Shopping With My Sweetie - Lost in Walmart

Lost in Walmart

Dear Meghan,

Since you'll be incommunicado all weekend and we could hardly hear each other on the phone, I thought I'd tell you this story before I forget it. We went shopping yesterday. It was social security check day for everybody, so Walmart was packed. We got lucky and I got a mobility cart for Mom. We'd already walked to the Ross store and then to Panda Express and then over to Walmart so she was fading fast. We put our folding camp chairs in the basket. 

Walmart has taken away the outside benches during CoVid and never put them back, so we take our own chairs to wait for the return bus. We also loaded the bag from Ross, and Mom's purse in there. This info is important to the story. Mom took off in the electric cart and I waited around to see if anyone dropped off another cart on their way out. My knees have had it so when I can get off them it helps. My left knee has a big dent in it where the cartilage has worn away and left it bone on bone. I now understand why Grandpa used to walk the way he did. I walk like that now. Anyway nobody gave up a cart, so I took off with the shopping basket full of stuff looking for your Mom.

The woman can disappear faster than a Navy SEAL in full camo in the middle of a jungle. I searched for her for quite a while, bought some clearance sale chrysanthemums and scanned the retail horizon before me. No sign of my Sweet Baboo. Then I got a bright idea. I'd call her phone and get her to tell me where she was. To my surprise and relief, when I called, I heard her the distinctive sound of her phone ringing somewhere up ahead of me. 

So off I went trying to find the source of the sound. She wasn't answering her phone so I figured I'd follow the ringing. I have her set up with an old-fashioned telephone ring so it's quite loud and easily to identify. Still, I couldn't quite track down the source of the ringing. It seemed to move here and there ahead of me. When the phone went to voice mail, I called again. The ringing sounded really close by so I took off again in pursuit. This time it sounded like she was in the cleaning supplies (not surprising), so I hurried on hoping to catch her. She still wasn't answering her phone. Again the phone went to voicemail and stopped ringing. I called again from the sour cream and yogurt section. This time it sounded like the ringing of her phone was coming from behind the back wall. 

 I circled back found those double swinging employee doors going back into the stock room. I opened it a little and it sounded like she was back there somewhere. So I turned my cart around and parked it by the door. I rang her phone again. This time the ringing had moved off, to the left again sounding like it was moving but now moving behind the back wall of the store. I hurried to follow, hoping she'd pop out somewhere. Finally, I came to the shoe section. "Aha!" I said, knowing she'd been looking at shoes earlier. I reached the end of the back aisle and turned left onto the sneakers aisle. Again the ring tone seemed move quickly cutting across my path coming out from behind the wall. moving behind the display shelves ahead and settled on a new course somewhere up ahead somewhere. By chance, as I accelerated to catch up with her, I glanced down into the basket and stopped.

My eye caught sight of a brown bag with MAMA written on it in big letters. A sudden awareness began to dawn on me. This was Sheila's handbag there in the front of my basket. And what would be in her handbag? Wallet, hand sanitizer, hairbrush, perfume, her medications, and..............................................................oh nuts! Her phone! 

I'd been frantically following the sound of her phone ringing at me from the front of my shopping cart trying to keep up with a phantom wife. I'm getting too old to keep up with a shopping wife. So, I went to the Subway at the front of the store, bought a drink and sat down to wait. Sure enough, in about twenty minutes, I heard my name being paged to come to the fitting room to meet my wife. I stumbled back across the store to find my sweetie perusing the clearance rack. We managed to escape Walmart once we joined forces and got out for just under $200. She says she's going to quit going shopping because she spends too much money. I'm not helping much. She shops by picking up things, trundling around for a while and then putting it back on the shelf because she thinks she's spending too much. 

Earlier she'd put back some shoes and some lavender hand lotion. Coming along behind her, I picked up the discarded items and carried them along with me on the side where she couldn't see them to the checkout stand. While the cashier was ringing up her stuff, I slipped the shoes and lavender lotion onto the counter while she was looking for something in her purse. I can't stand for her to not get what she wants. Us guys are like that. Our wives put up with so much from us, we jump at any opportunity to spoil them just a bit. We guys have no idea how to get in her head and just know what she needs or wants. So, if we see that she wants something, we jump on it. Notice that women and men express love in different ways. Women read your mind and do things for their men before they ask. It is their highest form of love. Sheila buys stuff for me that I didn't know I needed. 

Men on the other hand, express love by deed - I'll climb the highest mountain, fight tigers, cross blazing deserts and raging rivers. Our expressions of love are things we can do that we know how to do. We're lousy at guessing what women want. We don't read minds. Tell us and we're on the job. It's the nature of men and women. Men do goal directed stuff. Women build nests and social circles. Men are outwardly focused against the threats from the world against their wives and families. Women are inwardly focused, trying to make everyone in the circle, if not, happy, at least safe, alive and breathing. So guys like me follow our wives' handbags around Walmart, rescuing shopping discards and trying to figure out how to make them feel special. I'm going to go ice down my knees now. She's taking a nap. All is well in our little world.

(c) 2024 by Tom King

Thou Shalt Not Touch????

My friend Miss Mary Bob

In this age of CoVid they're telling us we all need to maintain something called "social distancing".  Also the public health Nazis say that things like hugging friends and kissing friends on the cheek need to be things of the past and never reintroduced into the culture. We're basically being told that we ought to keep our hands to ourselves.

