Kick 'Em in the Butt Big Blue!

I miss Daddy most when Auburn wins.

I miss him every day. I miss him at Christmas. I miss him when we are at his lake cabin. I miss him when I attend the funerals of his friends who lived to old age.

But I miss him most when Auburn wins, especially when they win spectacularly.

He was a likeable feller who was passionate about Auburn University in the 60s and 70s, when it seemed everybody was a Bama fan. We listened to “Your Auburn Radio Network” from our backyard on Decatur Street, while Daddy cleaned the catfish that he had caught that morning, which Mama would later fry for supper. Auburn would score, and he and his three girls would whoop and holler. He would throw his arms up, dance a jig, and yell, “Touchdown, Auburn!” (His right arm was crooked from a childhood break that was set incorrectly.)

He was devoted to his Tigers (both Auburn and Dothan High), but he was generally and genuinely a fan of football. He shouted Roll Tide at least twice. He and Mama went to New Orleans with Bama friends to watch Alabama win in the Sugar Bowl in 1975 (v. Penn State) and in 1977 (v. Ohio State). I remember watching the game at home with Little Granny and cheering for Penn State. He taught me later, “We want Bama to win. It wouldn’t be fun to beat them if they weren’t good.”

He was a gracious loser and a gosh-awful winner. He could take it (he was faithful in 1976 when Doug Barfield’s team won only three games); but, boy howdy, he could dish it out. (God bless the friends who suffered through “Punt, Bama, Punt!” ad nauseam in 1972, when Auburn won 17-16.)

The friends, in turn, righteously harassed him the next year when Bama won 35 to zip. 

He never saw an AU win in the Iron Bowl again.

He never heard Jim Fyffe holler, “TOUCHDOWWWN AUBUUURN!!! He never said, “Fear the thumb.” He didn’t know Bo.

“If Daddy had lived . . .” is a mantra that my sisters and I have hummed for 35 years. If Daddy had lived past 1978, I am certain that he would not be alive today. I am certain he would not have survived past January 2011. First, his Auburn elected one of his granddaughters (whom he never knew) to be their Miss Homecoming that season. Then, they rallied from a 21-point deficit at halftime to surprise Alabama (and everybody else) with an Iron Bowl upset. Finally, they went on to beat the Oregon Ducks in the Fiesta Bowl for the BCS National Championship. The jubilation of those combined events would have taken him straight to Glory; for without a doubt, life on Earth could not surpass that. He would not have lived to fall to his knees at the Hail Mary against Georgia nor praise the Miracle against Alabama. He would not have been here to toot his horn over the triumph of the Great Comeback Year.

So, regardless, I would be missing him tremendously right now.

‘Cause I miss him most when Auburn wins. 

War Eagle, Daddy. 

Searching for the Baby Jesus

I laugh at the Baby Jesus every year when we pull the Christmas decorations out of the attic. 

We have an old popcorn tin full of Christmas toys. We have a Charlie Brown set with his little Christmas tree. We have all the characters from Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, including the misfit toys and Chuck's favorite, Yukon Cornelius ("Looky what he can do!"). 

The collection began when Abby and Emma were two years old. I had my pretty, fragile manger scenes that they could not touch, so I bought a nativity play set for them. I don’t remember where it came from. One year, I represented Christmas Around the World home shows, so it might have come from there. Or, I might have ordered it from the Lillian Vernon catalog that I enjoyed so much back in the days when Amazon was still just a river.

I set it up on their little table.

They loved it and played with it every day from Thanksgiving to New Year's. Being toddlers, they rarely sat still to play with it. They wandered all over the house with it.

“Mommy, ‘her’s de Baby Jesus?” (Where’s the Baby Jesus? Consonant blends are tough at 2 years old.)

“I don’t know, Sweetheart. I put him on your table.”

At the beginning, I actively searched for the Baby Jesus.

I found him in the couch cushions: “I found the Baby Jesus!”

“Mommy, ‘her’s de Baby Jesus?”

“I don’t know. If you would leave him on the table, you wouldn’t lose him.”

When I wearied of looking for the Baby Jesus, I just waited until I stumbled across him.

I found him in the bathtub toys: “I found the Baby Jesus!”

“Mommy, ‘her’s de Baby Jesus?”

“I don’t know. You shouldn’t wander around with him.”

