Prayer for Hurricane Katrina Victims

Everything.....

EVERY THING.

I am watching the news from the comfort of my home and trying to wrap my mind around the hurricane disaster and relate to what is happening in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the core states of our beloved Southern United States. I am trying to think of the way to pray for people in the wake of such complete devastation and dire depravation. I am trying to imagine what their prayers and thoughts are, what their needs are, who they are and where they will go. I am trying to imagine the scope of their losses; family members gone, some surely dead, homes destroyed beyond rebuilding, medical help beyond reach, no drinkable water or food in sight or for that matter none available in the near future. No churches, no streets, no light when the sun goes down, no dry shelter. Blistering hot sun all day long and hours spent just trying to survive until help comes, praying that no more rain comes but needing the fresh water to drink. Trying to face another day when help does not come. Trying not to think of illness, and perhaps death if they are stranded too long. Some of them are surely wondering whether death would have been kinder.

Please share in my prayer for the hurricane victims and for the special people that are helping in any way that they can.

Dear Lord,

We acknowledge you as the one true God and Savior.

We thank you for the gifts in our lives and for your never ending mercy and forgiveness.

We thank you for our own personal safety.

We ask that you shower gifts of love, healing, mercy, supplies, health and strength to these hurricane victims, our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We ask that you protect each and every person affected by this storm and that you bring unprecedented healing and restoration to their bodies, their homes and their hearts.

We ask further that you bring us together as a nation and that you guide our national leadership and charitable organizations to carry out effective and timely search and rescue efforts.

We ask for the safety of our troops, our National Guard and private agencies that will put their own lives on the line for this effort in the days to come.

We ask your blessings on the souls that perish.

Lastly, we ask that you give us patience, endurance, strength, unity of purpose, resources and resolve to assist as we are able until the needs are met.

These things we ask in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen

Eaves Family Reunion or the Ties That Bind

The First Ever Eaves Cousins Reunion - August 13, 2005
Or, The Ties That Bind

Well we did it! After at least 40 years with various degrees of separation from family, raising our own families and following our individual interests, we came together for a weekend to share our common heritage. I wondered for a while whether this would be awkward, but I can assure you that it wasn’t. Pauses in conversation were few and most were filled with looks of joy, concern and amusement over old family stories.

I have to pause here and say that none of this would have been possible without Bob and Sharon opening their home and their hearts to this small seed of an idea last Spring. They were generous to a fault, and I don’t know how Sharon managed to put together such a wonderful meal, keep tabs on Bob and put up with so many relatives that she had never even met before. Their home is filled with obvious love and faith, making it a joy to be there and share it with them. It was also great of Bob to share with us about his animals and his life on the ranch. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

There were old family albums to be shared, and many of the pictures in one or the other cousin’s album turned out to be ones we had never seen of our own family members or the Eaves Grandparents. The albums are so old and the pages so worn that it was difficult to keep them from disintegrating as we looked for our own remembrances. Unidentified photos were scrutinized by our collective failing eyesight and we were amazed to see the generation before us come to life in these long ignored volumes.

Thus the ties that bind. Acknowledging God in our lives and thanking Him for all of our blessings. Recalling stories about one parent or another who did great favors, told great stories, and inspired the interests that we follow today. Repeating tales of fond encounters when a Grandparent, Aunt or Uncle was paying special attention to us. Hearing the latest versions of youthful shenanigans grown legendary with age. Sharing sorrow and tragedy with empathy and speaking gentle remembrances of the family members who have gone before us. Laughing at our faults, our follies and ourselves and acknowledging the imperfection of our human condition. This is a special unity of knowing the depth of family feelings that can only be found in this type of gathering. In truth, funerals and reunions have much the same purpose for families. They are for the living, they honor the past and they allow us a time of grace to enjoy family and worry less about our own cares.

