George Ablah: High risk, high reward

I received word this evening that George Ablah of Wichita had died. Years ago, when I was an editor for the Wichita Register magazine, I interviewed him; in a strange turn of events, the feature never ran.  If it were to appear in print, I would take more time to do some fine editing/rewriting. However, as it stands, I think the details about this gentleman's fascinating life are worth sharing and preserving. Thanks go to George's son, Jeff, for filling in many of the details.--KB

George Ablah

High risks, big reward

 

 

With George Ablah, what you see is what you get. The owner of Ablah Enterprises, he’s a freewheeler who can’t stand restraints. He typically won’t wear a suit and tie. And at a time when most people of his business stature won’t leave home without their Blackberries, he remains attached to a singular piece of paper. Ablah carries one around in his pocket, updating it constantly and filling both sides with everything he needs at his fingertips, highlighting what’s most important in several bright colors. 

At 16, he owned a gas station and a liquor store, and had traveled back and forth to Chicago to make real estate transactions. He did a stint at KU and WSU, but all the business acumen he would need was either already in his gut, or would be learned by trial and error. Along the way he learned perseverance, the importance of continuing, despite the odds. Ablah nearly died at 20 while working on a construction crew. A house jack he was manning snapped and hit him in the head. As a result, he lost the hearing in one ear. It affected his vision. But he’s never let either inconvenience stand in his way.

      The eldest son, he left his father’s business, Ablah Hotel & Supply, to strike out on his own. The company made everything from coffee mugs to dinner tables to restaurant floor plans. George worked until 2 and 3 a.m., drawing up designs. For a time, he and his wife lived with their young family in a College Hill duplex shared by his father and uncle’s families.

      With his wife, Virginia, working at his side for often six days a week, Ablah built a real estate and oil investment business that spans almost fifty years and every major city in the United States. There’s probably no metropolitan area in America that Ablah hasn’t considered a piece of property in. At 78, he’s got no plans of slowing down. Currently, he’s doing business in Memphis, North Carolina, Texas and Arkansas.

      By all newspaper accounts, Ablah seems to swoop in, quickly assess a property, snatch it up and swoop back out again, confidently decisive, holding onto the land or buildings only long enough to turn a profit. He is a true entrepreneur, a risk taker and a gambler. When others would balk at property based on the fact it’s one hundred percent vacant, Ablah sees clear potential, and buys it without a second thought.

      And his interests are diverse. Aside from oil and real estate, he’s had his hands in medical supply, steel, health care, computer software, restaurants and more. He goes to Las Vegas once a month, whether he needs it or not. And in his typically larger-than-life fashion, he’s managed to win $1 million at the table in one sitting.

      Time is one’s most valued commodity, he tells his grown children and those fortunate enough to hear his twelve steps for business and life. One way he saves time is through an uncanny ability of quickly scanning information to determine if a piece of property is worth pursuing.

      It was thirty years ago that Ablah bought Chrysler Realty with Charles Koch, dba ABKO. Ablah, realizing it would take him a year to visit two of the six hundred car dealerships each day, didn’t wait on his personal surveys or the written ones before he signed on the dotted line. Time was of the essence. Doing business as usual with a gentleman’s agreement, he took the word of the sellers that everything regarding the multi-million dollar holding was as it should be.

      Personally involved in more than $2 billion in real estate transactions, Ablah has never been in a lawsuit, a testimony to his personal ethics. While others burn bridges behind them, he knows he can look at himself in the mirror each morning. He also knows he can go back to the same people, over and over, and they’ll be happy to do business with him again. Perhaps another reason for this is that he tries to see things from the other side. Quite literally, he reads contracts from both sides of the table to make sure they’re fair, rising from his chair to sit on the other side of the table to look things over to see if he’d be comfortable doing business with himself.

      Locally, Ablah owned much of the land from Rock Road north of 29^th Street. He built Northrock Theatres and the bowling alley, Jimmie’s Diner, and the five-story building at 29th and Rock where Wendy’s sits. “He built that on spec,” his son, Jeff, says of the latter in amazement. “At the time, there was nothing there. I remember, because I was out hunting in the field across from it, where Walmart is, now.”