Sometimes the Baby Jesus went missing for minutes; sometimes he went missing for days.  One year, he went missing for weeks. I found him long after the Christmas decorations had been packed away. I don’t remember ever missing any of the other characters. We always found him, and we always yelled, "I found the Baby Jesus!"

“Mommy, ‘her’s de Baby Jesus?”

“I don’t know. I am tired of looking for him!”

Sometimes I heard myself say, “Bring the Baby Jesus back into the house!” or “Get the Baby Jesus out of your mouth!”

We lived in Birmingham for three years, when the girls were ages 2 through 5. The Baby Jesus survived the move back to Dothan with us. By then, the girls could sit still to play with the manger scene. Phillip never seemed as interested in him, which is a good thing, because if he had been, we would have found the Baby Jesus up to his eyeballs in mud or run over by a toy John Deere.

“Mommy, ‘her’s de Baby Jesus?”

“Why, he’s with Mary and Joseph and the others, where he is supposed to be. He’ll be right here until my future grandbabies chew on him and misplace him. I will look for him (or at least be aware that he's missing) until I can again holler, 'I found the Baby Jesus!'"

I’ll leave the interpretation of this story for someone wiser than I am. But there’s a Sunday School lesson in there somewhere.

When the Roof Caves In

I met Laurel at church, but I got to know her in Jamaica.

(That would be a good opening line for a murder mystery, wouldn’t it?)

For several summers, the youth group from our church went to Ocho Rios, Jamaica to teach Vacation Bible School for local churches. Laurel had gone once before. I heard all about that trip.

Laurel’s group taught up in the mountains at Jack’s River Baptist Church. On Monday, about 50 children came to VBS, but each day the Good News spread and more and more children came. By Friday, there were 200 children in a one-room church with no ac or sound system and very little wiggle room. It was loud and sweaty as Miss Laurel yelled that day’s lesson to the children.  Afterwards, she wanted to allow the children who were interested in Jesus to have an opportunity to learn more. She hollered and waved her arms in different directions, “ALL YOU WHO WANT TO GO TO HEAVEN, FOLLOW MR. JIM. EVERYONE ELSE CAN GO TO CRAFTS WITH MISS KIM!”

I doubt those words were written in the lesson plans.

What if someone wanted to do both? (I’m thinking 10-year-old Celeste would have gone home with a brightly beaded necklace that day.)

It was on the next trip that I got to know Laurel. She went back to Jack’s River and the atmosphere was worse. There was much-needed construction taking place on the roof of the church, so in addition to the 200 sweaty kids crammed into the church, the Bible story was punctuated with hammering and falling ceiling tiles. The adults wouldn’t let the kids go outside to play for fear of the nails that covered the ground. (I’m not even going to mention about the roof caving in on a leader while she was tinkling in the bathroom, because it wasn’t Laurel—but it should have been.) It was crazy and chaotic and fantastic. I imagine they let the kids talk about going to Heaven AND make crafts!

I was at nearby Hamilton Mountain Baptist Church. My envious friends called it Hamilton Mountain Resort, because we had a bathroom and a kitchen (albeit without running water in either).

So, it was on the bus rides to and from our churches or back at the condos as we prepared for the following day or over shared stories during dinners and delightful desserts at Glenn’s across the street or in the evening Bible studies by the Caribbean where I learned to love Laurel.

I loved her quick wit and loud laugh. I loved her wild, curly golden locks (about which her grandmother told her, “I don’t have much, but I’ll give you everything I own, if you’ll do something about that hair.”) I loved that she had the wisdom of a mom who had raised three godly young men and was willing to share it with the mother of a preteen boy who was thirsty for her knowledge.

Now, almost four years later, I find I am still thirsty for her knowledge. Fortunately for me, she has written a book.

Laurel asked me to write a review of Lean Forward  for Amazon. (I still haven’t done that!) She emailed the book to me on October 31^st. I pulled it up on my laptop just to skim while the trick-or-treaters came and went. Except for answering the doorbell, I didn’t get up for several hours. I nibbled on bite-sized Snickers and read the whole book in one sitting. I quickly discovered that I wasn’t reading it for the Amazon review. I was reading it for my sinking and struggling and seeking soul. She didn’t know it, but she had written the book for me.

Or maybe she did know it. She told me, “We spend most of our time trying to make the pain go away: we eat, we hide, we take drugs, we shop, we drink, we get really busy and try to feel important. The list of what we do goes on forever.  But all those things are just symptoms of the problem. The problem is the human condition. Life hurts for many reasons. We need to experience God on a moment by moment basis.” 