Well, not me. I'm a hugger and I WILL kiss your cheek. I'll kiss both of your cheeks. I draw the line, however, at kissing anyone's butt cheeks. Seriously though, I read somewhere that a human being needs at least 17 hugs a day to stay mentally healthy. I am not ashamed to show affection, but I have been told before that this is childish, immature, confusing, etc. to some people. That's just too bad. I believe that we will hug each other in heaven and I am practicing to be a citizen of that wonderful place here on this earth where we need all the bits of heaven we can get.

As for being childish, Jesus said, "Except you become as a little child, you shall not see the kingdom of heaven." If I love you, and this includes nearly everybody I know, I will tell you, I will show you. I will cry with you and rejoice with you and there is a place for you in my heart. If you betray me, I will forgive you. If you hate me I will pray for you. This love comes from the Holy Spirit, a gift from God I've had since I was a child. I am not starving for affection. but I have a healthy appetite for your love.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.

Sheila King*
© 2022

*Thanks to my Sweet Baboo for the guest post this week.
-Tom

Stitching up the Chink

Guys are NOT raised to get all emotional where I grew up. We're Scots and Saxons, not limp-wristed Frenchies. We put on our emotional armor before we go out of a morning. But it's all a front. We scions of the warrior-poet races also know that writing poetry attracts women. That's why, at first, that we tuck a pen into our belts beside our sword.

The flip side of being a poet is that the act of creating poetry opens up that soft spot we've all been protecting with the armor (I personally think it's also the manly knees). It's like wearing a chain mail shirt and a kilt. Women are drawn to that perceived vulnerability in strong men. Good ones are drawn, but then so are the other sort and, it seems, they are drawn in larger numbers. Or perhaps the romantic poets are right and soulmates are indeed most rare.

Let's face it, most guys don't find the missing half of themselves we were created without. Otherwise the divorce rate would not be so high. I looked for years and could not find her. The train of not-hers I encountered managed to stab me enough times through that poetic chink in my armor, until I was, at last, driven to my knees. And while I was there I prayed.

And in His mercy God answered. She is my world. She fits in places where I did not know I had places. Forty-five years later, our bodies worn and wrinkled, I still see in her eyes that fiery Scots-Irish-Indian girl I married. The one who gave me purpose and the strength to do those manly things I was raised to do. Because of her I stitched the chink in my armor with her, tucked neatly inside where I can keep her safe. She is the gift by which I know that God is good.

What Love Is Not

Love is not, in and of itself, immortal, nor is it some self-existent feeling, that lodges inside you; that is something you either "have," as in, "I have love for you," or that you do not have, as in "You've lost that lovin' feelin'." Love is something you create through committing relentless acts of love. It is not something you can suddenly acquire, like a headache, a cold or a new pair of shoes. That sort of acquired love is more like the song that goes, "I've got the hots for you!"  That is not love at all.

Love is something you create. Love is the greatest of the action verbs. To be shure there are feelings that come when you commit acts of love, but those feelings are an artifact of the act of love and not the thing itself.

Feelings of love help us know when we are doing acts of love. They remind us of our determination long ago that we shall love, honor, and cherish another until death forces us to stop loving, if only till we one day, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye" take up immortality and resume what turns out to have been an eternal love after all.

© 2017 by Tom King

What Charity Really Means

Language changes over time. When you look up the word "charity" you get definitions like aid, welfare, relief, handouts, largess, alms, philanthropy, nonprofit organization and money given to those in need. Sadly we've lost probably the most important meaning of the world. It's listed under "archaic".  It means love of humankind, typically in a Christian context as in this usage from the King James Bible (I Corinthians 13)

"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. "

Newer translations of the Bible substitute the word "love" for charity. Unfortunately, the old meaning should have stuck with us instead of morphing into something that means something shameful as in "We don't need no charity!"

That's sad. If you go by the archaic meaning of the word, you're basically saying, "We don't need no love!"  People give so-called "charity" for a couple of reasons. One group does give charity in order to feel less guilt and may, in fact, look down on those who accept it. But that group is terribly small. I worked for 40 years in the nonprofit sector raising money for and managing charities that helped pre-schoolers, students, abused and mentally ill children, people with disabilities, seniors, and low-income families. Nine out of ten of those working with me in those "charities" did so because they absolutely loved helping people. Their work was their joy and the people they helped, they loved.

After all that, God then taught me to be on the other end of all that love. I cannot tell you all of the people who have helped us pass through the some really rough patches. When it felt like the forces of evil were arrayed against us, there were suddenly angels when we needed them. Thank you to all of our friends who do angel work on the side and have blessed us.

Learning to accept the love of others is sometimes hard. Our pride so often stands in the way. We want to be self-sufficient. We think we don't need no charity.

But we do. If we are unable to accept gifts given in love, can we truly be the complete and loving people God wants us to be. Christmas is a great time to teach our kids about the joy of giving in love as well as accepting what is lovingly given. 


© 2016 by Tom King

Marriage Is NOT an Antiquated Institution

The day my life got better.

The other day someone made the comment that she didn't think that marriage was "important' anymore. The group immediately chimed in with various comments about how it was an antiquated institution and not really needed anymore. "In patriarchal societies," opined one newly minted college-grad, "marriage was a matter of survival." Apparently not any longer according to this batch of millennials. The whole thing started over a lament about the divorce of "Brangelina" - a relationship begun in unfaithfulness in the first place. In their disappointment over the end of another "true love", the ladies were prepared to say marriage was obsolete as an institution in the modern world.

