Paint the Town Red

Okay, so it isn't the ENTIRE town... just the portion of town that surrounds my ankle and foot... but it's RED!

This particular cast stays on for a couple of weeks as healing continues, then we will determine what color comes next.

The swelling comes and goes as as the process of trying to heal and find a position to put my leg in that doesn't hurt varies from moment to moment. I'm also trying to learn to navigate with the knee scooter without tumbling into a wall or other object while I'm in a drugged stupor.

I need the pain killers, but they do strange things to my sleep cycle, my dreams and my wake time comprehension. They make me loopy ... loopier... loopiest... and alter my perceptions of how things are coming along.

I'm getting a little throbbing in my ankle, so I guess it's time to head back to the ice filled fun, fun world of putting my ankle up on pillows.

It Slices, It Dices

I'm feeling very much like the participant in a product hawking infomercial now. There has been some slicing and dicing on the old ankle and we are now home watching the seasons change on my toes. Normally, you have to wait for fall to see these kinds of colors, but for the lucky few, they can see it on my left foot.

Roughly two hours into the morning Tuesday and I have a reconstructed ankle suitable for lying abed and sucking down percocet every six hours like clockwork. Of course, I don't really know much of what went on in recovery or what national security secrets were leaked while I was under the influence of sedation.

I could very well have given away my recipe for homemade turkey gravy! I do hope not... that is a carefully guarded secret but if I find the staff at the surgical center having particularly festive Thanksgiving this November, I know...

No surgical procedure is a 'yippee skippy' event and they all come with risk but I have been in pain for so long, I'm truly looking forward to finding out what's on the other side of this ride.

Ron Popeil has nothing on Doc Martens. He can hawk the stuff, but nobody filets an ankle like the doc.

My only question is what do you serve with it? Filet of ankle isn't too popular, but it IS gaining in notariety around our house.

I think my medicine is making me loopy... er...

Graduation 2011

Jared waits for his Graduation Cermonies to begin



Milestones are interesting things.

Often, we take for granted those little moments that just flow through our days as regular as sunrise and clockwork. It's as if the expected always happens.

But the understanding that God has often got other plans for us and those we love brings a jarring sense of reality to our milestone moments. We don't always get what we want when we wanted it or even how we expected it to occur. Detours and derailments can make or break us and in that process we are learning... not so much about circumstance as self.

Jared Shane Merrill is an unfailingly cheerful soul who takes whatever comes to him in a grace and dignity that most of us will never be able to muster under even the best of circumstances.

He has endured so many painful things in his life, it would be completely understandable if he were to be a whiner. But Jared doesn't whine. It simply isn't in his nature.

We had the blessing and honor of seeing Jared grow to be a man and to receive the rewards of the work that he has achieved in his academic career. That his path was different than what we expected 18+ years ago as we held a tiny infant in our arms doesn't seem to matter now.

He has done something that prayerful nights, tearful days and pacing the floor waiting for news of his progress has brought us all to - Jared has graduated.

All to frequently, the focus seems to be on what DIDN'T happen instead of a sharpened gaze directed upon what DID. Jared has been blessed by God to be an actor in a great refining moment, he has taught us to slow down and be thankful for the ride instead of viewing our life as merely the vehicle to get to "what's next".

I cannot be unthankful to have the brakes applied to my own life by the entrance of Jared into my chaos. Though he doesn't travel at the speed I'd like to go, the very fact that he cheerfully reminds me that what I thought was important to do really isn't has been a blessing beyond comprehension.

Jared smiles through life at things that would make "normal people" wither.

I put 'normal' in the quotes because Jared has taught me that normal isn't a real construct. To group people into that kind of iconic mode is not fair. It also isn't true.

We aren't 'normal', not one of us.

To say that is to deny the varying speeds of our individual progress and hamper our God-given glory by making us all the same. And we are NOT the same and were never intended to be the same.

I truly believe that God spoke with each and every one of us as we discussed our journey through life. He tenderly explained the confidences He has in us and then unfolded a plan as individual as He hoped we would be willing to become. Everyone received a journey and a plan that was different. Everyone also received a map of intersections that we would come to where our lives and the lives of those who would become our family of blood and family of the heart would join our journey together for a period of time.

God loves us enough that He wanted us to know that we are not just a 'group' seeking to be admitted back into his presence like a general admission cattle call to a carnival. He wants us to do like Jared is doing. Taking each day as it comes, willing to be somewhat like Job in an unwavering acceptance of all that he receives, both pleasant and unpleasant, with a steady trust that God truly knows the best for each of us in our individual circumstances.

My son has graduated.

God's son has graduated.

Next year, Jared begins a new phase of learning and we will be learning right along with him.

Maybe one day, I can graduate, too. Only I hope my 'diploma' will say that I have learned to roll with the punches and play the cards that life has dealt with the same level of uncomplaining grace as my son.

Who says parents know everything?

Sometimes, it is the lessons we receive at the hands of our children that are the most far reaching after all.

