and was so weak he just needed to get home, but he had a friend who had cancer and was sick, so he took time to go chase him down so he could check on him.  That’s my dad.
 
Another memory that has come to the forefront while I’m up at the Miss WV Pageant with Tal was the last year she was running for Miss WV.  It is a rare occasion when a girl enters that pageant and just wins the first time.  Most of the people who have won have competed for up to four years, until they age out.  Talia got the pageant bug when she was 11 or so and won the Miss Ripley 4th of July Pageant by promising to “sparkle for the little town of Ripley” and won $50.00.  From then on, it was her thing.  My dad sat through pageant after pageant that she wouldn’t win, but usually came home with Miss Congeniality.  He was a man’s man, not a pageant guy, but he loved this little girl, and he knew what it meant to her for him to be there.  He usually wouldn’t be at the Miss WV pageant as we knew she wasn’t going to win but was just learning and making great friends.  But the last year she competed, we had hopes that she could come close to winning, so Dad came to Morgantown to watch.  The prior year, Tal had had a horrendous thing happen to her, and she almost didn’t recover from it.  She had heard God tell her when she was 18 that someday, she was going to walk across that stage as Miss WV, and she clung to that.  This was the last year she could compete, so God was either going to fulfill that promise, or she was going to go home devastated and perhaps cycle back around to the depression and brokenness of the previous year, so a lot was on the line. 
 
As they began to call the Top 10, I was not nervous as I had watched the preliminary nights and I knew she’d done well enough to make it in.  But at the calling of the 9th girl, when it wasn’t Talia, Dad began to cry.  Slow tears were washing down his face, and I looked over and saw, and Kim saw, and then we both began to cry, just because the love and hope and fear Dad had for Tal was pouring out of his eyes.  They called her name on number 10, but by then, our whole row of people were crying, just from the love that a family shares and it had nothing to do with her making it in the Top 10 or not.  It was another way Dad showed us he loved us, by tearing up if something bad was happening or if he was filled with joy.  We often cry when saying the prayer at a meal, because Dad will cry, and then we just all start. 
 
Another way Dad showed who he was is how he always wanted to share his faith with others.  He would not be afraid to talk to someone about their soul, even someone who wanted nothing to do with the message he was giving.  He cared enough about them to risk that they would never care back, just so he could introduce them to the Lord.  A few years ago, when he came out of anesthesia from a surgery to fix a punctured lung from a lawnmower accident, he was out of his mind, seeing bugs and making Kim and Mom and I do construction work from his bed, thinking he was on a job.  Even then, when he was out of his mind, he was witnessing to the doctors and the nurses, holding them tight and asking them if they had made a decision to ask Jesus into their heart.  See, when he invited Jesus into his heart, he got turned inside out, became a man who would cry before he would curse, became a man who would love in the face of rejection, became a man he’d never dreamed he would be, and he wanted everyone to know that peace and joy that comes from being who Jesus makes you, not who you make you. 
 
As I’ve thought about these things, all of them remind me of God – the God who cries with us when we are hurting and when our dreams just might not come true; the God who loves us enough to call us to Him when we are rejecting Him at every turn; the God who sees us with a vision of who we can be, not who we currently are.  I am blessed beyond measure to know both of these fathers – and I would ask you – would you like to meet my Father God, my Savior, my Lord?  I would be privileged to introduce Him to you!  Your life will never be the same….

​30 years ago yesterday, I gave birth to my first child, a little spitfire we named Talia Rochelle Markham.  She changed my world, like every firstborn does, and captured my heart.  I really wasn’t sure what kind of parent I would be – I’d waited over five years of marriage to get pregnant, and I wasn’t one of those people that just grabs up every baby they see – babies scared me.  They cried and you didn’t know what was wrong with them; they couldn’t express themselves; they were just downright frightening.  And then I end up with a child with colic.  I can remember driving down the road with her screaming in the back seat with all her might, bawling my eyes out, feeling like I’m going to lose my mind.  Then I learned that a couple shots of Tylenol would put her to sleep – just a couple nights of that, and the colic was gone.  I guess you could say I was the first mom I knew to “self medicate”…..
 
As she grew up, it became obvious that she was meant for great things.  I remember vividly falling to my knees in the bathroom crying and thanking God the minute I read the “positive” line on the pregnancy test.  See, I had wondered if I would be able to become pregnant at all, and once we decided we want to try, I began to pray that God would bless us with a child.  And after trying for ONE MONTH, we were pregnant!  From day one, this child was prayed over, was dedicated to the Lord, was wanted and loved.  Back in those days, you didn’t find out what gender the child was; you just decorated your room in primary colors, bought a lot of yellow or green blankets and called it good.  But somehow, in my mind, I just KNEW it was going to be a girl.  I pictured her in my mind, pretended talking to her and walking with her. 
 
As Tal grew up, we were tighter than tight.  Of course, that waxed and waned depending on whether we were fighting over something she wanted to do that I was preventing.  Starting at age 15 months!  People used to tell me that these strong-willed children are the leaders of today, and I wondered if mine would live to get to be a leader, or I might just do her in before she reached adulthood.  Oh, it wasn’t all turmoil – just occasionally.  The majority of the time, we were laughing and loving and living life fast and furious.  Talia’s smile could light up a room, and she has a personality that people gravitate toward.  She is self-deprecating, makes people laugh and feel better about themselves.  She loves hard and is fiercely loyal.  She is one of the hardest workers I have ever known.  Her days are planned and are fruitful – rarely a lazy day.  She reaches out to people with cards and handwritten letters and notes.  She has a grateful spirit that spills over into her daily life, being thankful for large and small things.
 