      Ablah donated land to the city for the K-96 Expressway with the stipulation that construction begin in 1992. Thus, commuters on the north end of Wichita have been able to fly to their workplaces every day for years, while those who work farther south still await the Kellogg flyover completion.

      Time is of the essence. Ablah starts his workday at 5 a.m. And every morning at 11:25, like clockwork he walks down his office hallway and offers to buy lunch for anyone who will join him at his big heart-shaped desk, and chat. He knows all about relationships. The loyal friendships he’s made throughout his life have helped carry him through any rough patches. Because even the best gambler runs out of luck sometimes. 

      And the true measure of any person in any setting is how they perform when things aren’t going their way. “When most would fold up their tent and say, ‘I’m done,’ he kept going,” says son Jeff, who works in the family business in investments. (Ablah has another son who also works at Ablah Enterprises and focuses on oil.)

      Each time, Ablah has come back, successful once again. Jeff remembers the day his dad “lost a huge deal, and went on with his normal day. ‘Don’t you want to go play some golf, or go home awhile?’ he asked his dad. But Ablah doesn’t waste time thinking about things he can’t change. Do that, he told his son, and “you lose that moment forever.”

      A bleu cheese dressing fan, when Ablah sampled a particularly tasty batch in Colorado, he immediately asked the restaurant owner for the recipe. He was led out to a barn, and was shown the large wooden bucket where it was made. Ablah wanted the recipe for himself, so he bought it and formed a company called Swiss Chalet. Even now, the mini croutons sold in grocery stores as Crispins, are the remaining signs of his salad days. When he sold Swiss Chalet, he briefly became the largest individual shareholder of the Clorox Company.

      There came a point in Ablah’s life when he sometimes flew to three different cities in one day before arriving back home in Wichita. And so, he became partners with Jack DeBoer, and bought out DeBoer Aviation. Then he made his pilot, Ron Ryan, a full partner, and formed Ryan Aviation. The pair later sold it to a public company called PHH before Ryan bought it back again.

      Along the way, he also became a golf course developer. Willowbend was to become the first for him, but so far, it’s his one and only. He simply wanted to prove one needn’t be a millionaire to enjoy the perpetually green scenery and spend time out on the fairways.

      Equal access is a theme that runs through another project, this one on a tremendously creative scale. When Ablah became the largest owner of Henry Moore sculptures in the world, he offered to loan several pieces to New York City. People who typically didn’t see the inside of an art gallery ought to see the inspiring works of one of the world’s most renowned artists, he thought. So he wanted to place the sculptures outdoors, in the city’s parks and boroughs.

      Fearing the priceless work would become victim to graffiti and vandalism, Mayor Ed Koch wanted to wall off the artwork with guards and fences. But Ablah said no, and took personal responsibility for the art himself. As if some divine force were protecting it, Moore’s sculptures remained untouched the entire year they were on exhibit. Time Magazine would publish a book about the unique outdoor installation, calling it the “Museum without Walls.”

      He met Moore, became a friend of his. And yet, over the course of his lifetime, through all his accomplishments, Ablah has been most proud of his family. First and foremost, he told his kids, you are Christian. The reason your family fled to America is because other religious groups were killing and persecuting Christian Arabs.

      The second thing he told them was, you are not Lebanese, you’re an American of Lebanese descent. Speaking English was important at the Ablah household. In fact, the only two Arabic words his son Jeff used on a regular basis as a child were jiddy, which means grandfather, and sitty (grandmother). It was important that George took one of his children to eat breakfast with sitty every Sunday morning. “Grandma had a premium influence on Dad’s life,” Jeff says.

      Ablah’s mother came over to America as a young girl with not much more than an orange, which was given to her with the advice to only eat it if she really, really got hungry. When Sitty died, her family found that orange in her dresser drawer, dried up and shrunk to the size of a marble.

      He may form a partnership with someone, but if the business has anything to do with real estate or something he’s very adept at, he won’t take a back seat. In fact, he won’t answer to a board of directors. He can’t ask someone for permission. He’s got to be on his own. And he certainly isn’t concerned with what others think. A true individualist, he tells his son, “I’ve gotta go when I’ve gotta go.”As Jeff says, “He’s so real, and he won’t put on any airs. He dances to his own song.”

      At this point, Ablah shows no signs of slowing down. His goal is to live to be 129, and all he’ll need, he says, is a new set of eyes and organs, and he’ll just keep right on rolling.