The Mother Church of Country Music

Beth and me on stage at The RYMAN AUDITORIUM!

The Ryman Auditorium – or as we call it down here “The Mother Church of Country Music” and ancestral home to the Grand Ol’ Opry.

What was once begun as a hellfire and damnation church to preach against the evils of a society in decay has grown to become an icon of the music that defines a region, a people and a way of life.

Though the right reverend and traveling evangelist Sam Jones had hoped the tabernacle built in 1892 would serve as a Nashville point of salvation, it became something greater in the hearts of those who were served and saved by not only the gospel but the music of the country in which it was born and raised. Intended to be the Union Gospel Tabernacle built for Sam Jones by the newly converted riverboat Captain Thomas G. Ryman, it grew and even expanded during an 1897 Confederate Reunion to add an expansive balcony to the original theatre in the round design to accommodate the crowd that had come to honor the soldiers who fought in the “Late, Great Unpleasantness”.

Years of use and then eventual neglect created changes to the now (thankfully!) restored and stately old building. The theatre in the round is no more. Country music and WSM radio changed the face of the Ryman from a gospel shouter’s paradise and into a mother church of the music that defined a segment of the population. Country music, bluegrass, homespun comedy and an environment where kids, adults and the aged could all come and join in the fun and rich emotion that drives home the lyrics of each song crooned into the microphone of the Grand Ol’ Opry.

Growing up listening to all kinds of music, I remember many times listening to the songs coming from the radio broadcasts of WSM in Nashville. They played the current, the old and the favorite gospel songs that were like mother’s milk to the ears of people needing to feel like someone else shared their cares, their woes, their load and lot in life. From the hallowed and almost reverent stage of the Ryman, those broadcasts shared with the eager ears emotion for emotion.

Gaining not only a reputation for the music of the people, but also for the voraciously sought worldwide acts and productions that brought culture to the masses, the Ryman was quick to be compared to the boards of the famed theaters in Damnyankee country and was even tagged as being “the Carnegie Hall of the South”.

Lines to attend the productions and live radio shows surrounded the block as hunger for more than the day to day filled the souls of people who were enriched by the music and the emotion of the Ryman. It was indeed a version of life’s blood to all those who entered the hallowed halls and sat reverentially on the worn pews that created the audience portion of the theatre and balcony.

Even now, you can feel that presence of being in a Tabernacle, one that has the acoustics second only to that OTHER famed Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah. Both have stories that only the past can tell and both have futures that are, even now, unfolding before our very eyes and ears.

Visiting the Ryman was not what I was expecting. Frankly, I don’t know what I was expecting. Theatre, church, or both… who knows? I admit to being deeply awed, amazed and thrilled to know that where I was walking had graced the presence of “Country Royalty” past and present. I couldn’t stop smiling! Displays of the lives of the voices that I have heard on my radio filled the atmosphere with a heady presence of the living embodiement of what it is to 'be country'.

Walking from display to display to read about the people that inhabit the country world, I was singing along with Johnny Cash word for word and feeling the songs as if I had lived it.

Then, came the coup de grace!

Beth and I had the opportunity to ascend to the very stage and to the microphone stand that countless performers of Opry legend had occupied! It felt almost sacriligious. How could I possibly be counted worthy to step into the place where my musical heroes had once inhabited? It was a heady sensation. The photo op was just that… a chance to be immortalized in print as ‘being at the Ryman’.

Then, came the unexpected. Oh, joy! The photographer said "there's a couple of guitars up there, if you know how to play 'em". I picked one up and strummed a bit and picked out a quick giblet of a song. He laughed and said "Well, I guess you CAN play!"

The photographer then asked if we sang. Beth, who lied through her teeth, pointed to me and said, “I don’t, but she does”. Beth sings. I have heard her sing at lots of country concerts. I’ve also heard her scream herself hoarse at them, but I digress.

Chicken-hearted I am not, so I belted out a few lines of what felt was appropriate. I sang “Precious Lord”. It was, after all, a Tabernacle turned icon. Overwhelmed by both the atmosphere and the reality of where I was standing, I choked up a bit and just took it all in. My Grandpa Mitchell had been the bass in the old Athens Quartet and sung for recordings and radio broadcasts from back in the day when the Opry was just a regional suggestion. I hope he saw his granddaughter on the stage at the Ryman singing a tidbit of a gospel song. I think it would have made him smile.

When I talked to Kari about it later, she was jealous. I laughed. I WANTED her to be jealous. I want to go back and slip into the recording booth there at the Ryman with my sisters and record a gospel song in harmonies to give to Daddy. A record we’ll make at the Ryman.

I like to think that will honor both the Tabernacle that is the Mother Church of Country Music, and the Grandfather known as “Singin’ Sam”, the man who’s heart was filled with country music and gospel fervor whom we never really knew.

The Ryman – part auditorium, part church, all country.

Thanks, Beth! This was a road trip I will NEVER forget. I don’t think I will ever be the same.