Wednesday Hodgepodge: Light and Heavy Stuff

Joining Joyce once again. Won't you please jump in this week?

1. How many times in your life have you moved house?

As a kid we moved 13 times in my first 11 years. Once I graduated from high school, let's see...to college, back home, to the beach, back home, to college, back home, to Apt. 1, Apt 2, Apt 3, house 1, house 2, house 3. So that's 12 times since age 18. Total = 25.

2. What subject would you study if you had a year to devote to it?

Art. I'd dabble in all the things that seemed like too much fun to "waste" my college loan money on, such as painting, drawing, and pottery.

3. What in this world breaks your heart?

Oh, so very many things break my heart. Where do I start? The vast number of orphans. The number of children in foster homes because their parents have such messed up lives and just repeat the cycle, the stronghold of Satan. Also sex trafficking. Fetal alcohol syndrome. But I think what breaks my heart because I've seen it up close and personal is the effect of Alzheimer's on people and their families. To see a once-bright, lucid, self-controlled, gentle soul begin to lose their memory of things, and then of people, and then to witness the way they accuse their loved ones of horrible things, and the horrible feelings the caregivers have to deal with from sorrow to anger to guilt to despair. That breaks my heart.

4. What is one item that symbolizes the times in which we live? Why?

The cell phone. People crave a sense of belonging and connectedness, but there is a lost art of etiquette and common courtesy--a profound sense of entitlement that seems to characterize our culture. Entitled to a phone, to use it whenever and wherever, entitled to instant everything. Cell phones show how impatient we are--especially the phones with internet. The days of long phone calls seem to be over. Unless you call me. I still got the gift of gab that keeps on giving . Like it or not.

5. Share a favorite bumper sticker or t-shirt slogan.

I just heard about a funny coincidence tonight. A local pastor had to go the hospital after slipping on water in the church hallway. Messed up his knee pretty badly. The funny thing was he arrived at the hospital wearing a shirt that said, "I do my own stunts."

6. How do you like your spaghetti?

I love spaghetti made with finely ground beef, onions, Ragu Vegetable Primavera. I'm not picky about noodle brands, as long as the pasta doesn't get overcooked. I could eat spaghetti once or twice a week if my family also liked it as much.

7. What is one piece of advice you would give a recent, or soon to be recent, graduate?

I have a soon-to-be college graduate. Our son Ben will get his BS in Accounting on Sunday!!! I'm full of advice, but to pick one piece of it, I'd say this: Stay out of debt. If you're in debt, get out NOW. Don't try to have everything that your parents have worked 25 years to have. Like Dave Ramsey says, "Live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later." Something like that.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of two horrible things that happened at almost the same time. In Baltimore city, at about 6:05 pm on a grey, rainy day, my husband was in a terrible car accident. He ended up needing to be in the ER for chest pain overnight, so we didn't get home until 4 a.m. The phone rang at 7 a.m. Horrible news that I could not get my mind around. A friend was calling to tell me of another friend's son in Philadelphia who had committed suicide at 6 pm. the night before. He had just finished final exams at seminary. I sometimes feel guilty that my husband lived but her son died, the same night, probably within minutes of each other's trauma. It's definitely a day that makes me stop and talk to the Lord about mysteries and pain and suffering and heartache and gratitude and death and life, all mixed up together.