The antidote for depression? Discovering you are never alone

I have not written much on depression. I have preached about it, and it is a large part of my spiritual story. I have told people how I felt so very close to God, his Holy Spirit at one moment, then had absolutely no idea where he had gone, the next. But because there is so much focus on it this week, with the untimely death of Robin Williams, and because he was so closely associated with joy and laughter, and depression seems miles away from that, and because people are writing so much about depression and Christianity in the past day or so, I thought I’d share some thoughts.

It is not a club you ever want to belong to. But once you do, you can quickly relate to others who are going through it. Strangely enough, this is in huge contrast to actually going through depression, in which you feel utterly and completely alone.

My biggest, most vivid word picture to describe major depression is feeling like a hollowed-out, chocolate Easter bunny. It felt like nothing was inside. I felt… nothing. And I felt so much pain in my soul, all at the same time. At times, I would walk or drive through the cemetery and be jealous of the people who had peace and release from all the anguish I was feeling. When I saw a dead tree one day that looked like a broom stuck in the ground, upside down, I though, oh, that’s me. That’s exactly how I feel. I didn’t want to die; I just wanted to not feel the way I was feeling, every moment of every day.

If I had not felt so close to the Lord right before I was catapulted into the darkness--like his Holy Spirit was breathing on my neck--it would not have seemed like such a cruel thing. Because part of living in major depression, at least for me, was that it felt like God had pulled up his tent stakes and moved a thousand miles across the desert. There was, like, absolutely no contact with him, whatsoever. For most of a complete decade.

That was what I longed to feel, most. His holy presence. Any shred of feeling that he was near me. I thought I’d done something very wrong. Why else would God pull the rug out from under me? But all I’d done, in fact, was give birth to my second son. Just days, weeks, months before, he’d been right there beside me. Then, because of, or alongside an unexpectedly early birth (he was only three weeks early), an experience that was highly anticipated because I’d almost lost hope of ever having another child, and because this highly anticipated birth experience went nothing like I had envisioned, it felt like the walls were tumbling down. (He was healthy, I was healthy, but everything else had seemed so disappointing.) A huge part of this was that I no longer felt as though I could trust the man I had married, the father of my now two sons, to do the right things for my benefit (although I’m pretty sure that he thought he was).

And the worst feeling, the most long-lasting feeling, was the sense that I had been utterly, completely alone during the birth experience. It was something like an out-of-body experience, except I was there, and everyone in the room was not. I could see them, but somehow they were so far away, they could not help me, would not respond to my cries for help.

The feeling was compounded when I went home and could not sleep. It went on for about four months. Later, I would learn that this is how some military groups torture prisoners—forced wakefulness. By the time I picked up the phone to call my caregiver, I was in quite a bit of trouble. And, for the first time in my life, I had to take antidepressants. The stigma of this was compounded by the fact that my paternal grandfather had been hospitalized for the latter part of his life in a state mental institution, following what had been called a nervous breakdown. All I knew was that I never knew the man, and by all indications, he was rather sensitive. Which explained why my father, for the most part, had been emotionally distant and out of touch with his own feelings for most of the time I’d known him. I loved him, he loved me, and my mother explained that, “he just didn’t know how to show it.”

So the meds helped, but there were side effects, and I worried how this all would affect my new little baby boy. Somehow, we both survived. My darkness continued. Talk therapy helped. Figuring out that most of the things that happened to me in my younger life that seemed weird and strange were pretty common to many people was extremely helpful—I wasn’t nearly as alone as I thought! But perhaps the thing that was most comforting was a little brochure I found one day, in the doctor’s office. It said that people who have depression often say that they cannot feel the presence of God. Oh. My. Word. I thought. I’m not the only one who feels this way? The two can be tied together? Glory, hallelujah!! Thank you, Jesus!!! I so wanted to find the person wrote those words, and give them a great big hug. And a million bucks, if I had it.

Just having that awareness was so freeing. No matter the cause and effect—which came first, the chicken or the egg—if this Divine sense of aloneness was tied to my depression, I could deal with that, somehow, for as long as the darkness decided to hang around. (Later, I would take a seminar at a women’s Benedictine seminary and find that this is one of the most devastating places to be—wedged between major depression and what is called a dark night of the soul. But once again, finding out I wasn’t the only one made it all seem bearable. I wasn’t the strange freak I though I was, even though the looks on most of my friends’ faces told me otherwise, when I tried to explain what I was feeling, or not feeling.)

