In honor of Nano, an excerpt

Here is an excerpt from my last year's Nano Novel, just for fun.

(I am feeling compelled to add all sorts of disclaimers at this point, but I'm going to resist. It is what it is.)

Here we go:

Chosen

Chapter 1 excerpt


The cavernous underground room was deathly silent. Over three hundred people stood in rows, uniform in dress and in emotion. Each was clad in a white, gauzelike tunic and loose-fitting white pants, each person barefoot, each without any distinguishing adornment in their hair or on their bodies. Each woman had their hair fashioned into a single braid, and each man had been shaved bald. Each member stood facing the front of the room, solemnly and with a mixture of monastic calm and stoic determination. No one moved; no one dared breathe. A woman near the back of the room began to cry softly and was quickly ushered out. No one among the rows acknowledged the incident. Their training had been thorough, and only the weak dared show emotion or stand out during a meeting. There were no individuals here, only a collective Body.

At the edges of the rows, men and women in black tunics moved silently, carrying trays with paper cups. The women in black carried trays with cups containing water, pausing at each row and handing out cups to be passed down to each member of the row. The men in black passed out smaller cups, each containing one white capsule. The congregants in white also passed these down the rows, faithfully, bravely. Each person had prepared for this moment, this communion, whether consciously or unconsciously, for many months or years.

When the elements were distributed to every member of the Body, the people in black formed single file lines along the side walls of the room and slowly made their way to the front. They then turned and filed across the front, facing the crowd. The tall man in the center of the black-clad ushers spoke:

"Brothers and sisters, we have waited for this beautiful Day since we embarked on our journey together many years ago. As our numbers have increased, our energies and our psyches have been knit together as one. Now is the time of fulfillment and ultimate enlightenment. We have attained greatness on earth; now we will attain the ultimate achievement, the prize. It is time to journey to the next level. Our travel will be swift. In the shedding of our earthly shell, we will achieve a new freedom and a new level of enlightenment. We will truly become melded into one Great Body, and our collective energy will empower our great leader and strengthen him in his continued work here on earth. Let us therefore cast off the bonds of this plane, and partake together in the final Communion of transcendence."

The tall man lifted up his small paper cup containing the capsule. The crowd in white followed suit. As one, they lowered the cup to their lips and partook, following with the cup of water to wash it down. The tall man knelt down on the floor, and the throng followed, each with eyes closed, heads dipped in silence, and there they waited.

In the middle of the sea of white tunics, a young woman also knelt, eyes closed, heart pounding. She did not know why, but she felt that this was not right. She trusted her leaders -- her Leader -- implicitly; still, this seemed too...something. Her gut screamed, "NO!" She had made a split second decision in raising the cup to her lips: she did not allowed the capsule to enter her mouth, but instead, tipped her head back with her lips closed. When the group knelt, she had quietly spilled the capsule out onto the floor, flicking it away as far as she dared without drawing attention.

"What am I doing?" Her breath caught as she realized the gravity of her rebellion. Independent thought was considered the worst of all sins. She had been taught that it caused a rift in the collective energy. She was probably going to be the sole cause of the failure of this journey to the next plane; she knew she was hindering the process for the group.

She didn't dare move, but listened carefully to the breathing of those around her. She wasn't sure what her next steps would be; at the very least, she was buying time. She had discovered early in her tenure here that she did not have the option of leaving. One of her roommates had tried and was "taken care of." A revelation flashed through her like lightning, providing a brief glimpse at a new idea: she was miserable at the Institute, always had been, and she may actually get to leave now. This revelation was quickly replaced with another: where would she go? Surely they would find her as soon as she reached her home.

Towards the front of the room, she began to hear retching. Behind her, someone gasped. She held her breath. Suddenly, the room was filled with a cacophony of death: sounds of labored breathing, and many beginning to convulse and cry out as their hearts began to freeze within them. The white-clad congregants began to drop like common street rats, foaming at the mouth, seizing, bleeding from their nostrils. She could hear it. She was terrified. She dared not open her eyes.