When she was little (and now), she would read my face and assign emotions to it that would make her worry.  I can remember time after time, she would say, “Mom, what’s wrong?  You’re mad.  What did I do?”  I would say, “Honey, I just got home from a day in trial, I’m just tired.  There’s nothing I’m mad at.”  She follow up with, “No, mom, you just had a mad face on so I know you’re mad.”  I would have to explain and explain and reassure and reassure that nothing was wrong, that no one was in trouble, I just must have had a thought pass my mind that resulted in the “mad face” – whatever that was – pass over my countenance.  She could read my mind, and I could read hers.
 
Last night at dinner for her birthday, Kim was telling a story about her son Nathan getting into an elevator in a huge high rise, and the doors shut and she wasn’t able to make it in with him.  He was small, and someone on the elevator hollers out that they will watch him.  She stands there, her heart in her throat, as she watches that elevator travel to the 23rd floor with her small son being cared for by strangers.  As soon as she’s telling her story, I say to Tal, “What’s that remind you of?”  She instantly knows what I’m thinking – the time we were in New York (as adults) and she gets caught up in a crowd and pushed into a subway whose doors shut before I can make it in.  We had no cell phones or they were dead in the subway, so we had no plan as to what to do.  I just see my daughter’s panicked eyes looking at me through this sea of people, and I had to just try to think of what she would do. 
 
I jump on the next train, and at the first stop, I get off.  To my incredible relief, there stands my adult daughter, and with no care of who was watching, we both threw our arms around each other and cried with the joy of having been reunited.   I have often said that being a mother has taught me more about God’s love than any of the Bible stories or examples of Jesus.  It isn’t until you’ve loved a child or a parent that you know about unconditional love and how beautiful and strong and powerful it is.  No matter what your child does, your love is ever present.  Yes, disappointment can come, and heartache can be a physical pain, but the bond of love is unbreakable and ever-present.
 
Telling this story reminds me of an incident my son had with his daughter Laney a couple weekends ago.  Laney is three and is the most fun kid ever – always laughing, smiling, being silly, singing songs and telling stories.  The two of them had gone to our farm cabin for their first “sweepover,” and Laney was so excited.  They arrive around 8:30 p.m., and it was cold.  Tyler had worn shorts (not sure what that was about!) so he jumps out of the truck to run around and get Laney out and into the house, and as soon as the door shuts, he hears it lock and realizes HIS KEYS ARE IN THE TRUCK.  Laney is still in her car seat, so he runs around to her side of the vehicle and tries to explain what’s happened and tries to tell her how to unbuckle herself.  She can’t do it, and in the trying, becomes panicked.  She’s crying and then he’s crying, and he tells her, “Laney, I’m gonna get you.  Daddy’s gonna get you.  You’re my princess, and I’m going to come and get you out from the back window.”
 
He has just put a topper on his truck and had the back full of cabinets.  In his panicked frozen state, he unloads those cabinets as fast as he could, takes a screwdriver and busts the back glass.  The repair shop told him he busted the most expensive piece of glass on a vehicle (of course!), and at $430.00, they weren’t wrong.  But of course, as a parent, that’s not what you’re thinking of.  You’re thinking of your princess who is stuck in a cold vehicle, and you are the parent, and you are going to get them out.  He said going through his mind the whole time was, “I’ve got this.  I’ve got this.  I’m not worried.  I’m getting her out.”  He’s trying to yell loud enough so she can hear him making his way to her, and she calms down.  He gets her rescued and they get into the cabin to enjoy the rest of their evening, and Tyler says that all through the night, Laney would wake up cuddled next to him and say, “Daddy, I knew you would get me, ‘cause I’m your princess.” 
 
Tyler testified in church the next Sunday that as he thought and thought about this, reliving her panic and his panic and the ensuing details, God began to remind him that this is how he is to us:  We are his princess, his bride, his son, his daughter, and He’s got this!  No matter how trapped we are, how chained down, how panicked, how defeated, how scared, He’s making His way to us, He’s going to rescue us, He’s going to show us how much we are loved and wanted and protected.  There’s nothing He can’t move out of the way, no walls He isn’t strong enough to break down when His princess is on the other side needing Him. 
 
As you look at your children or your parents today, thank the Lord for His protection over you – and if you don’t know Him, today is the day to ask the Lord to come into your heart – there’s no better protector than our God!

​We are off on a trip with our grandsons, and while we were driving last night, telling stories, of course, and Tom says, “Tell the boys about the ‘Victory in Jesus’ guy.”  I said, “Oh my goodness, I had totally forgotten what I was going to write my story about this week, and you reminded me!”  I had seen this crazy “leggings gone bad” montage of pictures this week which reminded me of this and just made me laugh again.  Isn’t it amazing how things that happened 45 years ago can still make you laugh?  I love it – the things you forget that are so important, and then you latch on to that small memory to hold of something that brightened your day!
 
I grew up in the Church of the Nazarene in Ravenswood, and I have so many great memories of that church and its people.  My friends all went there, and we were a tight-knit youth group.  I don’t remember us taking a ton of big expensive trips and doing all the things that churches feel they have to do with the youth these days to keep from losing them, but we just went to church three times a week, tried not to get caught by Rev. Schmidt writing notes (or he would call you out!  Which, yes, I know from personal experience….)  We tried not to get “the snap” from our mothers which meant we had to leave the back rows with the teens and go sit with our parents, walking that long humiliating “perp walk” up the aisle with everyone watching.  We had crushes on each other in the youth group, and some even got married and are still married today – praise God!  All in all, it was just a great place to be and to grow up!
 