I beg to differ. The survival of my own 42 year-long love affair with the one and only woman I ever married, has long depended on our refusal to don our parachutes at the altar. Standing in front of Pastor Milton Reiber in a country chapel in the piney woods of Mississippi, Sheila and I made a lifelong commitment to each other. Promises were made that brooked no backing out. The idea was never considered. We signed the pledge in writing. I still carry my now faded, wallet-sized marriage license with me wherever I go. What has not faded is the commitment that little blue document represents.

While others of my generation were pledging "till we fall out of love", my wife and I pledged, "Till death do us part." And we meant it, even though we had no idea of what a rough ride it might prove to be. Because of our stubborn determination to honor that pledge, through tragedy, trial, struggle, good times and hard times, we have both known that we could always look over and find our best friend and lover always there beside us. 

Are we the perfect couple? Hardly. Neither of us is perfect. We understood that going in. We did, however, know that we both served the same master and we both had chosen that our lives should end up at the same place. We tried our best to believe the best, do our best and trust each other's love no matter what. It's never been easy. Life isn't. Not with the devil our adversary walking about like a roaring adversary seeking whom he may devour. But for all the struggle we've endured, I would not trade the love I've shared with my precious wife for anything on this Earth - not fame, not wealth, or power.

We have traveled this life together as God has led us, she and I. God has promised to be our teacher and so we did our best to sit still in the classes. We did our best to learn, however uncomfortable the lessons being taught. Over the past four decades, we've done our best to serve our children, loved ones and our fellow human beings as best we knew how. It has not made us rich. Quite the contrary. But, it has, I believe, left the world a slightly better place for our having passed through it. That was our intent at any rate. God must be responsible for the outcome.

There are two kinds of people in the world - those who give and those who take - those who mostly wish to be entertained and to have others meet their needs and those who strive to meet the needs of others. The love that we chose, was the consciously giving kind - the sort that reveres the Golden Rule as opposed to lusting for the power of the gold that rules. We chose to give love rather than wait around to receive it. I truly believe that choosing to believe that love was something we do rather than something we strictly receive has made all the difference.

I'm a firm believer in marriage. It's God's teaching tool; something of a crucible in which the souls of a married pair are purified and strengthened, molded and melded. Marriage is not, of itself, some touchy-feely emotional state. It's doing first, putting someone else before your own self. It's living life deliberately and with principle. It's giving 100%, not 50/50. When you do that you have a relationship that always is more than what any one person can create on his or her own - it is always a relationship that is more than 100%, for when one is weak, the other is strong. And when both are strong, the two are more powerful than they can be separately and alone. If you've put the effort into it, the emotional state comes with it as a bonus and you are strong and faithful and powerful. 

God said it was not good that man should be alone. He was right. I know that for a hard fact. As poor as we are in this world's riches, as disabled as we both are in body and mind, and as tough as life sometimes gets for us, God has given us each other, two hearts beating as one, and that is enough for this life. The next one promises to be incredible and the great thing is that we get to start it as two hearts which have already become as one thanks to an intertwined life guided by the loving hand of He who set the universe to spinning.

You can't beat that with a stick.

© 2016 by Tom King

In Search of a Peach Along the Broken Road

Sheila and I singing with Jack Allen at the nursing home
before God smacked me upside the head...

.

I'm a mess tonight. I know my Sweet Baboo is coming home from Louisiana, but I'm worrying anyway and will till I get her home. Except for a quick trip home, she's been gone for three months. I lent her to someone who needed her and they nearly broke her. The song below really hits me in the heart. When I was a teenage kid, I just knew that my heart was out there wandering around looking for me too. I used to sit in the top of trees and wonder where she was and what she was doing and why I couldn't find her. And boy howdy did I ever walk that proverbial broken road. I used to sing that John Denver song, "She Done Stomped on my Heart" a lot and I sang it with feeling let me tell you.

Pastor Mike Hansen forced his way into my VGA dorm room after one of my old girlfriends broke up with me and sat me down and told me this. "Tom," he said, "God has someone who is your match. He's already picked her out and if you'll just let Him, He's going to send you a real peach." Pastor Mike was absolutely right. 

Unfortunately,I'm kind of a bull in a China shop relationship wise and girls were terrifying to me. There was even a rumor floating around the Girls Dorm at SWAU that I was, you know, "Not the marrying kind," and not in a good way. Truth was I was scared of them.

Sheila actually had to ask me to sit with her on the bus to Bible Camp where we eventually got together. She asked me mainly because she wanted someone to play guitar with and I was too chicken to suggest it. She had no evil designs on me. It was really cool not to have any expectations - just two friends making music. We'd already been playing on Sabbath afternoons at the local nursing home where we worked. So we had 8 months of guitar playing together already. So it was just a friendly invite and completely unthreatening for Mr. Chicken. I'd never met a girl like her before. No games. No manipulation. Just says whatever she thinks. I loved that.

In fact, like me, she'd just gone through a breakup only hers was with a fiancee. She was looking for company. We even got invited to sing one of her songs together at one of the meetings. I think God was hinting, but I was still too dim to get it. We talked a lot that weekend. We'd both been hurt pretty badly and we wound up feeling sorry for each other which actually helped.

Even then, by the time the weekend was over, we were on the bus going home and still wondering if we should get back with our exes. Turns out God had other plans. We experienced the moment differently. To me it felt like God had smacked me on the back of the head and said, "Pay attention, boy. This one right here beside you is the one. I love this girl and I'm giving you the job of taking care of her. Got that?" All that went' clearly through my mind.