She forced her breathing to become audible now, mimicking that of the people around her. She rocked back and forth and tried her best to blend in with the movement of the room -- she had to pretend she was dying. Her heart was pounding; it was not hard to feign the fear and adrenaline rush. The man on her right side fell into her violently, knocking her sideways to the floor, and she used him to hide as much of her as she could as she deftly maneuvered her way to a prone position on the floor. A long lost memory flashed into her head - she remembered playing "Charlie's Angels" as a kid, and having to pretend that she had been chloroformed, and she wondered why this random memory would surface now. Her past had been erased from her mind in her training here. She wondered if the others were experiencing their former lives flashing before them. She focused on the childhood memory as she lay pinned under the man. She had to think. "Natalie." That was her name. It had been months since she had used it, heard it, needed it.

After many long minutes or hours -- she lost track of all sense of time -- the chaos subsided and a sickening, almost deafening, silence settled over the room. It was a tomb. She was still face down; her head twisted uncomfortably sideways, her cheek pressed against the cold cement floor. The man who had fallen on her was still on top of her, obstructing most of her head and upper body from view. She dared not move a muscle; any twitch, any breath, any indication of life at all would stand out like a sore thumb to anyone who may be watching. She didn't know who was left alive; she wondered about the one they referred to as the Great Leader. Charles Lazalle. In her tenure here at the Institute, she had come to speak his name with love and adoration. They all had. Though the students had never seen him, save for a few telecasts of his shadow that would deliver messages to them from time to time. The body of believers here would watch each telecast with rapt attention, drinking in every word he uttered like sweet honey, so great was the wisdom he proffered to them. As the students grew in their love for him, so grew their desire to please him. Obedience grew out of this love – though sometimes their devotion was enforced by various methods of “correction.” She was sure Lazalle was still alive somewhere, and that he would be watching to make sure that each of the Faithful had followed through with their part of the ritual. To Natalie, as with the others, Lazalle was her father, her friend, her god. She would do anything for him...although at this moment she was struck with the realization that she would not die for him.

Lazalle was a charismatic leader. He had come from California and was a man to whom people were instantly drawn; a visionary who made students and outsiders alike want to passionately participate in his vision. She had always trusted him, cared for him, looked at him with utmost admiration.

Natalie was jolted out of her memory as she heard a door suddenly scrape open in the back of the room. The door was the only entrance into the underground room from the outside. It was also her only possible exit. She froze, breathing ever so slightly, hoping that her fear would not cause her to gasp for air or tremble uncontrollably. She heard footsteps behind her, walking slowly, methodically, throughout the rows and rows of bodies on the floor. She heard a rustling, then a gasp, and a weak voice cried out, "No, please..." Then a gunshot boomed like a cannon. Her ears were instantly filled with a high-pitched whine. She began to panic. Lazalle -- or one of his helpers -- was making sure that there were no survivors.

As her hearing returned, she could hear the footsteps continuing as the unseen assassin slowly worked his way through the room. He was turning over random bodies, weaving in and out of the now haphazard rows. The footsteps approached her, and she held her breath, her lungs exploding with the rush of adrenaline and the need for extra oxygen. She began to pray, desperately, feverishly in her head to anyone who might happen to be listening. The footsteps stopped a few feet where she lay. After a brief but horrific silence, the assassin stepped over her and moved on, patiently working his way back to the door. Satisfied that there were no survivors left, he left, scraping the door closed behind him. She heard a bolt turn.

She waited several more minutes, listening with batlike senses. She could hear nothing but the ringing in her ears and the pounding of her heart, which, at the moment, sounded like a drum corp.

"What am I doing?" The invasive question came to her once again. She shook it off. She had more immediate concerns.

She lay there a few more minutes and relaxed ever so slightly. Whoever had come through the back door was apparently not coming back… at least, not for the moment. She had to get the man off of her. She slid herself out from under his one hundred eighty-plus pounds worth of dead weight, struggling to free her arm, which felt heavy and numb, from under his torso. Finally, she managed to pull free, and stiffly sat up, turning her head from side to side to work out the shooting pain caused by hours of being pinned to the floor. She shook her arm in an attempt to gain feeling in it again, and soon, pins and pricks in her nerve endings told her that it was coming back to life.