My friend Shelly and I usually sat on the back two rows, and as long as we were good, we were allowed not to sit with mom and dad.  Mom was in the choir, and one particular morning, she caught us laughing hysterically and we got in huge trouble.  Problem was, there was this guy who was right in front of us, and he had on these light tan polyester pants, fitting fairly tight, but not gross or anything.  I mean, who notices an old man’s pants anyway?  We never would have but for the fact he was keeping time to the song by squeezing his butt cheeks.  No lie.  The song was Victory in Jesus, and with every beat, he would squeeze a bit and hold.  I do not even know how we noticed it to start with – must have looked down at the hymn book and his rear was in the line of sight.  Once it was on our radar, game on!  You couldn’t stop watching.  It was mesmerizing.  And yes, I am easily mesmerized….
 
The longer we watched, the more hilarious it became.  It was impossible not to laugh.  At the end of the song, we were practically lying down in the pew, trying to hide our faces.  The hiding didn’t work, because on the way home, as soon as we get in the car, my mom turns around and says, “All right girls, would you like to share what was so hysterical this morning?”  We spill the whole story, and my parents laughed as well – and we made them sit with us the next week just to prove we hadn’t made the whole thing up, and even mom had to crack a smile.  I don’t think any of us sings Victory in Jesus now without thinking of this guy. 
 
And you ask, what in the world is going to be the moral of this story?  Hold tight to your witness for the Lord, as you never know who might be watching……

​Today is Tom and I’s anniversary.  23 years.  Very hard to believe!  Although speaking the number makes me regret that it’s not my first and only marriage, which would have had an anniversary of 37 years soon.  See, when you’ve been divorced, that remains with you always, rearing its ugly head at even the best of times.  When Tom and I got married, I remember lying awake one night talking about how our divorces were our greatest shame, and having to say you’d been divorced was like walking around with a scarlet “D” on your back.  It made you want to avoid situations like family reunions, class reunions, those events where people say, “Well, what have you been doing the last ten years?”
 
But as with God, the great remover of shame and sadness and sorrow, a second marriage is a chance for hope, for a new start and a chance for redemption of your failure as a spouse, no matter whose fault your divorce was.  It saddens me so much when I hear young kids say, “Well, if it doesn’t work out, we’ll just go our separate ways.”  In this instance, sometimes they’re not even married, just living together, almost predicting their demise.  If anyone has been married for a long time, unless you were fortunate enough to have literally married your soul mate, you’ve had times in your marriage where commitment is the only glue holding you together.  Sometimes for years.  And then the love comes back, the joy of being married to that person returns, and you find each other again.
 
We are at the beach this week, doing repairs and painting at our beach cottage.  Even in the midst of these chores I would almost rather take a beating than do, Tom and I have had fun and I feel that romance coming back into our marriage that has been put on hold for a few years in the busyness of kids and jobs and craziness on all sides that barely allows you to have a ten-minute conversation per day.  I’m seeing the man I fell in love with again – it’s a gift!  We’re laughing over those silly things that are unique to each marriage, those little one-liners that only you understand.  One of those in our family is the line, “Well, Peepaw, you’re the one who put me back here!”  To give you the background, one time we had Tommy’s kids at my parents, and we were taking them back to their dad, and Danny, the youngest one, was about four, and Tom had put him into a car seat and buckled him in.  Then he gets in his seat in the driver’s seat and puts the car in reverse.  He looks back at Danny and says, “Danny, is that you back there?” 
 
This four-year-old doesn’t miss a beat when he says (with a bit of aggravation), “Well, Peepaw, you’re the one who put me back here!”  Any time anyone says something that is sort of idiotic, or what I call “wasting air,” we’ll pipe back with, “Well, Peepaw, you’re the one who put me back here!”  Much nicer than, “Are you kidding me?  Why did you ask such a stupid question?” 
 
Danny also one time at Christmas wanted a piece of fudge when we were leaving mom and dad’s house, and Tom told him no, that he’d already had some, so Tom was taking a bag of fudge back to Tommy that mom had made him, and when they get to the car, Tom buckles him in and Danny looks up at him, so cute, and says, “Peepaw, you need me to hold that fudge for you?”  We laugh about that one all the time as well.
 
The things that make up a good marriage are those small things, the memories that aren’t the big expensive things, but the small everyday events.  I have learned in my marriage that compromise is the key to happiness, and reducing your expectations keeps you from constantly being unhappy, but instead, as Paul encourages us, to be content in whatever situation you find yourself. 
 
I find if I praise my husband (just like when we praise our Lord), he is more present in our marriage and our relationship is twice as good.  Same with God – if we keep praise on our lips, we are reminded more and more of His goodness and His faithfulness.  I used to tell Tom that the first thing I would do after his funeral was get on EHarmony, because I love being married so much.  I told him recently that if he was bothered about that, I had changed my mind and decided I would just stay single and run around with the grandkids.  He laughed and said he really hadn’t been fretting over this….
 
We are a blessed, blessed couple, and God has been so good to us!  I praise His name for bringing this man to me, for holding us together in the hard times, and for giving us joy in our old age.  Go hug the ones you love – they won’t always be there! 

​Just yesterday I was talking to one of my videographers who has a nine-month-old son, and he says his wife is obsessed with getting his son into the best schools and figuring out where to move and all these things, and I told him that I had just recently been thinking that one of my words of parental advice would be to relax a bit, as I’ve watched my children grow into adults, and neither of them are doing what we worked so hard for them to be able to do, and they are happy as can be.  We hauled Tyler around to several out-of-state colleges, several in-state colleges, and he didn’t even attend college.  Talia went to college, got a degree in communications, and we just KNEW she’d be doing marketing or political campaigns, and she’s now back in school to become a history teacher. 
 