Sheila meanwhile was seeing visions of she and I and our kids and our family like a sort of vision. We impulsively grabbed each others' hands and have been hanging on to each other for dear life ever since.

And she's coming back home to me on Sunday!

God is very good to me, even when He's whacking me upside the head to get my attention.

© 2016 by Tom King

Forty Two Years and Counting

Every day I get a friend request on Facebook from one or two narcissistic females who post nothing but selfies on their home page. Are these girls really so desperate for compliments that they are willing to post photos that objectify themselves? It's kind of sad. Most are pleasant enough looking girls, but is that all they've got? Is there no brain back there with ideas and dreams and passions (and I don't mean long walks on the beach and cuddling by the fire)?

Have some self-respect girls. Any man worth his salt isn't interested in a girl he can use. He is looking for a woman who is his match in every way; one who challenges him, inspires him and who cares enough about him that she takes the trouble to "get" him in a way that no one else does.

That's how you get to your 42nd anniversary like my Sweet Baboo and I did today. You find someone real who uses her brain for something besides filler for a big hollow thing to which she attaches hair extensions, applies colorful paints and hangs big dangly earrings.

And to the woman for whom I would give my life, "Happy Anniversary, my darling." I look forward to millions more.

Love always and forever,

Tom

© 2016

Dystopia or Utopia: How's That Working Out for You?

© 2014 - The Giver

Have you noticed who the villains in the latest dystopian books and films for young people have been - Hunger Games, Divergent, The Giver, Maze Runner, Elysium, et al?
Each of these films casts a large intrusive, control-everything, would-be utopian government as the bad guys. As the Meryl Streep character said in "The Giver", When we give people a choice, they always choose wrong!" Free will always gives those who would rule problems. So the solution virtually every government comes to eventually is to remove all choice from people whether by laws, repression, drugs or brainwashing. Humans can't seem to come up with any better cure than brute force for the problem of free will - at least not those humans who tend to make up governments.

I've only found one solution that cures the problem of free will and it does so by giving us a choice. Joshua articulated that choice to the children of Israel, "Choose you this day, whom you will serve......"

Making that choice leaves you changed. Making the right choice leaves you changed to a better person; one fit to live forever, free and able to truly choose without prejudice, habit, ignorance or confusion to get in the way.

It's an incredible thing, but I think our passage through the crucible of Earth where self service (also known as sin) is allowed to work itself out to its inevitable conclusion, is the only way such a change may be wrought in creatures with true free will. Lucifer thought the Earth needed a prince. Turns out, all it really needed was love. Nothing more complicated than that.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Tom

When One Plus One Does Not Equal Two

 

“Let the wife make her husband glad to come home and let him make her sorry to see him leave.”  

  - Martin Luther

There is a little trick I have learned over the years that has made a huge difference in the quality of my relationship with my beloved wife. It is the pause and the quiet breath before speaking. In that moment, whatever is happening, being said or done, I try to think before I speak. What is really going on? What is she really trying to say. What does she need. It's merely an application of the Golden Rule - Treat others as you want to be treated. But it is more than that. It's putting yourself in her place and trying to understand what need I can fulfill. Sometimes it's not exactly the one being requested or the situation is not as it seems. If you are confused or do not understand, even if you are hurt or offended, stop and think about her first. Take that long quiet breath - careful, it's not a sigh you're going for. It's oxygen to the brain.

She does this for me all the time - thinks of me over her own needs. It is why we've lasted 39 years. It's wonderful to be loved so much, but what is even more wonderful is to love so much. In this way, 1 plus 1 equals wonderful.

© by Tom King

What God Hates?

© 2012 by Tom King

Every once in a while, I read an angry post by an offended Christian that lists all the things God supposedly hates – things like agnostics, atheists, gay people and Democrats.  I do sympathize with the person’s desire to tell all the folk in those groups to go straight to hell. They really do say some nasty things to and about Christians, so I suppose it’s natural to want to tell them where to get off.  That is, after all, the point of these kinds of posts whether they actually use the 'H-E–Double Hockey Sticks' word or not.  

The trouble is that, as Christians, we are under orders from Christ, Himself, to treat others the way we want to be treated. What I understand from that is that we may not respond in-kind to nastiness.

I’d like to address one particular point I found in one of these angry missives. The writer said God hates atheists and agnostics.  As a former agnostic myself, I speak with some experience of agnosticism, when I say, “God never hated me.”  On the contrary, I was an agnostic simply because I had not yet met God, so agnosticism was an appropriate belief system for me.  I used to get into it with atheists as often as I did with Christians over the existence of God.  You can’t prove he doesn’t exist I told the atheists.  You can’t prove he does I told the Christians.  And that’s where I drifted until the day I met God for myself.

So, I'd go a little easy on the atheists and agnostics if I were making lists, which I occasionally do. I would argue with my well-meaning friend that God doesn't hate anyone. He gave his son for everyone. He even goes so far as to give us the very impulse to seek Him. That does not come from us. It is hard-wired into our DNA. God also gives us the ability to respond to love and to give love ourselves from the moment we draw breath.  This impulse to love and seek God is at war with our sinful nature - the product of a long history of human abuse of free will. 