(I’m not going to tell you the means I use to escape life, because that’s too personal. Just leave me alone and pass me the Cheez-Its.)

In 2011, Laurel and her husband, Jim, faced an unexpected and unwelcome move. Once the boxes were packed and later unpacked, with her three boys all grown, she had time on her hands to write down what she had learned through the difficult experience. Much of it, she had already learned just by living and striving for godliness most of her life.

“Sometimes a wilderness experience is not dramatic at all.” She readily admits in the book, “Our problem faded into insignificance when compared to what many people endure; however, I have come to this conclusion: whether a circumstance is desperate or merely difficult a believer must make a choice.”

Truth is Truth, regardless of whether we are surviving a move or drowning in the grief of burying a loved one.

“This book is neither a formula nor a set of religious rules,” she writes in Lean Forward .

She emailed me, “The disciplines (that this book is about) are biblical ways, proven-through-the-centuries ways, to encounter God. My prayer is that my experiences help others. I think that is finally what the pain is all about.” 

My favorite line from the book is “When you don’t know what to do, go to church.” Not because “the devil will get you,” like the sign says on I65 north of Montgomery, but because a commitment to church brings connection and companionship and, occasionally, a casserole.

Are you weary or fearful or angry or depressed or lonely or despairing (or all of the above)? If not, chances are you will be at some point.

Let my friend Laurel Griffith share with you how she learned to Lean Forward .

(Now, I’m off to write that Amazon review!)

  

The kindle edition of Lean Forward is available on Amazon for $2.99.

The Great King Family Gingerbread House Throwdown

I googled the word tradition. Among its definitions are descriptors like generations, long-standing, and customary. Can generations consist of merely the living or must it include deceased ancestors as well? How long is long-standing? How many times must an act be performed before it’s considered customary? What do we call an act that is immediately beloved and certain to stand the test of time? Is new tradition an oxymoron? Perhaps there is an appropriate word in another language besides English?

You see my dilemma, don’t you? I want to tell you about something that has only recently come about but is already part of Christmas folklore and ritual for the children of the King Girls and their growing families; yet, I don’t know what to call it. I want to call it tradition, but evidently, it is not. At least, not yet. I am going to borrow the word for this story, though, since I don’t know of another word to use. I sincerely hope my four faithful friends can forgive this indiscretion.

Like most traditions, no one planned it or even saw it coming. Like most traditions, it began as nothing.

2007

Emma stretched a ligament in her ankle at a practice for the vicious middle-school girls’ church basketball league. She had surgery over Christmas break to tighten it. Jordan Lee came to Dothan to cheer her. While grocery shopping, I picked up a marked-down gingerbread house. I thought the kids would have fun decorating it together, especially since Emma was housebound.

Emma was high on Lortab and dozing on the sofa when the other three decided to assemble the house. I smiled as I imagined the priceless image of my children and their precious college-aged cousin sharing a sweet—albeit forgetful—moment. Soon, their shouts woke me from my daydream. They were about to duke it out in the kitchen over whose turn it was to squeeze the icing! They cared deeply about whether or not to put icicles on the roof! They were not SHARING! They were COMPETING! In between licking their fingers, they were smack-talking each other over the placement of gumdrops!

2008

They had acted so mean to each other that we bought two gingerbread houses to diffuse the festive tension.

It didn’t really help.

Only Abby, Emma, and Jordan Lee participated in the "family bonding" activity. After their tempers cooled, we decided that everyone needed his/her own house, and if the kids insisted on arguing over this sugar-coated fun, then we needed to organize a competition.

2009

The Great King Family Gingerbread Throwdown officially began. We instituted a one-hour time limit, because some people (not naming names—or initials) would never be satisfied that her house was finished. Finger-licking and nibbling were allowed, expected even.

We bought four houses, because we assumed that only Abby, Emma, JL, and Ellen (newly married to Justin) would want to compete. When Jeremy and Phillip decided to join the battle, we formed teams. We knew that the climate would stay calmer if no siblings or significant others were allowed to work together. Jeremy/Phillip and Abby/Ellen teamed up. JL and Emma are too much alike, and everyone agreed it would be best if each girl decked her own halls. Each team was given an equal amount of candy and icing. Leftovers were put in the center of the table in a free-for-all pile.