I believe as parents, we should strive to teach our children about God, who He is, how He applies to their lives, make sure to instill as much character in our children as is humanly possible, and try to shield them from the world’s influences upon their choices as much as possible.  I can remember looking at my children at times, when they’d say or do something totally AGAINST what they’d been taught, and I’d think, “Who in the world is this???  This is NOT my child!”  And I think God has to do the exact same thing with us at times….wondering where that evil thought came from or those nasty words that were spoken out of our mouths, looking down at us and thinking, “You are not acting like my child, the one I’ve been teaching and training and believing in and building up.”  But the fact remains that even though our children disappoint us or break our hearts, they are still our children.  And aren’t you thankful that when you disappoint God, He doesn’t just give up on you and turn His back, but instead turns you back around to what He was teaching you and training you to be? 
 
All these Miss America memories popping up on my Facebook reminded me of the craziness of that time, and I’m not sure I’ve told the story of what it was like to go through getting a kid ready for something like that and being there with them.  When you are Miss Oklahoma or Miss Arkansas, they have an entire team of people (voice coach, interview coach, personal trainer, you name it) preparing you for the Miss America pageant.  When you are Miss West Virginia, you have your mom and a few wonderful volunteers who do their best to get you prepared interview-wise, practice and critique your talent with you, and help you shop for and pack for the biggest event of your life.  Talia had something like four or five HUGE suitcases to get all these gowns and cocktail dresses and workout wear and shoes out to Las Vegas.  Tom and I had two or three large suitcases just to get all the things we would need for a week as well.
 
Talia goes out a week or ten days before we leave, and mom and dad are meeting us in Vegas as they were coming from their place in Florida.  We had rented a condo a few blocks away from the hotel as we thought that would be a lot easier with food and things.  For some reason, our flight got delayed, so I have to message mom that she’s going to have to pick up the rental car, wait at the airport to pick up Talia’s friend that was coming also, and then just go ahead and go check into the condo.  I have very little time to tell her any of this, as they were on a plane, then we were on another plane, and I basically have to leave her a message.  After I get off the phone from leaving this message, I’m thinking, “I just dumped a huge responsibility on my 70-year-old mother,” thinking nothing of telling her to just get a car and find her way around Las Vegas!  If anyone could do it, it’s mom!  So once we arrive (many hours later), there are mom and dad sitting and waiting for us.  I ask how it went getting the car and getting to the condo, and she tells of this harrowing experience of trying to drive and find her way through this wild town, and her GPS dies on her.  She’s struggling to figure out the one-way streets and dad keeps saying, “Ask the woman!  Ask the woman!”  Talia’s friend died laughing as she told us how classy-never-gets-rattled Patty Vannest screams, “The woman is DEAD!”  By the time we arrived, it was 11:00 p.m. or so, and we are told that they finally dropped Talia’s friend at her hotel and arrived at the condo, only to be told that they couldn’t check in because they hadn’t rented it.  So they have been sitting at the airport on a bench for about six hours just people watching.
 
We get our luggage and take it to the car to load it.  We’d rented this economy car, of course, because why would we need something better or bigger?  No thought of how we’d get four people’s luggage to this condo.  Mom and dad still had their suitcases in the car because they hadn’t been able to check in, and their stuff took up almost the entire trunk.  Then here Tom and I come with three more large suitcases.  We have to put the suitcases in the back seat, and Tom and I sat on top of them.  Yes, there was about 3 feet of room left, so we’re bent in two, laughing hysterically because we’re all so tired.  We left mom driving, because by that time, she’d made about 20 trips around the town and knew her way.  I’m laughing even now, just remembering how ridiculous we must have looked, peeling ourselves apart and getting out of that tiny car at midnight to haul all this luggage into this place.
 
As the week progressed, it was a nerve-wracking deal, that’s for sure.  Each night was split up so the girls would do talent one night, onstage interview another night, evening gown one night and swimsuit one night.  After each night, you could meet with your girl for a few minutes before they took them off to wherever they were hiding them.  The girls didn’t have their cell phones, so you couldn’t talk throughout the day.  On Saturday, the day of the actual pageant, I get a strange call from a random number, and it is one of the Miss America chaperones that stayed with the girls.  She says, “I need you to come.  Talia has been in the emergency room all morning, and we have her in bed, and I can’t stay with her as I need to go be with the other girls for final rehearsal.  Can you come and sit with her?”  I assure her, of course, I could come.
 
I jump into the car, and mom drops me off at the hotel.  I race up to the room I’ve been told to go to, and there she lies, dead asleep in this hotel room.  I don’t try to wake her, but my thoughts are racing.  I’m praying and praying and thinking, “Lord, all these pageants she’s gone through to get to this night, this dream of hers, this dream that she felt like you were walking with her on, are you going to let her miss it?”  I’m thinking of what in the world would happen if Miss WV is just missing from the pageant?  Do they announce that she’s sick or do they just go to Miss Washington or whoever and sneak it through?  A couple hours goes by and she wakes up.  She can hardly move to sit up to use the restroom, and I just know we’re done.  She had been starting to get sick before she left, and we even got a Z-pack to take with her in case she came down with strep or something while there.  She had already started taking it, but turns out she had fainted during a practice and that’s what landed her in the ER. 
 
Long, long story short, she and I cried and agonized over what was going to happen.  Was she going to just miss it?  She croaks out, “I’ve just got to be able to say I’m Miss WV and then I can go collapse in a corner somewhere.  I can do it – I know I can!”  I’m not really buying it.  She looks like death warmed over and can’t even hardly sit up.  A doctor arrives about an hour and a half before the pageant is to start.  She convinces him she can do it, she can at least stand long enough to say her introduction, and he clears her to try it.  By this time, there is less than an hour before a LIVE TV show starts!  He takes her to go get ready (starting from no makeup, pajamas, eyes matted together), and I call mom to tell everyone that she’s been approved to be on the show. 
 