In my own experience when I was an agnostic, I was searching high and low for God. And it wasn''t God blocking my path to Him.  It was well-meaning churchmen and women who thought they were doing God a favor by portraying him as an angry, judgmental, send-em-off-to-hellfire deity who would cast you into hell and torture you forever if you habitually skip Sunday School.They had fallen prey to the temptation to use fear to rally the troops. As an experienced troop rallyer, I can tell you that fear is a poor motivational tool.  When God sends an angel to help, the first thing the angel always says is "Fear not."  I assume from that that God doesn't use fear to frighten people into submission.  And, by "fear", I don't mean respect or awe. I mean the afraid for your life kind of fear.

When I finally met God himself, I cast aside my agnosticism quite easily, because it no longer served me. I had finally met the Father I was looking for and that made all the different. A list of all the things God "hates" probably isn't going to save a single soul. A list of the things God loves might be a more effective tool. For instance, how about this list?

1. God loves a cheerful giver.
2. God loves one who would give his life for another.
3. God loves a kind word and a cheerful heart.
4. God loves a patient man.
5. God loves the world so much he sent his own Son to save us.
6. God loves us so much he wants us to live forever.
7. God loves beauty and truth.
8. God loves unconditionally. He loves us even when we reject him.
9. God makes everything come out for the best if we'll let him.
10. God loves us so much he wants to give us the wealth of the whole vast universe.

In the end, I believe we should always be kind to others if we must make lists. You never know who is a tender heart, all wrapped up in a protective coat of agnosticism or atheism, but who is really, down deep, just searching desperately for the real God – the loving Father no one has ever introduced him to.

Thieves In the Garden



The boys playing on the "trolley"  at Honeymom's and Grandpa's

When my boys were little, my wife taught them to love raw veggies.  She'd set broccoli, peas and cauliflower on their high chair tray and pour a little puddle of ranch dressing beside them. They were at that fiercely independent stage where they didn't want to be fed anymore. They wanted to do it themselves.

My wife, a scathingly brilliant educator where it came to getting children to do what she wanted, came up with this little ruse to get our kids to eat things they would normally have resisted. People at restaurants would marvel that we could get two and three year olds to eat raw veggies.

Honeymama, who recieved her nickname from her grandkids, planted a garden every year. My grandpa plowed up the ground, dug the rows and together they planted vegetables every year. They started in January with the English peas - two or three rows of them.   My grandmother for the longest time thought she had racooons because she kept finding all these empty pea pods when she went to pick peas.

It wasn't coons.



My Grandmother

Whenever we came out to visit, the boys always loved ot go out and play in the backyard. My grandpa had built a swing and a zip line trolley made from a pulley and a steel cable strung from the top of an oak tree to the bottom of another one. They also liked to poke around the barn and climb on the cow pen fences.  Turns out they were also sneaking out into the garden.

They would sit between the rows of English peas where we couldn't see them and strip young sweet peas right out of the pods. Inevitably, they got so busy snitching peas, they didn't hear my grandmother come out the back door.

She saw what was happening and slipped back in the house, calling us to the window.  There, out in the garden, were our offspring crawling around amongst the peas, their heads bobbing up and down like a pair of cows grazing in a pasture. I was all set to rush out there and punish them, but Honeymama told me to leave them alone. She kind of got a kick out of them sneaking around eating raw peas, I think, even if it did reduce the size of her pea harvest..

Her solution?  Every season after that she just planted an extra row of peas for the boys.

There's a lot of Godly wisdom in that somehow..

Tom King - (c) 2012

Unhorsing Your Knight

My niece posted one of those snarky female comments about men the other day on Facebook.  The quote read, "Every Girl Is Entitled To A Knight In Shining Armor, Mine Just Took A Wrong Turn, Got Lost, And Is Too Stubborn To Ask For Directions."

Wow, it has been almost 24 hours since I heard a variant of the "men won't ask for directions" complaint from a woman. I feel compelled to respond, if only to warn my niece of the danger inherent in blithely accepting that a man's reluctance to seek directions from some stranger is necessarily a bad thing.

This female obsession with her Knight in Shining Armor's asking for directions reveals a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the male of the species. This misunderstanding, I believe, has lead women to a classic psychological double bind where their men are concern.

First women seem to want strong, capable hero-type guys as their mates.

Then, they want them to ask for directions, help with the dishes without being asked and spend long hours talking about feelings.

And women everywhere are now saying, "Yes, exactly!"

Men everywhere are rolling their eyes and picking up the TV guide to see if there's a Thursday night football game on this week.

Let me explain something. We knights in shining armor don't ask for directions because we know where we are! We're right here. Finding the place we're going is the whole point of the quest. The journey is the worthier part. Give us time to find our own way, girls. You'll like us much better if you do.


Have you ever noticed that the first thing women complain about after they get their husbands successfully domesticated is that they have become boring? Teach us to ask for directions and next thing you know we're couch potatoes, taking our cues from television. After that, we don't go anywhere that no one has gone before. We no longer do anything unless it's safe.

For a young man, life is a grand adventure stretching before him.  There are worlds to conquer, mountains to climb, damsels to rescue!

Pack up your knight's armor and domesticate him at your own risk ladies.  He may be easier to handle, but he'll also be a lot more dull!
 
I could be wrong...but I don't think so.
 
Tom King
.

Laughing at the Devil - The Art of Riding Out the Storm While Maintaining a Sense of Humor

Over the past four years my relatively stable life has been pitched into the dumper in exchange for an emotional, financial and spiritual roller coaster ride (mostly downhill). Generally roller coaster rides are fun, but in them is an element of terror too. I've often wondered why we risk being flung about in a tiny cart on thin rails at 50 or 60 miles an hour and pay for the privilege.  If something goes wrong, the consequences are not pretty. We don't know who's doing the maintenance on any particular roller coaster and we don't have a 100% assurance that everything will come out okay at the end.  Yet we have faith in those unknown maintenance people to look out for our safety.