And then came this Humungous Epiphany, which felt like the only place it could have come from, was outside myself. Which I like to explain as the moment when God broke through. This voice, somewhere from inside my soul. Someone speaking to me, telling me, “You know what, Kim? Your emotions are important. After all, I have made them. They feel oh, so powerful to you, like they can finally mow you down at any second, but let me tell you something: your emotions are, and never will be, powerful enough to make Me go away. What I mean is, I am a whole lot bigger and more powerful than anything you will ever feel or not feel.” So, what I had been feeling was not true! God HAD NOT pulled up tent stakes and moved on. It only felt that way! Perhaps he had turned his face for a time, but he never really had left me.

When I heard this, when the words rattled around inside my soul, let me tell you, I wanted to do a little happy dance. Lift up my hands and shout. Because suddenly, I finally felt free. And I knew that if I just kept going one more day, and another day, and another day, that finally I would break free and come out from under the darkness. And you know what? I finally did. Not all at once, but gradually. And the residual effect is that I now have oodles of compassion for all those who have been, and are going through, the same thing.

Depression doesn’t mean you’re not a Christian, that you don’t pray enough, or believe strongly enough. Depression doesn’t mean you have sinned and need forgiveness any more than anyone else. Depression is a medical condition that affects your whole being—body, mind AND spirit. I’m pretty sure that, if Job’s friends had come alongside me in my time of darkness and offered their two cents, God would not have been happy with them at that point, either. So pat answers are never a good thing. But coming alongside someone and sitting next to them, and offering a caring heart? Sharing that other people have been there, through no fault of their own, and have come out on the other side? Now, that’s what I think the Lord had in mind. That’s what I think he intended for us to say and do. Give people Hope.

No, I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. But I know I am a much different person because of what I’ve been through. For one thing, if I hadn’t felt such an absence of God, I wouldn’t have striven so strongly to find him again. And I wouldn’t have met him again in such a life-changing way that ultimately led me to give up one way of life, and devote my time to serving him, and his people.

I was a pretty selfish person, before all of this happened.  I wanted nothing more than to make MY life better. And then I realized, I was not alone. I was never really alone.

The Widow’s Offering
(Jesus) sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.
--Mark 12:41-45

Willing to be Made Empty
Two small coins,
Little copper pennies
Enough to buy a hollow
Bright-colored piece of gum
That lasts for twenty chews.
This is all she had
This is all she gave.
So much more than the rest
So much more than they would ever give.

What if that is all he ever wants?
Our desire to give it all
All of our breath, all of our energy,
All of our sanity, all of our lives.

The willingness to empty our pockets
With even the lint
Inside out, for all to see.
Yes, that is what he hopes to receive
This all he longs to hold.

Would you give him two small pennies
If that were all you had to rub together?
Would the things he gives you
Be worth it all, in exchange?

What could we give, that would be worth so much?
The Savior's love and forgiveness
The pathway to God's heavenly throne
The assurance we will live forever
In a peace that, as yet, is unknown.
--KB

Something strange can happen when a girl grows up in a church where a woman pastor attends... she grows up thinking that it's perfectly natural for someone like her to grow up, wanting to be a pastor.

As a kid at First United Methodist Church in Newton, Kan., I would often see an elderly couple sitting in the back of our sanctuary... there, in the deep, dark recesses, behind the accordion doors, where the hearing aid devices hung next to the offering envelopes and wooden Communion cup holders on the back of the pews.

It was a long way from where my mother would usually sit, second row back from the dais, north side of the sanctuary, just barely in the aisle. Here I would beg half a stick of Juicy Fruit or Doublemint or Spearmint gum, and chew until all the sweetness ran out. Then I would promptly fall asleep on Mom's lap, listening to Dr. Armour Evans preach.

There was a lot I was unaware of, back then... a lot I took for granted. I didn't think much of the fact that Mom chewed gum in church to try to cover up the smell of cigarette smoke on her breath. It didn't bother me that my Dad wasn't with us, because he worked such odd hours as a railroader that we seldom went anywhere together save the grocery store, unless he took vacation time. I also had no idea that others thought it strange that a woman would be a minister.

