In Gennesaret

Another in my continuing saga of analogies between the body and the soul . . . A month or so ago, I woke up hardly able to move my neck. Who can relate, people? It SUCKS. Apparently I’d slept on it funny . . . and had been doing that for a while, I guess, because it had been getting progressively worse for a few days. My kind and thoughtful colleague Lani used to be a massage therapist, and she offered to work on it a bit before the school day started, which helped dramatically – thank you, Lani! A couple days later, she also brought a foam roller to school and showed me how to use it to essentially massage my muscles myself at home. I’d never seen a foam roller. Hadn’t even heard of such before this fall. As part of my job as Middle School Team Lead, I have been seeing in our Athletics teacher’s lesson plans the instructions to use "foam rollers and lacrosse balls" at home between workouts.  Foam rollers . . . I was picturing those cheap little curlers my mom used to put...

Last week, I burned the inside of my right forearm pulling a pan of caramel popcorn out of the oven. Not badly, but it hurt like the dickens for a couple hours. (Sidenote: I wonder how old Charles feels about our using his name in a phrase that describes extreme intensity? Is that complimentary or not? But moving on . . . ) Because that burn is on a spot on my arm that doesn’t get touched much, it stopped hurting pretty quickly and just started to heal. I have another burn on the inside of my right pinkie – another caramel corn injury. This one is a blister, right where the joint bends. A tiny little blemish in an unfortunate spot that gets irritated whenever I close that finger on anything. It will heal, too, but it makes its presence known a bit more often. And then there’s the monstrous, ugly bruise on my upper left thigh from last week’s car wreck that looks like something out of a horror movie: a deep evil presence blackening my soul and silently spreading its malignity throug...

It’s only been a couple days since the accident, so I assume this image will eventually stop invading my brain when I’m lying in bed at night – the back of the blue Nissan rushing at me at a terrifying speed while my foot pounds on the brake, my hands clench the steering wheel, and the tires screech on the pavement . . . and then a dusty white airbag explodes into my face and I wonder for a split second if I’m about to die. I’m fine, for the record – physically, at least. A big, ugly, black bruise on my upper left thigh and a little stiff in the joints, but that’s it. The guy in the Nissan is fine, as is the Nissan. My van is NOT fine. The insurance company hasn’t gotten back to me yet, but I suspect the faithful Sienna has seen its last days. It could have been worse, SO MUCH worse. I have so much to be thankful for, and I am. But I keep seeing that blue Nissan rushing at me when I close my eyes.  After several agonizing years wondering where in the world God was, 2021 has b...

Y’all, I’ve never been terribly fond of Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law. Do you know this story? Naomi and her husband leave Israel and move into Moab. (I’ve often wondered about that – I mean, yes, there was a famine, but Moab ? The Jews were all about cocooning themselves away from the pagans around them – by God’s command – so how exactly did they justify this relocation? I hate to accuse them of being bad Jews, but . . .) While they are there, Naomi’s husband dies and her two sons marry Moabite women (which mom couldn’t have been happy about, but just what did she expect?). Then the sons die as well, leaving Naomi all alone with two foreign girls. So, she decides to head back home where she belonged . . . and she has a bit of a pity party as she does so. Now, hear me – that pity party of hers is understandable, but it also feels annoyingly over-the-top. (Please don’t crucify me for that, friends – I’m just being honest.) And let me add that later in the story, when she’s advising R...

My last blog post was about my youngest. Today I write about my eldest. That's her on the left -- the pretty one with the long hair. Friday night last week, I sat and watched a Christmas program my daughter directed for a homeschool co-op she teaches at. This was the third show she’s directed for them. The first play was supposed to happen in May of 2020 and got postponed, of course, because of covid. Once they got permission to perform, she had to scramble to throw it all back together again in two weeks during the summer with a bunch of new cast members. She did me proud. It was trial by fire for a new director – I figured every play after that would be a breeze. Her second play was last spring, and I was nervous for her as I watched. Folks, directing is hard . It’s a lot of pieces to pull together, especially in a small organization like this where she had very little assistance and the people who were willing to help had no theatre experience or knowledge. She had mostly b...

See this pretty girl here? With the smile on her face and the spring in her step? She’s my youngest. And my friends, SHE walked a marathon yesterday morning. Kind of.  She was supposed to do a real one, here in San Antonio, the final requirement for a class she’s in this semester. But she ended up getting cast in a play that opened this weekend and couldn’t get down here in time for the real run, so her professor gave her permission to do the walk on her own time with her roommate proctoring her. She tried to approximate the real event as much as possible – she even started at 7:15am, bless her heart. The eldest and I were in town to see the play Saturday night, so we hung around in the morning to cheer her on in this athletic endeavor. We parked the van by the football stadium at a spot on her circular route, and every thirty minutes or so when she passed us, we got out to hoot and holler and hand her a water bottle and a protein bar (or candy bar – I know what motivates my girl...