I ask mom just to grab my formal floor-length gown, the sequin belt that goes with it, describe the shoes, etc. and just get her, dad and Tom ready and bring me the clothes and I’ll change in the restroom outside of the event.  They had been waiting on bated breath, so they were dressed and ready.  She grabs my clothes and they head out the door.  They immediately get stuck in a traffic snarl because of an accident, and it’s FIVE MINUTES before the pageant begins when they arrive at the hotel.  She throws me a Walmart bag, and I rush to the casino bathroom to change.  When I open the bag, the belt she’s sent isn’t the sequin one, but another more casual one.  At this point, who cares?  I throw this dress on while trying to straddle a toilet, cram my jeans and things into the Walmart bag and have to enter the Miss America pageant while carrying a Walmart bag full of clothes.  They searched your bags when you went in because of cameras and things, and they sort of looked at me like…..”Uhhhh?”  I said, “It’s a long story,” grabbed my bag and rushed in as the music began and the show was on.  I am thinking to myself that it’s only Miss West Virginia’s mom that arrives to the Miss America pageant, having dressed out of a Walmart bag while in a casino bathroom stall…..
 
She was able to make it through the first dance and introductions, and they propped her against the wall as the rest of the pageant went on.  We knew she had not made Top 15 or they would have been really freaking out with her being sick, so it was a relief that she could just disappear after her piece was said – LOL.  And what an honor to represent West Virginia in ANY CAPACITY on a national stage – we are so proud of our State and its people, its heart and its work ethic! 
 
I tell this story so you can have a good laugh at my expense, but in the end of the day, we all know these pageants and these “honors” mean nothing in the scheme of anything that matters.   It is only who we are inside, where our heart and soul resides, that matters in the eternity we will all arrive at some day.  I pray you know who you are and Who you belong to! 

 

​Well, I have survived Tom’s first week of retirement.  Everyone kept asking me what we were going to do when he retired, and I had to respond with the “I have no clue.  Tom doesn’t even know what he’s going to do!”  I was cautiously optimistic this was going to be a good thing, but I have to be honest, Tom and I have successfully made it through 23 years of marriage while not spending a ton of time together.  Oh, we do everything together after work hours, but in our lives, there has been a lot of work, hours that went into the evenings frequently, raising children and doing all their activities, just rushing through our days like we were on fire.  So thinking about Tom having all this time on his hands and possibly being home in my hair when I’m trying to work was met with a bit of apprehension.
 
We left for the beach a few days after Christmas.  We were redoing the bathrooms in our condo down there when Hurricane Matthew hit, and the workers that were supposed to put the new vanity tops in had to do more important things, so these vanity tops had been sitting in this condo in boxes since October, and the floors and custom shower and other things were completed but the old tops were still on the vanities, and I needed to paint, etc.  So we took off to try to accomplish this work ourselves. 
 
When we get the new vanity top out for the master, we set it on the vanity, and the pipes don’t line up right anymore for the drain.  So Tom (who has never done this before) sets out to try to do this Lego puzzle called plumbing.  He goes to Lowe’s and gets what he thinks he needs, crawls under the sink, lays there for not a small amount of time studying the situation, then realizes he needs more than he got from Lowe’s, so back he goes.  This takes up one afternoon and evening.  The next morning, he realizes he needs different things, so he goes back again.  Now, each trip to Lowe’s is 20 minutes one way, so it’s not a quick and easy thing.  By the end of that day, we had been to Lowe’s three times, the last time at like 8:00 p.m. when he’s saying that he just wants to get this over with by this second day.  I didn’t participate a whole lot other than to go back and peruse him laying on his back under this sink, telling me what didn’t line up, studying what he needed to do to make it line up.
 
The last trip to Lowe’s, I had surveyed the pipe situation and sort of knew what we were looking for (I thought!), so we both go.  We stand there in that plumbing aisle and look at these HUNDREDS of boxes of white pvc parts.  There were couplers, reducers, flexible pipe (which we bought to use and later read on the tag it was only for landscape outside work – RATS!)  There were bushings (I had always wondered what a bushing was – and still couldn’t figure it out even with one in my hand.)  My dad had always talked about “putting a bushing on” and I would just act like I knew what he was talking about.  Anyway, we stand there, exhausted, with this plumbing puzzle fresh in our minds until we actually had the parts in our hands, and we ponder and study and ponder and study.  Part of the problem was that we had to bend to reach the pipe coming in from the wall, and at one point, Tom had the parts all lined up to meet that metal pipe part, and when he grabbed ahold of it to move it toward his new creation, it broke off and literally fell apart in his hands.  Which means then that that pipe has to be replaced as well.
 
Long story short, the three trips that day and two the previous day did not do the trick.  The next day had two more trips.  At the end of the day, he had learned the use of plumber’s glue and putty and tape and how all these pvc parts fit together and what you have to do to not make it leak.  It was an ORDEAL!  The other vanity just matched up and it was a five-minute deal.  I have to brag on him – in all of this on-his-back work, he did not complain a bit.  He wasn’t all stressed like he would have been before, when time was always such a pressure because you didn’t have enough.  He just went with the flow (or should I say “the leak”) and got the job done.  I’m thinking I could like this retirement thing ….
 
As I thought about what an ordeal this project was and whether it would have been such an ordeal for someone who started out knowing what they were doing, I began to think of how God has to piece us together when we get off the right path, how when we have twisted and turned and broken ourselves into a million pieces, he knows just the right glue to make us whole again.  I was just listening to Governor Rick Scott on the news talking about the attack yesterday, and he said, “For me, it’s my faith that gets me through.  I just have to pray to get the answers I need.”  And I thought what a perfect testimony that was in the midst of unspeakable evil and carnage.  If we would just keep on the path we know to be right, we won’t end up being such a pain for those around us and such a job for God to keep putting back together.  And God is easier to get to than Lowe’s!  Stay warm and love those around you…our days together are not guaranteed.