She looked around at the scene, taking in for the first time the carnage and the horror that she had heard. The room was a sea of bodies, stark and surreal in their uniformity. She could not see her roommates, but saw many faces of the people she had grown to like and even care about, despite the fact that emotional bonding was discouraged here at the Institute. She didn't know their names or how they came to the Institute, or even what they did in their former lives. They were all nameless souls who had sacrificed themselves to be added to the collective goal. Who were they? "Who am I?" She was not sure anymore.

She was numb to the notion that each of these familiar faces was now lifeless. She could not get her mind around the enormity of the situation. She began to tremble uncontrollably. She was cold. Her mouth was so dry she could hardly swallow. She knew she was close to shock. She had to get up. She had to do something.

She stood shakily, feeling as wobbly as a newborn lamb. Carefully, slowly, she stepped over body after body, almost losing her balance as she tried not to step on one of the lifeless forms at her feet.

Ooohh... I love memes

Okay, so Marcus tagged me to participate, so here we go:

Quick: what were you doing ten, twenty, and thirty years ago?

Hmmm...

Ten years ago, I was 25, married for two years, had a one-year-old, and was singing in coffeehouses. Lady Jane Grey was in its early days... and I mean very early days: I think, at that point, we had maybe just begun singing songs on our back deck. We were living in a tiny house in Pipe Creek, TX, had no friends, and David was working at a dating service in San Antonio doing telesales. We had no clue what we were doing, what we wanted to do, or where we were going. Oh, and we were poor as Job's turkey. Good times.

Twenty years ago, I was 15 and living in Arlington, TX. My dad had passed away a year earlier from AIDS, and I was picking up the pieces and trying to figure out life as a sophomore in high school. I was thick in the midst of rehearsals: my school daringly decided to take on "A Chorusline" as their spring musical, and I was cast as in the chorus, which required 8 hours of dance practice a week. I loved every minute of it, and I can still remember what the auditorium of Lamar High School smelled like: musty, like old band instruments and carpet.

Thirty years ago, my family had just moved to Texas from Ohio, and I was in the first grade. I was one of the few five-year-olds in my first grade class. Because I was an "October baby" and the schools in Ohio had different birthday requirements fhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifor school than Texas schools, I had already completed Kindergarten, and my mom fought tooth and nail for me to be placed in first grade in Texas. Consequently, growing up, I always felt like the baby amongst my friends...always felt like I didn't "get it," like I had yet to be clued in to information the rest of my peers were privy to. I was always a little "behind" everyone else maturity-wise. Sometimes I still feel like the baby among my peers because of this. Maybe that's why I like youth ministry! :)

Okay, so that's it!

I will tag:

Kathy (my sister from another mister... seriously, I think we were separated at birth)

Sarah (my writing soul friend)

Flo (my non-blogging friend... maybe I can convince her to blog with this? ;) )

David (my dear hubby, of course)

And I think that is all.

Good night.

It's that time of year again... (on why I love NaNoWriMo)

That's right, folks, it's time for NaNoWriMo!

Yep. November 1 is the commencement of National Novel Writing Month.

In short, it's an excuse for us Bipolar/artistic types to have a month long manic episode in which we write like crazy, live in sheer insanity, drink too much coffee, blog about nothing except our novels, obsess about word counts, and try to write a 50,000 word novel in a month's time. It's insane, and why they decided to make NOVEMBER -- the month in which Thanksgiving occurs and the holiday season ramps up in full force -- the month in which one is supposed to accomplish said goal is beyond me. But I do know that it's possible. I did it last year. And I'm going to try it again this year.

Now, for all you haters out there, don't hate. I know that NaNo can be viewed as an event strictly for geeks who write Fan Fic and Emo girls who write vampire novels (and there are certainly many of those present in the NaNo forums), but I think it's an excellent tool for "serious" writers, too.

I do it because it's a month-long excuse to get my butt in the chair. There is a sense of community with the boards and the local write-ins and the podcasts. And there is a healthy, positive peer pressure present (how's that for alliteration!) that spurs me on to get my word count up there... I see my peers' word count graph grow and grow, and I am challenged to keep up.