Like most folks, I will likely as not, continue to cue up in the hot sun for my turn at the ride - at least, so long as my spine will endure the shock.

Reliable witnesses have told us that it would be like this in these last days.  Though we have long expected it, still the intensity of it has been a surprise now that it's really come at last.

Has anyone been surprised at the raw anger that Christians have faced in the news media, the blogosphere and in what we once thought of as "polite" society? Even comedians have brutalized Christian belief and practice in the name of humor and the "comment" section of on-line commentaries and news stories are rife with frighteningly intense and vicious diatribes against believers.  Even some of the very people to whom we have shown the greatest love, kindness, patience and longsuffering, have turned on us with a vitriol that is nothing short of stunning.

I had a conversation with someone the other day, who was having trouble getting around the fact that a loved one was behaving in a way that he could not understand. We laughed about it; tried to make excuses for the person. We even made jokes about  it.

So why do we laugh about something that makes us so sad? I think it's because in these "end of the roller coaster ride" days, stuff like this comes at us so hard and fast anymore that if we didn't laugh, the alternative would be to weep all the time. It's like the folks coming off the roller coaster when it's over who, having been frightened out of their wits, and find themselves laughing at themselves for their earlier terror.

If, like me and roller coaster riders everywhere, you operate on the belief that everything is going to turn out okay in the end (see Romans 8:28, if you're a Christian believer), then after a while, you recognize that the increasing trials, troubles and assaults on your peace and security, that we've all endured of late, are nothing but a last desperate attempt to knock you from your seat in the coaster tram by a "designer" with nasty intentions.  If you can just be frightened enough to jump over the side, he wins.


Martin Luther once said, "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." Sir Thomas More wrote, "The devil... the proud spirit.. cannot endure to be mocked." Lucifer must be having a right old unhappy go of it right now, because the primary targets of his machinations have begun to figure out what's going on - and we've begun to laugh at him.

Lately, I talk to a lot of Christians who have begun to see clearly why so many troubles are coming at us all at once. Not only that, but we see clearly who is behind it. It's gotten laughable. It becomes a comedy routine when it gets that bad.  There you are, unemployed, broke, your loved ones seemingly turning against you, your dog's hair all falling out and headed for that interview for that janitorial job you probably won't get because you're old and gimpy kneed.  It's 105 degrees outside, 99% humidity and your air conditioner has failed.  Then, at that very moment the car radiator starts blowing steam, you run out of gas, and discover you have no money with you AND your cell phone has been shut off.  At that point, if you truly believe in God, you sit back in your seat, throw back your head and laugh.  THEN YOU START WALKING!


"Is that all you've got?" I grin. "I'm supposed to curse God and die over a little 5 mile walk in the hot sun, some public humiliation and a lost janitorial job? Ha!  I know what you're up to and it won't work. Kill me if you want to, I really won't mind.  It'll be restful.  I am not afraid of you!"

If we really believe that God saves us, we're coming upon a time when our belief in eternal life and our faith that God has our salvation well in hand will be surely tested. It will be hard for those of us who harbor a sneaking suspicion that this life is all there is and that God's promises are nothing more than a mass delusion, opiate of the people, psychological crutch with no basis in fact.  It should come as no surprise when we see some of our number leaping over the side, unable to take it anymore.

Meanwhile, some of us will be laughing, not at the loss of our comrades, of course, but at the pathetically transparent attempts by the devil to make our heart's fail with fear.

I recently found out that someone had been saying some terrible things about me. At first, my reaction was to work up into a rage over it.  "Why how could.....I mean......after I....I will never....."  You know the kind of thing that I wanted to say.

Then, I laughed.

I remember once how Ronald Reagan, in a presidential debate, responded to distortions of his record by his opponent.  "There you go again..."  he laughed.  It wasn't so much what he said, it was that bemused chuckle that people remember. It was so powerful a thing to do that nobody remembers the point Jimmy Carter was trying to make.  It wasn't so much the words Reagan said as the way he chuckled when he said them that disarmed his opponent.

I said to myself, "No.  You don't win.  I will not be the kind of nasty vindictive person Satan wants me to become in response to this. I will not seek revenge, Instead, I will declare a holy war.  I will fight my jihad with the tools of love, patience, generosity and  faith - the only weapons of war a Christian soldier is allowed. I will become a better, stronger person after this, not a worse one.  I will overcome my enemies with kindness and love. I will forgo the hollow pleasure of vengeance for the eternal pleasure of life everlasting."

(insert hearty chuckle here)

Tom

Schrodinger's Lawn

"Wind"
An Acrostic by Tom King


Will I with courage face the closing of the day?
 In wrapping up my life will I be done?
 No, I expect to leave unfinished business here
 Don't grieve for I have fought my war and won.


My wife and I do not have the same set of values where yard work is concerned. I have been called "afraid of manual labor" because of that lawnological difference between us. I know better than to retort. Let her take her shot. She will go inside soon and leave me out here with the fresh cut grass and forever falling leaves.

The problem is, I think, one of basic gender values. Men tend to take the longer view; pursue more distant goals than do our women. We are, after all, the hunters in the hunter-gatherer partnership. In the poem, I express a very male idea. It's not accidental that women don't really get what I'm talking about here, but men do. Men seldom really finish our work. There's always more to do than we can get done in a day or in this lifetime for that matter.That's why we tinker and tweak cars, boats, sound systems, whatever! We plan on making them perfect eventually, but we never quite get there. Next time a guy shows you something he's proud of, see if doesn’t tell you not only how cool and powerful whatever it is, but he'll also tell you what's still wrong with it and what he plans to do to make it better.