We waited a long time, but now the torch of tradition should be carried forward. Joan and I will talk about where to have next year’s reunion and we’ll ask around for opinion till the decision is made. The most important thing is to have it, not where it will be. I’ve already heard interest from people who couldn’t make it this year, so positive things breed positive reaction. The consensus is that we will have the next reunion in June of 2006. I am waiting to find out the dates of Bill’s 40th Dartmouth reunion before I try to set a date, as that is an important event for him and I’m sure we will try to go. I’m thinking that the earliest date possible will be shortly after the 10th. I’m also thinking that the weekend of the 16th, 17th and 18th will probably be best. Keep this in mind and let me know if anyone has objections to those dates.

For anyone other than family that read this on my blog, my message is to stop thinking about a family reunion and plan one. This is one of the few places where such enduring memories can be made in such a short and enjoyable time. Every year that you wait, you risk the loss of a loved one or maybe even your own ability to participate. Life is way to short to keep waiting.

Here are a few pictures of our time together and some of a time many years ago:

FROST Reunions…The first picture doesn’t have a notation on the back. The second is of Ada, John, Aunt Laura, Sterling and Colonel Frost with our Great Grandmother Betty Cooper Frost. The third has the following note on the back: “This picture was made just a week to the day before mama died, thought you would like to have it.” I believe that the handwriting is Grandmother Eaves. This is only from memories of letters I received from her as a child.



August 13, 2005 – Eaves Cousins













I have more, but I think I’m pressing it with this many for email. Whoever took the group pictures, please forward me one. My camera was on the blink and I’d really like to have a copy.

Thanks and be well until next time. God bless you.

Paula

Embarrassing Moments

We all have a few. Some store them in a dim, dark spot, never to be mentioned again. However, in my family the tradition has always been to get as much mileage out of these as possible. You can bet that when someone says “Do you remember when…” , there will be an revival of someone’s buried secret, bared for all to consider. Since they are all fodder for other peoples sic amusement, I thought you might as well enjoy them too.

Scenario 1: I am about 5. My Uncle and I are sitting in front of an ancient apartment building in San Antonio, Texas, where my parents are negotiating rent and move in details. It must be 110 and we’ve been in the car for a long time. I need to pee so bad that I am holding my breath to keep from releasing anything, even air. My Uncle gives me a small coffee can and I promptly make an effort to fill it, squatting dutifully over the can on the floorboard of the car. I am successful in filling the can, but my bladder keeps going. Said Uncle realizes the problem and snatches me out of the car, through the window, still peeing. There are people on the lawn watching. To top this off, HE was upset with me. My mother was rabid that the car had been soiled. I was teased mercilessly about my capacity. It was insensitive, but no one meant any harm. I cried for an hour and still never pee in strange places unless I’m absolutely forced. This is the first time I ever remember being embarrassed or knowing what it meant.

Scenario 2: I am 13 and in the first year of Junior High. I decide for the very first time that I am just NOT going to go to school on this particular day. We live in an apartment in back of a funeral home (my father was a mortician), and there is very small employee bathroom about 6 feet down the hall from our apartment door. Being super cool, I walk out the front door as if I’m leaving for school, but I duck in to the bathroom so that I can go back in the house after everyone clears out for the day. Footsteps. Oh Shoot! Someone is coming. Panic sets in and I step into the shower behind the shower curtain, books in hand, heart pounding so loud I thought it was going to thump through my chest. Water running…ok, maybe it’s just a hand wash…oh no, someone’s sitting on the toilet. There’s nothing between us but about 4 inches of shower wall. I am stupefied, mortified, terrified that I will be found out. Then things get worse. There are noises that clearly indicate that this is my father’s boss. It is obvious that he is going to do his daily…right there, with me in the shower next to him. By this time I am all but dead with fear. Alfred Hitchcock’s panic scenes were nothing compared to this. Without being too graphic, I will say that the topper of all toppers to this already sloppy scene was the stink. Try holding your breath and trying to ignore stench at the same time. End of story; he left, I was not caught, I waited 5 miserable minutes in the bathroom then went into our apartment and lost my breakfast. After that, I gathered up my books and WENT TO SCHOOL. I waited at least 30 years to tell this story to anyone.