Emma’s house repeatedly collapsed. We ameliorated the rules to ensure that everyone had a partner the next year to help with construction.

Justin was the judge. He was not allowed to watch the event and was not allowed to know which house belonged to which team. While purposefully attempting to pick his new wife’s decor, he unknowingly chose the Jeremy/Phillip collaboration as the winner over his bride’s house. The rules were amended on the spot to have an outside-the-family judge for the following year.

2010

Emma/Ellen created a beautiful church-like Hershey bar door. Justin/Abby put a hot tub on the outside of their house, complete with a melting snowman. Jeremy/Phillip attached a fireplace with shredded Brillo pad smoke curling from it. JL/Celeste were the winners! I crafted a window with homemade curtains from a cupcake liner, and JL made a jolly snowman out of Life Savers Wint-O-Green Mints.

Ellen’s mom, Janey, was the judge. She grasped the seriousness and importance of the task and performed like the professional crafter she is. Still, she had a conflict of interest.  

New rules:

1)     An impartial judge

2)    All items must be edible and only items on the table may be used. No running all over the house for stuff.

3)     Since every team added something delightful, we initiated one Best All Around and smaller, individual awards to recognize creativity and to encourage good behavior.

2011

We purchased extra icing and candy from the dollar store, drew names for partners, and set up partitions to block each other’s view. Jeremy enlisted two friends to be our judges. They were organized and official. They came with notebooks and pencils in hand. We left the room to allow them to confer with each other in privacy. We overheard them whisper comments such as:

I really like the candy canes on this one.

Cute! A pretzel fence!

What is that? (Evidently tasted it.) Yuck!

Ellen was pregnant with Lydia. We think her hormones gave her an unfair advantage. But how could we prove it?

Ellen/Phillip – Best All Around

Emma/JL –Best Use of Resources

Abby/Jeremy – Most Random

Justin/Celeste – Most Creative (Our ribbon-candy roof rocked!) 

Justin, Abby, and I won a 3-way tie for best attitudes. The rest didn’t really care about their attitudes.

Our new rule for next year was to assemble the house before the clock begins. That way, the entire hour could be spent festooning. 

2012

Angie was finally able to come to view the rivalry for herself; however, Justin and Ellen couldn’t be there when everyone else could. Emma had the perfect solution: they would Skype with us and be our long-distance judges. (I know this breaks the impartial judge rule, but they would be fair, and we wanted them to be “with” us. And it was our rule to begin with. We could break it if we wanted to.)

We only played three houses. JL was a newlywed, and Jeremy had a girlfriend. The newbies got thrown into the brouhaha. Since one rule is no significant others can be partners, we put the newbies on the same team. I wanted to hang with Angie and Lydia instead of being half a team, so we put Phillip with the newbies to guide them. He was the best anyway, having already won twice.

Peyton and Katy were schooled in the rules. Peyton pulled me aside and asked if he could have a hammer. It wasn’t on the table (a rule), but it obviously wasn’t going on the house (a rule). This was iffy, but Peyton is adorable. I made the call to allow it. We didn’t tell the others. He put some peppermint in a baggie and stepped outside to crush it. He sprinkled it on the roof of his house. His bride argued in favor of his beheading—or his elimination, at the very least.

She needn’t have worried. The JL/Abby team won Best All Around. JL’s peppermint fireplace was spectacular, and Abby’s cute Rolo mailbox pushed them over the top. Emma/Jeremy had a great Twizzler fence. The candles in the windows of the Phillip/Peyton/Katy house were warm and charming.

2013

Although the competition has always been held at Starla’s house, the location is not part of the tradition, nor is the date. Starla likes to hold it before Christmas, because she enjoys using the bright and colorful gingerbread houses to adorn her own house for the holidays. She has saved them a time or two for the following year, and they hold up pretty well in her cool, damp basement. This year, we are not going to be able to be together until after Christmas. But location and date are just details. As more weddings are held and more babies are born, the act of gathering will become more difficult. The day might come where July 4^th sees fireworks exploding outside the house and within it as well. If Independence Day were to be the best day for us to celebrate being an extended family, so be it.

Even then, we’ll be plotting and planning the most appropriate use of red and green M&Ms. Hopefully, we’ll be fussing about it until the Great King Family Gingerbread House Throwdown becomes true to the word tradition.

On your mark . . . get set . . . DECORATE!