​Our family is always low on cash.  We use credit cards for literally everything we buy, including a $2.00 candy bar.  I’ve always got these points schemes running, points on the charge card, fuel points for buying Kroger gift cards.  You name it, a card is going to get used.  Therefore, when we’re going through toll booths, it’s a challenge.  At Thanksgiving, Kim’s son Nathan was in from Raleigh and we were re-telling his famous story about trying to come to West Virginia and having no money for the tool booths, trying to get them to take his American Express card and being horrified that they wouldn’t accept it, so he tried to do a back roads detour to miss the toll booth and then just came upon another one.  He tries to give them his driver’s license to hold as an IOU until he could come back, and they just took a picture of it and sent him a ticket.  What an ordeal for $2.00!
 
Kim then tells of when she was trying to get to Duke to be with her husband on the trip that he eventually died, and he is in the ambulance behind her.  She drives through the EasyPass booth holding cash in her hand, she is so whacked out, then the next toll booth would not take her extra $2.00 she tried to pay to avoid a ticket. 
 
That reminded me of when Talia was Miss WV and she got this modeling job in New York City.  It wasn’t very well paid (perhaps paid in dresses and clothes – can’t remember now) so we opted to stay in Newark in this dive of a hotel on my free hotel points (see, using credit cards does pay off!).  Anyway, we’re getting up every morning and driving into the city, and we didn’t know how much time to plan and we had driven all the previous day and were worn out, and we’re in this sea of vehicles and up comes some tool booth type deal.  There was no person in it, and it just had one of those change catcher things, and we didn’t even know what the toll was, so we just zipped through thinking they’d never catch us because we were driving a rental car that a Ford dealership in Morgantown provides Miss WV to drive on her year of service.  They changed those cars out every month to a new one, so who would be the wiser?  And the main truth is that we just were so freaked out by the enormity of the traffic and not knowing really where we were, that we just weren’t up to the figuring it out with all those impatient New Yorkers right behind us.
 
By the next morning, we had asked and knew what to do, but we were VERY SHOCKED to find out you have to pay like $16.00 a day to get into the City of Manhattan!  I thought $6.00 to get to Beckley was bad.  We had such a good trip that time – Tal would model all day at the Javitz Center, and I would walk the streets of NYC or just sit somewhere and read or talk on the phone and wait on her.  I’d get lunch and take to her and then we’d go out for supper and piddle around and shop or whatever.  Good times!
 
But it was not good times when TWO YEARS go by and she gets a call from the Morgantown dealership with a “Hey, did you have our car in New York such and such day?  Because we just got a bill from the Turnpike Toll Division for $175.00!”  Of course, she can’t think of the details, but she says she is sure she did.  They send us the bill, and the original amount was maybe $2.50, then they add on $100.00 or so for having to send you a paper bill through their automated system, and then another $75.00 went on because it was a rental car and that required more research and paperwork.  Can you believe that?  I sure won’t run one of those things ever again.  They’re Nazis about getting their cash!
 
We laughed telling these stories, but it reminded me of how when we tell a lie or do something deceitful, it ALWAYS comes back to get us.  One lie leads to another, and one sneaky thing leads to another sneaky thing.  One way or another, the truth always comes out, and you have to own your mistakes and your sin.  What a blessing it is that there is a Savior who can erase those “tickets” in the blink of an eye, who can make you not afraid of what’s just around the corner, or what might be uncovered.  Because see, when Jesus gets involved, He covers it all and he throws those sins as far as the East is from the West.  Aren’t you glad??

​I’ve been making these bulb wreaths…the first one I made last year was so relaxing – you know, mindless – just some bulbs and a glue gun, no stress, no brain work.  So I tell Talia this is going to be my new hobby and she says, “I’ll help you!  We’ll sell them at craft shows.  That’s what we’ll do this winter in our down time!”  So I go crazy and purchase thousands of bulbs, thinking that while I was taking care of a family member with cancer, I would have lots of free time to glue and decompress.  Not!  I got about ten wreaths made and had enough bulbs to make 50 more when this fall rolled around!  So then my “hobby” turned into a pressure of what to do with these bulbs!
 
Part of the bulbs I bought last year were purple and silver, and I intended to make some huge wreaths for the church which has plum chairs and some dark purple paint.  So I watch this youtube video of this girl taking pool noodles and duct taping them together and then making her wreath.  She sped up the video, so it looked like a quick “Voila!”  By the time I thought to buy the pool noodles to make my wreaths, they were all sold out but these really thick “good” ones.  Which happened to be lime green.  No worries – I can always paint them purple, right?  Just in case there are holes that show through. 
 
So I get my noodles, and Tom helps me get them bent and adjusted, and we put the duct tape over the seam and go about three to four inches extra on each side.  I started to paint them then but thought I better wait to see how they did with the duct tape.  Next morning, they’d busted their seams, were totally apart, duct tape just hanging over on the edges.  That night, we put a thick wire in the middle of the noodles, tie it down the best we could and duct tape them again.  Then my friend helps me one day and we paint them purple.  Next morning, the wire held the inside of the circle, but the outside part was split open.  So I tighten up the wire, duct tape them AGAIN, paint over the new duct tape, let them settle, and wait another day.  Next morning, the noodle has come apart a little bit but hasn’t broken the duct tape.  One of them has remained in a circle shape and the other one looks like a heart.
 