Scenario 3: I am maybe 15. My Dad has a new emerald green Rambler with lay-back seats. I borrow it to go on a date to the drive inn and the next day my Dad discovers the driver’s side head rest sticking into the back of the driver’s seat. Go figure.

Scenario 4: Same year. My biology teacher lives 2 doors down and at the end of the street. Every time I go to class, he feels obligated to comment on my social life and report to the class who was at my house the previous evening and ask rude questions about where we went and what time we got in, and the inevitable jab about whether I had quality time for my homework. This went on for an entire year. It would never fly in this day and age.

Scenario 5: Flash back to age 12. I’m getting undressed to put my pajamas on, but I stop by the closet mirror to see how things are growing, if you get my drift. As I walk away, I hear giggling and my young cousin reveals that he has been hiding under the bed watching. I didn’t tell on him, but I got a lot of mileage myself out of this as a blackmailing tool for ice cream, sodas and other essentials.

Scenario 6: Age 14: I am “seen” in a car at the local fast food drive in talking to two boys at once. I am called on the carpet for this by my social club sisters (really their up-tight mothers) and told that if this ever happens again that I will be black balled. I never could quite understand what the significance of that would be for my future, but it was clearly embarrassing in the present. I find out later how immediately significant this is when I ask one of my “sisters” to visit my house during a phone call and I can hear her mother in the background replying that she is not allowed to hang out with “trash”. WOW! Hurt first, then embarrassed and in retrospect very angry.

Scenario 7: I’m a young busy mother of 3. I haul myself out of bed on a Saturday morning, grab my jeans from the day before, put them on and head for the grocery store. I’ve been there about 45 minutes, perusing the isles, when I look down on the bottom shelf for something. When I bend over, I see one leg of a pair of panty hose trailing about 2 feet behind me. They had been in the leg of the pants when I put them on! I can’t believe people were mean enough to see this and just let me suffer through it and find out myself. Live and learn.

Scenario 8: My first job interview after my husband came home from Viet Nam was at a car dealership in California. I have no panty hose, so my husband runs in a department store on the way to the interview. He brings out the package and we start toward Santa Anna for the interview. I’m supposed to put the panty hose on in the car. They are entirely inappropriate and I don’t have the heart or the guts to tell him. They are black and have seams up the back…to boot, my clothes for the interview are way out of sync with California life (red, hot and too dressy) and I look like a complete idiot. They felt sorry for me and I got the job anyway.

I realized while typing these that I probably have several hundred more. Some are not amusing. Eight is enough! Maybe I’ll confess again another time. For now, I’ll just tell you that somewhere around age 40 I decided that embarrassment was just a gross waste of time and energy. If I get caught in an act of stupidity these days, I just laugh it off, admit the sin and chalk it up as experience. Who really cares? As long as I’m trying my best to please God, everyone else will have to live with my faults.

The reason I got that job with the stupid panty hose and the wrong dress for an interview is that I obviously needed it, deserved it and could do it. When you deal with decent people, that’s the way life works anyway.

Till next time.

Paula

An Adaptive and Dignified Career

In 1985, I experienced a “career interruption”. Mind you, my choice of vocations had not been focused even up to the events that preempted this change, but it had definitely been interesting and remained so for the rest of my working life.

I had my first real job at about age 12. It was clerking at a little local business that sold records and flowers. “Running Bear” by Johnnie Preston was continuously playing in the shop because they were trying to push it off the shelves before Christmas. It was 1959 and I still hate that song. This was my one and only retail experience. I had various jobs through Junior High and High School, some normal things like babysitting and ironing, but I also sang for funerals. Since my father was a mortician who worked in a Funeral Home with a flower shop; any morning I was free on a Funeral Day was spent making funeral sprays.

In 1965 I married and left the town in the Texas Panhandle where I had been living since Junior High. I became a statistic at that moment, although I didn’t understand economics well enough to realize it. From where I stood at the time, almost anything looked better, but I was looking with untrained eyes. There is much more to this story of young love and escape from the known to the unknown but imagined life of glory forever, but that is for another time. I was speaking of occupations.