Sitting in that dark recess, just in front of the nursery and kindergarten room walls, was an elderly couple. So elderly that they appeared frail, thin, bent over. They looked ancient to me. The man's face looked rather sunken in, as I recall. But I knew who they were. And I knew there was something special about the woman.

She had a title, you see. She wasn't just Laura Bradbury. She was The Rev. Laura Bradbury. She was the only woman I knew who bore that name. Her husband had also been a minister--he was first--but in my mind, there was great significance because this woman was Someone.

I must have heard her preach a time or two, when Dr. Evans was gone or ill. I don't recall being especially impressed--what kid ever is, with a grownup's preaching? But I do remember having it firmly established in my mind that Women Could Preach. And Women Could Be Preachers.

So much so, that when some of us high schoolers went to Riverside Church in New York City years later, the thing I was taken with (aside from the marble walls in the bathroom) was that Women Could Be Ushers. Women collected our offering and took it up to the front to be blessed! Now that was something I had never seen in church before.

But women preachers? Of course.

It wasn't until I went into ministry that I discovered that The Rev. Laura was one of the first women ordained in Kansas, probably a decade before I was born. I had been sitting among a legacy in the making, and hadn't even realized it.

The cult of womanhood

As women, and girls who will one day be women, we all have a legacy to share, and a legacy we can leave behind. Let me tell you about the legacy that was given to me. I grew up in a beauty shop. That is to say, my mother had a beauty shop in our home, down in the basement. And our basement was filled with women, four days of the week.

This was during the time when most women went every week to the beauty shop to get their hair washed and curled. They’d sit under a hairdryer for 45 minutes before the curlers would come out. Then a hair artisan like my mom would backcomb and tease it and softly brush and swoop it up into a perfect hairdo.

Every so often, the ladies would come for a color rinse or a permanent. Their voices would rise above the drone of the hair dryers, and then above that, one could hear laughter here, a cackle there. I knew them all, and their voices, and without seeing them, knew which woman was beneath my bedroom, down in the shop, getting their hair done.

On certain days of the week, the distinct scent of permanent wave solution would waft upstairs. It seemed that the back door of the garage was always opening and closing, as one woman would leave and another would come. Mom would climb the stairs periodically throughout the day to put up her feet, get dinner started, and make sure that everything was all as it should be.

Her beauty shop represented a cult of womanhood. Mom was a beautician, and the women were there to become beautified. She also was part therapist, a woman’s bartender of sorts, listening as they confided all their family issues and challenges.

It was a wonderful place for a girl to grow up. Mom’s customers were women who owned businesses, women whose husbands owned businesses, women whose husbands worked with my dad on the railroad, women who had been schoolteachers, women who’d never married, women who sometimes brought their grandkids with them to play. It was hard not to believe this same activity was happening at other peoples’ homes in our neighborhood.

I was grateful to be surrounded by all these women, for my paternal grandmother had died a decade before I was born. My mom’s mother lived more than two hours away, and trips to her home in western Kansas didn’t happen often. Neither did phone calls.

Somehow, it seems, if you are lacking a special person in your life, God will sometimes give you substitutes—people you may not be related to, but can love, just as well. Sometimes, in my case, you get dozens more than what you truly missed out on.

They were in our house every week, some for twenty or more years. They knew everything about us, and watched us grow up. They put special gifts under a little Christmas tree in the beauty shop for mom and I. They ordered Christmas cards and pocketbook calendars from me, so I could earn enough money to buy slippers and a Zippo lighter for my mom and dad and stick them under the family Christmas tree.

They were my teachers about life, and patiently listened while I told them what was going on in school that day. They sat and colored pictures with me. They held me in their lap while we looked at Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens magazines. They knew when I had my tonsils out, when I got in trouble and had to stay after school, when I had my first date, and when I left home for college.

I tell you all this because I want you to know that every woman has the ability to love and mentor a young girl in their life, if only they will look around you. If only they will sit down and take the time to listen. And ask questions. And care a little.

And if you are a girl or young woman, I want you to look around you and see the amazing group of women around you, who have all sorts of wisdom and love to offer… if only you will sit down and take the time to listen. And ask questions. And care a little.