Anne Lamott, in "Bird By Bird," talks about how, as a writer, you have to only be concerned at first with getting the words on the paper. She says to just get your butt in the chair and "write a sh***y first draft" (her words, not mine). This is why I do NaNo. I have a first draft of a novel from last year, which, incidentally, was my first attempt at writing fiction. I was pleased at the outcome. It needs much revision, but creatively, it was a huge milestone for me.

Last year, I had NO CLUE what I was going to write about until the moment my fingers touched the keyboard the first time. It fascinated me to watch as a story came to me and wrote itself, simply because I allowed myself to get out of the way and let it flow. That is when I fell hopelessly in love with the writing process. I started to view myself as a writer, and I let myself write.

This year, I am a little more prepared: I still have no plot idea, but I have a cast of characters -- rough sketches -- whom I am looking forward to getting to know as the month progresses. Last year's novel was genre fiction, and very plot driven. This year's, I think, will be more character driven.

We shall see.

At any rate, the typing begins on Thursday. I have to write 1667 words a day to stay on pace. Wish me luck.

Oh, and I may be posting excerpts here every now and then... if I feel brave. We'll see about that...

Fire

We are driving through the Mohave Desert, and I never knew such a barren place could be so rich in color. The pale tans, blues, purples, and a black that is the exact color of cocoa decorate the mountains on the horizon in perfectly layered lines, while the bleached sand in the foreground is dotted with scrubby trees that are surprisingly green, complementing the color palette perfectly. The sky is awash with a pinkish haze – whether from smoke from the fires in California or dust, I don’t know – and it blankets the landscape, softening the edges.

We were in California for 10 days, but as we make our way homeward, I feel as though I am leaving behind a lifetime’s worth of emotion.

When we began our trip, we left home a family of “four”… the three of us and the hopes of a new baby, whom we found out I was carrying the week before we left. Now, on the way home, we return as a family of three, the dreams of a new baby left behind in San Diego.

Having miscarried at the beginning of the trip, I allowed myself to grieve very briefly during the two days of limbo when we didn’t know whether or not I was going to be able to keep the pregnancy. Like King David, I spent those two days crying, praying, and asking God for healing and deliverance… and waiting. I was sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

On Sunday, then news came. It was over. The first four days of our vacation had been colored with worry, fear, and grief. I – we – decided, like King David, to wash our faces, get out of the sackcloth, rise from the ashes, and enjoy the rest of the week. We did so for Punky, because he deserved to have a good vacation, and we did so for ourselves, because we had looked forward to this trip for a year.

After the hospital drama, we enjoyed another day in San Diego, and then the fires came. We were oblivious to the sheer scope of the flames; we frolicked on the rocks of La Jolla cove as the smoke rolled in and masked the sun, turning the sunset a deep tomato red, and we smelled the smoke and wondered at the ash. We had no idea the fires were so close.

As the latter part of our vacation began, we headed up north towards Los Angeles. The fires in San Diego were raging, and when we left the area, we drove through smoke and ash as the hot Santa Ana winds whipped the fires into a frenzy. Evacuations had taken place ahead of us on our route, leaving the middle class suburbs where we stopped for gas and food quiet and empty, like modern-day ghost towns. The freeway route we were traveling literally closed in our wake as we headed north.

We arrived in Fontana where we stayed with my former youth pastor and his wife, Dennis and Karen. Seeing them felt like home. It was so amazing to get to hang out with them and catch up – we’ve seen each other just 3 times in 20 years. We cherished our time together, and it was water to my soul. Dennis and I sat up till 2:30 am our last night there, and when we left yesterday, my heart was breaking.

Last night we stopped by the Grand Canyon at sunset and stayed long enough for the full moon to rise all orange and plump like a pumpkin over the South Rim. And now we are headed home, and I hear that autumn has finally come to South Texas. This year, it rained more than it has in our whole lives, and the Indian Paintbrushes bloomed all the way through September. They say it will be a mild winter. I hope so.

Loss

I haven't blogged in a few weeks because I was pretty busy preparing for a two-week vacation to California. You know how it goes: there's mountains of laundry to be done, cleaning, and then the setting of the office in order so that things will (hopefully) go smoothly while I'm gone.