Ugh.  I go at it again, trying to reposition and get the heart-shaped one into a circle and then hold the circle with my legs to try to get that top portion to stay together (with the duct tape on it) and I get the bright idea to hot glue the crevice that keeps wanting to bust open and then duct tape again over the now-glued crevice.  So I stick the glue in, wait, wait, wait, holding it with my legs.  Seems to take forever to dry, so I add more glue and then go to add more duct tape immediately.  Stupid move as I grab ahold of the noodle RIGHT AT THE SPOT I just glued to add the duct tape.  Burnt me fairly bad – right at the crease between your thumb and first finger – even blistered up.  By this time, I am so sick of this thing, I could scream, but I’ve got too much invested in it to quit now!  So I duct tape it again and it is resembling a fairly round circle.  Now, mind you, five days have gone by and I’ve yet to stick a bulb on this baby!
 
Paint the grey duct tape purple again and then have to touch up the places where my legs have worn off as I’ve manhandled the thing (did I mention Tom quit on me after about two break-throughs?)  Wait another day.  By the time Day 6 rolls around, my heart-shaped circle was the most warped roundish thing you’ve ever seen.  But by then, I’ve put too much time and effort into this, and I KNOW it will be beautiful if I just dress it up with the bulbs.  So I make Wreath No. 1 – the one that was fairly round – and it turned out phenomenally!  Start on Wreath No. 2 – adjust the circle again, put some bulbs on, adjust the circle again which breaks off some of the bulbs.  Glue them back together, put more bulbs on, adjust again, break open more bulbs.  Then I think the only solution is to put some “pokey” bulbs out into the center so you don’t notice that the circle is uneven.  And I have even gone so far as to measure the circumference of this circle a myriad of ways to try to get it right.  Long, long, long story short, as I add bulbs, one minute it would look good, the next it looks like a heart again.  I kept adding and adjusting and “dressing up” and “building up” to make this appear the way it should.  At the end of the second wreath, it’s not a circle really, but still gorgeous.  And anyway, who is going to notice……well, that is, until I now tell the story and everyone will look for itJ
 
As I’m spending day after day after day working on this “image” I had in my mind, I began to think of how God views us – not as we are, but as who He knows He created us to be.  You see, Jesus sees us as our potential, not as our wrecked selves.  Do you ever wonder why you just split apart at the seams over the least little thing?  Do you ever feel like you’re not the shape you need to be (emotionally, spiritually) and you try to adjust yourself, make slight changes or add some more make-up so people don’t see through to the real you, surround yourself with “distractions” so no one can closely see that on the inside, you just aren’t right?   As I adjusted these noodles, every single time, I got the purple paint on me.  On my face, on my clothes, all over my hands.  You see, they were being rubbed off every time I “adjusted” and I was leaving them scraped and damaged even more by my wrangling. 
 
This is what we look like when we try to fix ourselves, or we try to have others help fix us – thinking a new relationship or a new haircut or a new job will fix that broken place in us – that God-shaped hole that only Jesus can fix.  In this process, one of my friends said, “You should have bought those cheap pool noodles, the real flimsy ones, not these hard expensive ones.”  I was like, “NO, DUH!”  But I was too far into it by then, had worked too hard on these, and had spent too much time and energy on them.  And frankly, there weren’t any cheap ones to be found.  But this is exactly what we do with God.  We KNOW there’s something wrong on the inside, we KNOW we need a new fix from the inside out, and we make excuses…..we try to fix ourselves.  When we KNOW that the only way we can be fixed from the inside out is to reach up and ask our Creator to come into our hearts and heal that misshapen mess we’ve become.  I pray you do not cover yourself with beauty, hoping that no one will notice that mess on the inside – because there is One who cares, who loves you more than you’ll ever know, and HE KNOWS that if you’ll just let Him in, it will end all those cosmetic fixes and you will have more joy than you’ve ever known!

We attended a fairytale wedding last night, the culmination of a fairytale romance of a beautiful girl and a handsome man, just like in the princess story books.  Cara, one of Talia’s good friends, got married at the State Capitol, right in front of the Senate doors, walking down the aisle from the rotunda, surrounded by that gorgeous marble on all sides….it truly was beautiful!  But all this “perfection” did not come without some hurts and worries and fears, as Mr. Right was sought and not found.  Cara had been a bridesmaid more times than I can count, and who would have thought she’d be the last one to be married?  She had it all:  Looks, brains, kindness, generosity, athleticism, all the success in the world.  Yet her heart longed for that special man to fill it.
 
It was almost five years to the day yesterday that Cara stood in our kitchen, on the day of Tal’s wedding, and she says to me, “You know, Teresa, I watched Talia and Jimmy last night at their rehearsal dinner, just staring at each other and laughing, like no one else was in the room”…..and I said, “And what?”  She says, with big tears in her eyes, “I want that.  I really want that.”  Tears began to slide down her face, and down my face, as I hugged her and said, “Cara, you will find that – YOU WILL.  Just don’t settle!  Don’t settle for less than you deserve, and don’t just marry someone you’ve dated for a long time just because you’ve wasted too many years on that relationship.  If you don’t love them with a love unselfish enough to give up all your dreams to focus on their dreams, then it’s not enough.  And if they don’t love you in the same way, it’s not enough.”  She says, “I know.  I know.  I just don’t know if I’ll ever find that.”  We hugged, I kissed her forehead and said, “You will – I know you will.  And I’m going to pray that God sends you the man for you, the ONE that will steal your heart and change up your life in a way you’ve never expected.  And most especially, one who loves the Lord more than he loves you.” 
 
And I did.  I did pray for her.  As more years passed and she was bridesmaid once again, and the one to organize the showers for her friends’ babies that were beginning to come, being the best friend anyone could ever be, still walking without THE ONE by her side, my heart ached.  God, don’t wait so long – send him NOW!  A little over four years after that conversation, a chance meeting turned into a love for a lifetime, and Cara got to walk down that aisle last night to give her heart to a wonderful young man from Clarksburg, happiness oozing all over her.  She was crying as she entered the aisle, crying while reciting her vows, and I know she was shaking all over as she saw God’s plans revealed, and oh, how precious they are.  I was bawling then for her, and I’m still bawling, joy seeping out of my eyes little by little.  Her church family was there to celebrate with her, and many from the community – it was truly an incredible wedding, perfect in every moment from beginning to end.
 