I found out quickly after I married that lack of education IS a problem in getting work. I also found out that a little ingenuity, personality and hard work can get you a lot further than a resume without experience. I was fortunate that getting hired was never a problem for me. I’ve always been able to ace the interview and field objections in a way that put them in my favor. Often I ended up with work that exceeded my skill level, but I was always able to learn quickly and rise to the task.

In my early work life, money was the most important thing, with a family to care for I was looking for an occupation that paid the highest rate possible for my skill level. It just happened that in 1965, this was about $1.35 an hour. When my husband went to Viet Nam in the fall of 1965 leaving me at home with a new baby, I moved back to my parents and went straight back to school. I could already type well, so a quick course in 10 key and alpha-shorthand and I was back in the workforce. This has been the pattern of my education; one small skill at a time over many years, edified by a succession of jobs that grew beyond their bounds into nightmare workloads of epic proportion.

It’s not that I didn’t like working; it’s that I seldom worked at anything I particularly liked. I think that this is a common dilemma among people who do not have a strong passion that they follow for a career. My saving grace was that I did have a passion for accuracy and that is a highly valued strength. By the time I was 23, I was a widow with 3 children, so choices were limited and my responsibilities were indelibly defined. My first husband came home from Viet Nam, but died in a car accident within 3 years. This is not a pity party. My children are my life and we’ve had a very interesting, if somewhat difficult journey together. Some of that journey was my work as an accounting clerk, full charge bookkeeper, financial services administrator, salesperson extraordinaire, temporary employment service manager, customer service manager, and cab driver. Did that last one get your attention?

1984-1985 were two years I’ll never forget. I almost took my own life in despair over my job and the sure demise of my second marriage. I found out my mother had cancer and lost her within 6 months of the diagnosis. I left my husband and went to stay with my brother and his partner until I could find a home, and ended up after a short while living in a house with 9 people that included my son and his new wife and one of my high school age daughters. No one was working but me and my brother’s partner. I lost the house that I had made the down payment and all the payments on for the previous 7 years. I was forced by my financial condition and living circumstances to leave my youngest daughter to live with my ex-husband. I was broadsided by an 18 wheeler in my sister’s car while I was taking her children to pick her up at work and all of us survived the wreck but the new Buick was totaled and the rig had no insurance. A few months after that, we found out that my brother had AIDS.

In the midst of this, I gave up God and converted to Buddhism. God still loves me and I found my way back to his fold. I was just so very angry and unsatisfied with the world that I forgot that He never gives us any burdens that we can’t handle. I don’t want to mask this as a minor infraction though; I was a practicing Nicheron Shoshu Buddhist for almost 10 years.

The advent of my brother’s illness cast me in the role of caretaker. He was 10 years younger than me and I had been more of a 2nd mother figure to him than a sister. It was logical that I should help with his care since I was in the same town and I didn’t have small children living with me. How was the question. A rigid work routine of 40+ hours could not accommodate running him to doctor’s appointments, seeing that he had food to eat, medications and proper care and contact with family. When his condition began to deteriorate, the needs were so obvious that I could not turn away.

I tried waitressing odd hours, but there was not enough money to survive on. So, I saved a down payment and bought a taxi cab. This was an odd solution, but one that ultimately worked out well. I drove the cab 12 hour day shifts and was able to pick my brother up for appointments, take him meals and check in on him anytime that I was in the area. I hired two other drivers to pick up all the shifts that I couldn’t work and the cab ran 24 hours a day. The cab was a 1984 Chevrolet Impala police car that I bought with 42,000 miles on it in mid-1985. When I sold it (for $1000.00) to another cab driver in 1991, it had almost 500,000 miles on the odometer. It was still clean and had some life in it.

My brother died in 1991 and I went back to jobs that society would deem more appropriate for a lady of my age and education. Sales, mid-management, then a small business (very small). I gave all this glamour up in 1996 when I married my dear husband, who I met in a chat room on the internet. Then I spent 10 happy years in Boston with him and now I am retired and living in Sun City Texas.