In the midst of trip preparations, we found out that I was pregnant. We were shocked and excited at the prospect of having a baby after so long (our son is 11 now, so we've not had "baby" on the brain for some time). We started thinking baby thoughts. We started looking at baby clothes. We started thinking about converting our guest room into a nursery. And when we got back from vacation, I was to have my first doctor visit. We were looking forward to that first sonogram and that first heartbeat.

We began our road trip without a hitch and arrived in San Diego on Thursday. I was looking forward to taking Punky around San Diego while David was in his conference. We planned our next few days in the car on the way out to California: one day we'd go to the zoo, one day we'd see downtown, and one day we'd go exotic car hunting in the fancy areas of town.

As soon as we got into the hotel room, though, I had just gotten settled when I noticed that I had started spotting slightly. I immediately began to panic: this didn't happen when I was pregnant with Punky. This can't be good. I called my mother-in-law and she eased my fears a bit. A little spotting is normal. Don't worry about it. I called my doctor in San Antonio, too, and they told me the same thing: Don't worry. Just take it easy, but as long as it doesn't progress, you're fine.

The next day, Punky and I took the train into downtown to look around. I tried to enjoy myself, but in the back of my mind, I was concerned. We walked around for half of the day, and when we returned to the hotel that afternoon, I was exhausted. I laid down for a bit, hoping it would help to be off my feet.

When I got up, though, I knew things weren't right. The spotting had progressed. I went outside to find David, who was waiting at the rental car for AAA — the van had a flat tire! — and told him that we needed to get to the hospital.

So we hired a cab, got to the hospital, and spent exactly 6 hours in the E.R. waiting for the doctor. They took blood, told me to come back in two days to take more blood so that they could compare the levels, told me that I was to be on bed rest, and sent me on my way. Oh, and the doctor said, "If you do miscarry, it will probably happen sometime next week, so you'll need to find another hospital in LA just in case that happens.

I spent all day Saturday in bed, and it was a very low day. Why had God brought us all the way to California for this? Why had we had such a surprise pregnancy — gotten pregnant on the pill, no less — for it to end in miscarriage? Why, when we had spent a year talking about this vacation, looking forward to it, and talking it up to Punky… and now, it seemed, all we were going to be able to do was sit in the hotel room and in hospitals, mourning? Why? My heart was broken.

I picked up my Bible and prayed through Psalm 139. It didn't help. It only made me cry more. I set my Bible in my lap and wept, flipping randomly through the Psalms, asking God for some help.

Then my eyes fell to Psalm 116.

" 1 I LOVE the Lord, because He has heard [and now hears] my voice and my supplications.

2 Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore will I call upon Him as long as I live.

3 The cords and sorrows of death were around me, and the terrors of Sheol (the place of the dead) had laid hold of me; I suffered anguish and grief (trouble and sorrow).

4 Then called I upon the name of the Lord: O Lord, I beseech You, save my life and deliver me!

5 Gracious is the Lord, and [rigidly] righteous; yes, our God is merciful.

6 The Lord preserves the simple; I was brought low, and He helped and saved me.

7 Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

8 For You have delivered my life from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling and falling."

I breathed it in. My self-pity began to vanish. Indeed, God has dealt bountifully with me. And then I read this:

"15 Precious (important and no light matter) in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints (His loving ones)."

Reading this through the lens of Psalm 139 gave me a revelatory perspective on my situation. God saw what was happening to me at that moment. He was right there. He knew, and was grieving with me.

What a relief. I decided at that moment that I was going to trust Him, and whatever He allowed, I would choose to trust in His perfect sovereignty.

And as I gave it to Him and read the rest of the Psalm, I discovered how I needed to respond:

"17 I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call on the name of the Lord.

18 I will pay my vows to the Lord, yes, in the presence of all His people,

19 In the courts of the Lord's house–in the midst of you, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!)"

I had been in bed all day. I made my choice: I got up, washed my face, got dressed, and went to the evening worship service at the National Youth Workers Convention with David. I knew that my going was symbolic act of trust. I went… and I paid my vows to the Lord in the presence of His people. I offered, through an abundance of tears, my sacrifices of thanksgiving to my God. Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.