Women on the other hand approach tasks as a series of nest buildings. They work very hard to pull everything into a nice nest-like enclosure and kill themselves trying to tie it all up in a bow. It's an exercise in futility though. There is always something undone left outside the bow and the basket. I think it's why so many women are unhappy. It's the way my wife does the lawn.

She'll kill herself to bring the lawn to the peak of perfection, not a leaf anywhere, the lines in the dirt perfectly parallel. Every blade of grass subdued; every flower standing erect. Then she stands on the porch, looks at it with satisfaction for a moment and then goes inside before the next autumn breeze can shower a ton of dead leaves down on her nice tidy lawn. She needs to see that moment of perfect in order to content herself that all is right with the lawn till next Sunday. Next Sunday, she'll start all over trying to subdue mother nature.

Me, I figure the grass is an on-going project. I know I'm not going to beat the leaves. I can be satisfied with the yard looking only generally better. While my Sweet Baboo is inside taking a bath and fixing her hair, I sit out on the porch, play the guitar and watch the wind swirl down the dry leaves and make them dance on the new mown lawn. I am content.

My wife is also content in the house where she doesn't have to watch the depredations of autumn leaves upon her perfect lawn. For her, it's like Schrodinger's cat, the physics exercise where you seal a cat in a box with cyanide and a radioactive trigger. The idea is that if you don’t open the box, the cat isn’t dead in there because you don’t really know till you open it. If Schrodinger wasn't a woman, he was certainly in touch with his feminine side.


So, for my wife, so long as she just doesn't look at the lawn, in her mind it's still perfect. 

Men don't much get that.......

© 2009 by Tom King

American Psychiatric Association Warns Therapists not to Treat Homosexuality

"Politicizing a Mental Disorder"

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the primary diagnostic tool used by psychiatrists and psychologists to identify mental disorders. With a stroke of the eraser, the mental health establishment made it okay to be gay. There was dancing in the streets of San Francisco. There was strong opposition to this measure from the psychological community, but these scientists were shouted down.

With that action APA instantly "healed" millions of troubled individuals by simply saying "Never mind, go ahead with what you're doing, just learn to live with it."

The APA tried to reach a compromise with objectors in 1980 by including a new diagnosis - ego-dystonic homosexuality which simply stated was a persistent lack of normal arousal, that interferes with heterosexual relationships the person wants and emotional distress caused by unwanted homosexual arousal. Apparently, even this recognition that some people didn't want to be gay was too much for the activists. There were riots by gay activists at scientific conventions. In response to the ensuing uproar, the APA, always a tower of Jello, in 1986, removed the diagnosis entirely from the DSM, leaving only a faint vestige of it under "Sexual Disorders Not Otherwise Specified".

At the time, psychologists working on homosexual treatment programs wondered if preventive therapy for homosexuality would be prohibited. They were reading the future correctly.

The campaign to legitimize homosexuality continued with a recent two year APA task force that examined the issue. They released their report this year with a stern warning to therapists not to suggest that homosexuality was a mental disorder or to recommend "reparative" therapies aimed at changing sexual orientation. APA further states that in dealing with gay clients from conservative faiths, therapists should be "very cautious" about suggesting treatments aimed at altering their same-sex attractions." The report goes on to say, "Practitioners can assist clients through therapies that do not attempt to change sexual orientation, but rather involve acceptance, support and identity exploration and development without imposing a specific identity outcome."

The task force that issued this report included not one psychiatrist that believed homosexuality is not a normal adaptation. Further, the APA task force took as STARTING POINT, the belief that homosexuality is a normal variant of human sexuality, not a disorder, and that it nonetheless remains stigmatized in ways that can have negative consequences.

Big surprise the outcome of that "scientific" study.

This issue makes less and less sense the longer it is debated. The Rolling Stones once sang, "Satan, Satan is my name. Confusion is my game." So it seems to be with this issue. Both sides grow increasingly muddled in their thinking.

The gay community wants you to believe that homosexuality is not a choice. They also get mad every time someone tries to find out whether there is a genetic or physical problem with the brains of gay men and women. A study that indicated a shrinkage of the pineal gland in homosexual men was hooted down by the gay community. If it's not a choice, then there ought to be a physical basis for it not being a choice. For a long time the gay community has maintained that being gay is not a choice, but also has no physical basis.

This confuses me. Heterosexuality has a definite physical basis. I am aroused because physical things happen in my body. How is that now so with homosexual arousal? Recently the gay community has embraced the muddled idea that there is a so-called normal "gay gene" and claims that proves that gayness is 'normal'.

Unfortunately, the APA says there is no gay gene and with this recent ruling, the APA's version of 'don't ask, don't tell' for scientific research, the APA has effectively shut down any legitimate research into what does cause homosexuality and how to treat it. They have, in effect, told gay people who don't want to be gay to "Get used to it!" They've opened the doors of derision on such researchers in the same fashion that the global warming people have done with scientists who are skeptical about global warming in the Al Gore era.

The Christian community's resistance to such research hasn't helped. The mystical nonsense about the human brain that many Christians accept as gospel, does not allow either mental illness or genetic factors to be causative for homosexuality. Homosexuals some vocal leaders argue, are just bad people who want to be bad and therefore must go to hell.