It makes me think, though, of how lonely we are when we don’t have a mate, that special someone to share our life with, someone to lean on in times of trouble and to celebrate with in times of joy.  Reminds me of what my sister Kim has said is the worst thing about her husband being gone – she says, “It’s that not having someone to call – you know, to check in and say, ‘I’ll be home in a bit – want me to pick up a pizza?’  Someone who cares if you’ve made it to your destination or if you’re having fun or when you’ll be heading back to them.”  I’ve thought of that a lot – that connection that we take for granted, that person who is just always there.

Jesus talked a lot about weddings, and used weddings in His parables.  In the Jewish culture, weddings were a big, big deal. In the Jewish marriage, people didn't "fall in love". Marriages were more normally set up and executed according to a plan that fitted the needs of the whole society of the Jews. 
When a young man saw the girl he wanted he consulted with his father about the idea of marrying her. Sometimes his father picked the girl and no consultations were necessary. When the bridegroom's father approved the choice the young man would go to the bride's house and speak with her father. Fathers really counted for something in Israel.
At the bride's house the young man would do three very important things:-

• * (a) He would make a covenant with the bride - an actual contract.

• * (b) He would drink a cup of wine with her which sealed the contract.

• * (c) He would pay a price for her. Her father would be entitled to money for his daughter. A young man had to be very serious about getting married because he had to make a sacrifice. In olden times a man with a daughter had suffered financially bringing her up since she was not the field worker that a son would have been.

After the groom had made the covenant, drank the cup, and paid the price, he would make a little speech to the bride. He was going to leave her for a long time and go back to his father's house. He was going to build a bridal chamber for her, a place where they would have their first coming together in marriage (modern honeymoon). Before he left her he would tell her: "I go to prepare a place for you". The contract, cup, and money were her security that he would return no matter how long it took him to build the bridal chamber.
The groom would have to finish the chamber and have it approved by his father. It had to be stacked with provisions - the bride and groom were going to remain inside for seven days, the prescribed length of the "honeymoon". It took quite an amount of work on the part of the groom to build a first class bridal chamber. If anyone asked the bridegroom, during the building process when he would be getting married he would say, "I don't know, only my father knows." He could not go back and claim his bride until his father approved the chamber and said that the time was right. Because of this work and payment, a bride knew she was loved and was prepared to wait a long time.
During this time the bride waited with dignity. She would wear her veil whenever she went out, in order that some other young man would not try to initiate a contract with her. Now she was called set apart, consecrated, bought with a price. In effect she was no longer her own person, but an individual contracted to her bridegroom. She conducted herself with due respect and she used her time to think about married life and to prepare herself for it. As she gathered her trousseau, she always waited, being home every night, especially as time went on. She didn't want to be caught away from home when the bridegroom came. The tradition was that he would come at night, even at midnight, and try to take her by surprise.
It was an "abduction". The bride was "stolen" from her house. She would be waiting with her bridesmaids and her sisters and whoever she wanted to take in the wedding party with her, and they would all have oil in their lamps in case the groom did choose to come at night. As the time went on they were ready to go every night. And suddenly, one night the bridegroom would come. The bride's father and brothers would look the other way, as long as it was the young man with the contract, and the bride and her friends would be whisked off into the night. When the groom's party was close enough to the home of the bride to be heard, they would shout; and when the bride heard that shout, she would know she was as good as married.
The young man would head towards the groom's father's house with the bride and her friends. They would travel through the streets making quite a bit of noise with their laughing. If strangers looked out they would not know who the bride was, because the veil hid her.
The bride and the groom would go into the chamber while the wedding party waited outside. There would also be a large crowd of wedding guests - friends of the groom's father - assembled at the house, awaiting the couple. Everyone would wait until the bridegroom would tell a trusted friend through the door that the marriage was consummated. Then the celebrating would start. There were never any annulments, and every marriage was started right, in its proper place at the proper time.
The next time the crowd would see the bride, at the end of the seven days, she would have her veil off and would be a wife, not a bride. They would spend the entire time celebrating the grand occasion, for seven days. Sometimes they would run out of wine and have to get more; it was difficult to plan for so many people for so long a time.
At the end of seven days of celebration the bride and groom would come out now husband and wife. And then there would be a grand marriage supper, what we call a reception. Everyone would congratulate the new couple and there would be a scene of wonderful joy. And finally the new couple would leave to take up residence in the husband's house. He would have prepared a place for them to live, his own kingdom, as it were, and the couple would go there leaving his father's house. They would permanently reside there, with the husband hoping they wouldn't have too many daughters and have to go through all that with each one.
At the modern Jewish wedding:

• * (1) "Chuppa", the canopy, symbolizes the old bridal chamber

• * (2) the cup is drunk at the wedding

• * (3) the honeymoon is at the home of the bridegroom's father

Jesus often compared our relationship to him as being his bride, and says He will come for us.  But first, we must marry Him – we must choose to be His bride, and then we are never alone.  Sometimes we are married and happy with our spouse, but we still feel alone.  Anyone with me?  I’ve even said to my husband, “If I’m going to be alone, I’d like to be by myself!”  But when we have a relationship with the Lord of the universe, there is never a time we are alone – not at night, not in the desert, not in the wilderness.  He is ALWAYS there.  But we must be ready, for one day the shout of the bridegroom is going to come, and we will not know when it will be – but then is when begins the honeymoon for us as Christians!