We all have a legacy to share, and a legacy we can leave behind. The days of the beauty shop may have ended when my mother retired and made her last trip up the stairs, in 1990, but the women I grew to love there will never leave my heart. The love I received from them all—Lois, Helen, Ethel, Lorene, Lucile, Catherine, Dorothy, Elizabeth, and so many others—remains with me even today. I can still hear their voices of encouragement. And I cannot wait to get to heaven and see them all, once again.

They are the women of the beauty shop, the mothers and grandmothers that God gave me as a source of strength and support. I pray that you may find your own cult of womanhood, a special place where women come together to love and nurture each other in a spirit of love.

A Rich Experience

Looking back, I don't think I ever followed up on that post about Rich Mullins... I was writing for some Christian music magazines. One was Rejoice! The Gospel Music Magazine. After trying to get an interview with Rich for years, finally it worked out that I could go talk to him at Roxy's on Douglas in Wichita.

Rich had been to Europe, had cut his long hair, grown a beard, was wearing shorts and tennis shoes... I hardly recognized him. It was at the beginning of his time as a student at Friends University, I think. We sat down and had a good long conversation, me, writing notes as fast as possible, recording it on cassette--having learned a hard lesson with the Michael Hedges interview, noted elsewhere on this blog. Still have the cassette... will post my article at the bottom of this update. If ever I find the two photos I took of him, I will try to add them to this, later.

What were my impressions? I felt so fortunate that I could sit, alone, with him and ask basically any question I wanted. I felt blessed he would give me that much time... I was impressed with how candid he was. At the end, he said he didn't much care for the sound of his own voice, singing, and that he really wasn't very Irish, although plenty of people thought he was. Nor was he part Native American, nor did he know how to build campfires, although some might think so, based on the insert from one of his recordings.

I gave him an extra tin whistle I had, with some sheet music and instructions, and a bagpipe chanter I'd tried my hand at, but never had any luck with... he was very gracious, very appreciative.

The day we drove home from McPherson after buying our first "almost new" car--I think it had something like 30,000 miles on it--I was very pregnant, and we gassed up at a convenience store at SW 14th and Main in Newton. I had the radio on while my husband paid for the gas inside... and caught the tail end of a news story about some Christian recording artist that had been in a car accident... details were just coming out... and someone said Rich's name. And that they didn't think he'd survived.

I had to fight everything within me, not to get out of my car, run to the field, fall to my knees and scream... it could not be. Although I would never try to represent myself as being the least bit close to Rich (my introduction to him happened because my sister was his friend), I got used to seeing him on our block, in our neighborhood... got used to hearing his music and words ring in my ears. I admired his talent, the fact he was a true poet, an artist with words... his ability to move people with something he'd created.

I look forward to someday seeing and hearing him once again, in Heaven. Until then, Rich, know that people around the world are still singing Awesome God, despite the fact that you believed your music and your legacy would probably not be very enduring... God is still using you and the work you did, in obedience to Him, as he called you to it.

So here is the article that I wrote for Rejoice magazine:
It's another humid day in Kansas, and Rich Mullins sits on a tier halfway up from the stage at Roxy's, a Christian club in Wichita, talking about his new life away from the stage. Whether playing the keyboards or guitar or hammering away on a lap dulcimer, he's created countless songs of praise that compel audiences to stand and sing.

Just back from a three month Euorpean tour to promote The World as Best as I Remember It, Vol. II, he appears refreshed and invigorated. Earlier last summer, a tired, much older looking Rich premiered the new Vol. II album at Roxy's, introducing and playing cuts with his co-musician "Beaker."
But there's something different about Mullins that makes one wonder what happened during the summer. Maybe he's merely glad to wrap up the tour, to come home and be an everyday Joe, but it's probably his decision to take a sabbatical and complete a degree in music education that makes him seem so animated.

If Mullins the musician was intense, a little eccentric, and hard to pin down ("people want to know what inspired us to write certain songs...they're probably more provoked than inspired," he quipped the night of the Vol. II premiere), then the collegian Mullins is markedly different. His attitude is softer, and he's sincerely concerned about putting something good in other people's lives.