The next evening we went to the hospital and found out that we had lost the baby.

And while it has filled me with sadness, while I grieve for my lost baby, I know that God has a plan. He is the author of life. I have to trust Him.

While I may never know the whys, I know the Who. And if nothing else, this was a fierce reminder to me that I cannot do anything apart from Him. I am His, He is God, and I am not.

At the conference on Sunday, Steven Iverson led us in Taize-style worship. We sang one line over and over again, and I wept as it penetrated my soul:

"Your way, Your will, Your heart… not mine, Sweet Light, not mine."

Papua New Guinea and Me

I'm ten years old. It's Wednesday night in the throes of Texas summer, and I am at church. My mother has just delivered me to my classroom where I normally attend Pioneer Girls, a Christian Girl Scout lookalike organization. We all gather Indian-style on the floor to wait for our plan of action for the evening when our teacher, a jolly lady with a moon face, claps her hands and says, "Girls! We have such a treat for you tonight! A missionary is visiting from Wycliffe Bible Translators, and we are all going to join the big people in the sanctuary to watch a movie about the exciting things the Lord is doing in Papua New Guinea!" We all look at each other, trying to decide if this is an exciting development or not. One one hand, it's something different, and it's a movie, and when you got to watch a movie in school it was always fun. On the other hand, it's a movie about missionaries. We aren't really that excited as the realization sinks in that this is probably a "big people" movie, and our "big people" Pioneer Girls leaders are only taking us in to participate because they want to see the "big people" movie; thus we will be bored to tears.

We enter the sanctuary quietly, herded in by our leader who is shushing us all the way down the aisle, and file, giggling and whispering into the only remaining row -- the front row. The sanctuary looks weird to me, because it is dark and cool, the narrow windows blacked out by fabric, the late summer evening glow still oozing through the gaps like liquid gold.

The movie, projected on a portable reel-to-reel machine, flickers the story of this lone missionary woman who lives with the natives in Papua New Guinea, learning their strange language that has no written form. This missionary's job is to learn the language, and then to create an alphabet and a written language for them so that the Bible can be translated into their language and, ultimately, they can be taught to read about Jesus.

The missionary is a wisp in the tribe. She is small, and ghostly white against the beautiful espresso-black of the people she is trying to reach. The grainy film sputters and stutters as it shows her eating with them -- grubs and ants and some sort of white paste out of a leaf -- and walking among them, holding their children, listening to their stories, trying to understand their tongue. The language barrier is great, but she manages to live as a fairly accepted citizen among these strangers. She stands out in her missionary clothes, a long skirt and a long-sleeved canvas shirt, while loincloths and black breasts and naked little children's buttocks fill the movie screen. We giggle at the nudity. Breasts being shown in church! We are embarrassed because we know our parents are somewhere in the room. They know we have seen the naked people. We squirm at the thought.

"The lack of common language can be frustrating and often heartbreaking," says the missionary in a voice-over. "One night, I was awakened by the sound of wailing. Neemaw, a grandmother, has been sick with fever. Her family was now wailing in the night in the hut next to mine. I rushed out of my hut and asked what was happening." The movie shows half-naked women weeping and wailing and the white lady trying to communicate, but they are not hearing her. She continues, "One of the women finally told me that Neemaw had died, and they must bury her. I rushed over to where Neemaw was lying, and, upon closer look find that she was still alive, but in a deep coma. She was certainly breathing. I tell this to the women, but they do not listen, but continue to cry for Neemaw."

The movie shows pandemonium as the crowd presses in, a sea of people crying and mourning as they place Neemaw on a stretcher and raise her still-alive body on a makeshift stretcher. She is haphazardly waving one of her hands around like some sort of crazy conductor, directing the throng as they wail their funeral song, delirious, eyes lolling back in her head, mouth open and drooling, obviously still alive. Then the movie depicts, to my horror, the whole crowd lowering Neemaw into a hole in the ground, Neemaw still flailing her hands around, the missionary woman in the back of the tribe screaming, desperately begging them to understand that she is alive. The crowd doesn't listen, but begins to throw dirt into the hole, covering Neemaw's face and body, until her hand stops moving. Soon she is completely covered with dirt and still. The missionary woman is crying and tearing her way into the center of the crowd, but she is too late.