On the surface this may sound like a story of immense tragedy, but if you think this, you should look deeper. There were many happy and treasured hours with the people I love during this time, there were learning experiences that formed personal values, and there were lessons in tolerance, patience and the practice of living with diversity. I learned the difference between surface acquaintances and true friends. Most importantly I found God again and I found my true life mate in my husband. He made it possible for me to live life in a calmer, more structured way and to build resources to support that life. With an opportunity offered by my last employer, I went back to school while I was in Boston and trained as a programmer.

There are still unresolved issues in my life. I have two daughters that have had problems with drug addiction and have suffered legal consequences from their actions. They are struggling to restructure their lives and recover from this devastating problem. I lost my father to an embolism far too early. I have arthritis and my husband is disabled. Through all of this I am blessed. I am blessed with love from my family, with acceptable health and the ability to improve it, with a wonderful husband, with 6 grandchildren and a small but cherished group of friends. I am blessed with survival and I am eternally thankful to God for my life.

My father used to say “There is honor in all work.” He was trying to tell me that I should never judge anyone by the level of their formal education or how they make a living. He was also trying to make the point that common labor is a necessary and proper element of society. He was right. The truth is that if you could count the layers of complexity in any one person’s life, you might be counting to the end of your own. Work is only one layer. Try to make it a layer that you love, but if you can’t, love yourself while you perform the task. There is dignity in that.

Paula

Unison Prayer of Confession August 2005 and Keeping the Faith

The services this morning at the First Presbyterian Church in Georgetown, Texas were dedicated to the opening of the New Education/Administration Building. It's a wonderful facility and will add years of purposeful service space for this vital church community. I am continuously amazed by the unity and spirit of this church, and this is just an example of what can be done when people are faithful and of one mind.

I believe that God blesses this congregation not because of their works, but because of their obvious faith and trust in Him. My husband and I have benefited tremendously by involving ourselves in this church family and we are thankful for their presence in our lives.

Every service includes a prayer in unison. This was the morning for the unison prayer of confession, which follows:

Gracious God, our sins are too heavy to carry, too real to hide, and too deep to undo. Forgive what our lips tremble to name, what our hearts can no longer bear, and what has become for us a consuming fire of judgement. Set us free from a past that we cannot change; open to us a future in which we can be changed; and grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image; through Jesus Christ, the light of the world.

This is a short prayer that is filled with meaning for imperfect souls everywhere. Following the prayer, there is a silent prayer of confession and then a declaration of forgiveness. Each of us need forgiveness, renewal and freedom from the bonds of our collective sins. Each of us need a chance to put our affairs in order and look toward a bright future where we can stake our claim for peace and know the comfort of being forgiven.

This future of living in the knowlege of being forgiven belongs to us through Christ's sacrifice on the cross. He died so that we would be forgiven our sins and have everlasting life.

This simple prayer is going to be the beginning of every prayer I say this year. I was taught that there is a proper sequence in prayer. First praising God, second confessing your sins, third prayers for the world and for others, fourth asking God for help in your own life and lastly but most importantly, acknowledging Christ as the Son of God. This is a wonderful way to start praying if you are unpracticed at your faith, but I believe that you can pray in any way that is natural to you. If all you can say is "Lord I need you." with sincerity and humility, it is an eloquent beginning to a journey of faith.

This particular prayer goes right to the heart of the matter. Forgiving and being forgiven, accepting our past and putting it in it's rightful place and opening your heart to a future that you can grow and thrive in with the help of God first, then your family and your friends is the only way to achieve true happiness. Grace is a natural state when we are doing our very best to walk in Christ's image.

OftenI read what I write and wonder how I would feel if I was someone else reading it. Please understand that I like to write about what I aspire to, and not necessarily what I have already achieved. Walking a path of faith and goodness is a lifelong task and it takes tremendous effort to keep climbing back up the hill every time you fall. It's that way with my life and with everyone I know. Be encouraged that if I can do it, I know that you can. All of us need a lot of help from God.