This too is obvious balderdash. God places us in a physical body that, in a sinful world, is not always perfect. If you can get cancer, lung disease or have birth defects that cause asthma, digestive problems or a physical disability, is it any less likely that the delicate mechanism of the human brain might also, on occasion, have something wrong with it?

When Christ healed people with mental illness, did he not also repair the shattered brains of those people as well? When he drove out the "demons" did he not also repair the damage that allowed those demons to lodge there in the first place. It is God's purpose to bring us in this life to healing and health so that we are free to choose whether to follow Him or not. The Psalms say, "He knows that we are dust." That is a comfort to me because I have worked for years with people whose minds, through no fault of their own, have been damaged to the point that they could not make good decisions. Does God abandon them because they were born with fetal alcohol syndrome and cannot reason cause to effect properly?

God, whose eye is on the sparrow, surely sees these folks and finds a way to save them. The Apostle Paul says that some of us will be saved as a "man escaping through the flames". I have to wonder whether he was talking about some of the truly damaged among us, the aborted babies, the severely mentally ill or those who die under tremendous abuse. I believe God can bring each and every one of us to a point of decision. Who will you serve? He knows what is truly in our heart. The evidence of the thief on the cross shows that salvation isn't about what we do, but about simply embracing the salvation that is offered to us. To those who die not fully formed as humans, I believe God is powerful to save. In heaven, God could place in my arms any child that never had a chance at life and I will with unspeakable joy, raise that child as my own. I will befriend any soul that had Downs Syndrome in this life and comes to heaven as a childlike soul and I will gladly mentor him or her to adulthood.

The APA has said we must not offer healing to those who suffer with unnatural desires of homosexuality and wish that they did not. Well, civil disobedience works for Christians too and I believe that every Christian therapist, psychologist, counselor and psychiatrist should fearlessly disobey the APA. We should continue research into the physical causes of this disorder and work tirelessly on treatments. We should treat our brothers and sisters who choose to remain gay with the same love and tenderness we would treat anyone. We must love our enemies as well as our friends and that duty extends to the lesbian couple next door, the gay men down the streat and even to the misguided protestors at the APA conventions. They are our fellow travelers and we are commanded to love them as we love ourselves.

It's that simple.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

35 Years and Still Makin' Music!

Tomorrow I will have been married to My Sweet Baboo for 35 years.

That seems like it ought to be a long time and there are time it feels like we've always been together. I have, after all, been with the Missus for more years than I was with anyone else.

It has been a ride. I met her in the ladies room. I was working as a janitor in a nursing home and she was an aide and taking my great great aunt to the potty at the time. I was scrubbing the toilet at the time. I remember being struck by this leggy Louisiana girl and as she walked back down the hall to get Aunt Ethel, I stuck my head out the door and watched her walk away. It was an inspiring sight.

Then I asked around and found out she was engaged. I remember telling my best friend it looked like all the best ones were taken. I did, however, discover that she liked to play gospel music for the residents on Saturday afternoons after she got off work. I started showing up with my guitar and playing with her and Mrs. Nix, an LVN who joined us on the piano - she had a powerful left handed Southern gospel style. The seniors loved it.

Then Sheila's fiancee found out she was playing music with some long-haired local boy and he showed up with his guitar. I remember him standing across the room looking at me like I was a rattlesnake. We had some intense music that afternoon, but the future Mrs. King seemed blissfully unaware of the tension between us. She was all about the music.

We went off for the summer - me to camp, she to some youth ministry deal in Oklahoma. When I got back to college, I'd been dumped by yet another girl. It was my 7th time being dumped. I was tired of it, so I got down on my knees and prayed. I told God I was through looking and if he meant me to find someone, He'd have to take care of it.

Two weeks later, Sheila asked me to sit with her on the bus to a Bible Conference and play some music. She'd just broken up with her fiancee and I'd just been dumped so neither of us were looking for a new romance. We circled round each other all weekend. Both our exes were there, but we kept bumping into each other. Finally, on the bus ride back, we'd just finished a song and were trying to think up another one to do. Suddenly it was as if someone smacked me on the back of the head. I literally saw a flash of light and it was like God said, "Hey, stupid. This is the one!" She had the same exact experience (except God didn't call her "stupid") at the same instant. We fumbled for each others hands and in that moment we knew this was it.

Everybody told us it was a mistake. Our exes even tried another run at us to no avail. Her ex even tried to beat me up in a student association haunted house where he poured fake blood over my head and pushed me around. My best friend warned her against me and almost succeeded in breaking us up, but God would have his way. We were perfectly pitiful lost lambs and our marriage should have been doomed, but God apparently knows his stuff.



We soon had 3 wonderful kids - all with sweet dispositions and tender hearts and we love them dearly. We struggled, worked in one nonprofit or mission type project after another, We've done well. We've been flat broke. We've had every bit of the "in sickness, in health, for richer, for poorer" the world can throw at us.

But God knows his business. I needed her gift for creating peace and orderliness because on my own, my life is chaos. She needed my mule-headedness, patience and gift for handling crisis. Together we complete each other. We fit like two pieces of a puzzle.

So, tomorrow, we're 35 years together going on billions more. We plan to share digs in heaven and the new Earth since neither of us can imagine doing anything remotely fun without the other. She'll have her music back and I hope to be able to carry a tune without needing the bucket. Ya'll come by the house and sit a spell. Bring your banjos and your fiddles or whatever else you play. We'll raise the rafters together......

.