The movie screen cuts to black as the missionary narrates the horrible words:

"...and Neemaw...was buried....alive."

I am sickened, horrified, my young mind terrorized by the travesty of Neemaw and by the savage stupidity of these naked natives on the missionary's film. I look down the row at my fellow Pioneer Girls; some are sleeping, some are giggling, one is drawing on an offering envelope. I feel guilty and weird at my reaction to the film. I am, apparently, the only one who is really bothered by Neemaw and her mean family.

This is one of those moments in which a tiny sliver of the slab of childhood is chipped away, another part of innocence lost forever; this, the process by which we become adults. When enough of the marble has been chiseled and cracked and broken off throughout our childhood, we find that underneath is an adult person who has been both hewn and uncovered by this process. Sometimes it is brutal; other times it's just mildly shocking.

Many of my moments of "minor" chiseling came from films like these: bad 1970's church films about the Rapture; "safety" films at school about fiery bus crashes and about predators who wanted to sell us all LSD-laced Mickey Mouse stickers that would make us jump out of windows and kill ourselves; horror films I was forced to watch while spending the night with friends; that made-for-TV movie called "The Day After" that came out when I was in 5th grade about the Commies nuking us; and Driver's Ed films from the Ohio Highway Patrol that depicted bad drivers ending up in fiery crashes with steering wheels impaling their bodies. It was very traumatic growing up during the 80's -- the adult world was apparently obsessed with all things apocalyptic, and felt it was necessary to frighten us all into good behavior. I was constantly ambushed by these films, and they surprised and traumatized my feeble, trusting, sheltered mind each time. It's a wonder that I didn't turn out to be, at worst, a psychotic lunatic bent on mass destruction, and at best, an anxiety-riddled freak afraid of her own shadow (well, okay, maybe the last part is true). Each scene stole another tiny piece of my innocence, and each time, I came away feeling sick and regretful...as well as a little ticked off that I had been duped again. And these movies certainly didn't help my already-neurotic, anxiety-ridden thoughts which had begun to plague me at that time in my life due to my father's battle with an unknown illness.

Punky is wired like me -- innocent, wide-eyed, and not a little fearful of disastrous things. I see the same chipping away at his marble slab happening before my very eyes these days. As an adult who experienced the same innocent horrors of childhood, I am torn between wanting to constantly cover his eyes and wondering if too much sheltering could turn him into a weirdo later. We do our best to balance his fears by instilling faith in God, but he still hasn't quite figured out how his faith will protect him from tornadoes and Osama Bin Laden. I don't think that component in our faith walk comes into play until later, maybe, and the small chiselings are baby steps in faith; maybe in realizing that our house is not going to be taken over by Islamic terrorists who come through our bedroom windows at night and steal our toys, we learn to trust in God with the real stuff. Maybe by the time we get to the real stuff, we're ready for it because our faith has been hewn out of the stuff of apocalyptic-missionary-Driver's Ed-films, and as adults, our fear of the unreal is replaced by a faith in that which is Real. It's a confusing way to grow up: having to practice trust in an unseen-yet-real God while trying to understand that all the rest of the stuff we worry about is imaginary, unrealistic, and unlikely.

My childish fears were quickly replaced by the harsh realities of life when I turned 11 and found out that my dad was going to die. Neemaw and the Rapture films quickly became impotent against the very real knowledge that my very worst fear was coming true, and I was thrust into the deep waters of trusting God, sink or swim. I can't help but think, though, that Neemaw and her cinematic cronies were early lessons in faith for a fearful swimmer like me.

portrait in salt water

portrait in salt water, originally uploaded by LadyJaneGrey.

So check it: we're driving home from a funeral in Kerrville at 3 pm on Saturday, and we're trying to figure out what to do. We've tossed around going to Boerne City Lake and flying kites, going to a movie, and other ideas that just aren't hitting us.

So right around Comfort, I look at David and say, "You know what we *could* do..." and he goes, "Hmm... you're right. Two hours... can we make it before sunset?" I say, "Heck yeah!"

So we drove to the beach, stayed for an hour, and came home.

It was great.