At first glance, he draws a double take. Gone are the long dark locks often tied in a ponytail ("I left my hair somewhere in Holland," he sings with a hint of longing sarcasm), and on this day he abandons his worn-through-jeans/no-shoes look for a t-shirt, running shoes, and a pair of shorts.

He realizes that bowing off the stage means he won't be able to buy everything he wants. Consequently, "I may not be the snappiest dresser on campus, but at 36, being a snappy dresser is a lot different than it is when you're 19."

He also knows the advantages of being an older student. "When I ran out of money in high school, that meant the party stopped. When you're 18 and on your own and run out of money, suddenly your lights get turned off. You find there are more serious consequences. I'm used to being worried about the electricity being off!," he laughs. "It's happened, I survived it, and the world didn't end."

Mullins has been a student for seven years. When asked if he's on the extended plan, he corrects with a slight smile, "It's the extended unplanned plan!" Tongue-in-cheek humor from Mullins is to be expected, but his class schedule this semester is somewhat surprising. He's filled it with seventeen hours of music theory and performance classes: conducting, percussion methods, and cello, to name a few. The ultimate in self-punishment? "I can't think of anything more fun."

The hard part about coming off tour means he has to switch tracks and do weird things like wake up in the same room each morning and make his own bed. "I do like clean sheets, and I do like my bed made, so every morning I have to go through the conflict of, 'Gee, do I want my bed made badly enough to make it? Do I want clean sheets badly enough to change them?"'

He's been on the road so long that traveling doesn't bother him anymore. "I would say we've been gone now for about two or three years, and it's always hard when you come back to the place you live, and it doesn't feel like home. Not because it's not home, but because you've forgotten what home feels like. You forget what it's like to be able to visit with the same people day after day, to know exactly where the laundromat is, so that if you only have an hour to do your laundry, you can do it." He paused "Laundry seems to be a big issue here..."

The home he's returned to is a modest two-bedroom rental house that sits in a quiet middle-class neighborhood of Wichita. The neighborhood reminds him of his boyhood home, though it's far from an Indiana farm. But he's very comfortable here. Why doesn't he trade up for a bigger place?
"I live a very ordinary life because I'm a very ordinary guy. A lot of musicians give themselves a lot of slack because they've been told over and over how exceptional musicians are. I think people are people. An exceptional plumber is as exceptional as an exceptional musician. I don't buy the idea that musicians are a unique breed of people who need to be pampered. I tell them, 'You know what? I get to make a living doing what I love to do. Isn't that favor enough?"'

Mullins seems hesitant to talk about his success. It's not that he takes it for granted, but he believes his life as a musician can be overshadowed. "I think there's much more power in living a brilliant life, in letting every moment be brilliant, than in all the songs I ever wrote, or all of us wrote together. One truly Spirit-filled life will impact the world more than the entire Christian media combined.
"If the impact of my life at best is gonna be similar to the impact of the lives of other Spirit-filled people who have lived in the vitality of that Spirit, why would I waste a large amount of energy and create a lot of tension around a career that will be less successful than my life? The problem is, in my life now, my career is much better than my life. I've talked to people about commitment, about being a good neighbor, and I've seen other people practice it. I just want to see if I can do it."

Somewhere between here and Europe, Mullins decided to come out of his comfort zone, to let people in. "I had this sharp realization that, 'Wow! This was the first time I sat down and had a conversation with a non-Christian for a long time, that I really have become real picky about doctrinal issues that I don't think are real essential issues. And when that happens, that indicates to me that my focus is way off. And whereas I may be doctrinally correct, I am not focused where I ought to be."

He thought about what he wanted his life to be like for the next two or three years, the kind of person he wanted to be. "I want to be a loyal customer. I want to trade at the same grocery store. I want to get to know people by name. I want to go there a couple of times a week when I go and buy my potatoes and Corn Chex, and say, 'Hey, Sally!' to the girl at the check-out stand, and 'How's school going, Billy?' I want to give them some self-esteem."

As a kid, Mullins was exposed to people who drove by him as he toiled away. They refused to look at him, he says, because hard work was somehow beneath their dignity. He recalls a four-year stint as a cashier in a parking garage. "There were people who went out that never looked at me. They'd hold their money out the window and never slow down on their way out. They were regular people.
"Later on, other people told me, 'Man, we used to hang out and wait until the rush was over so we could come out and talk to you, because we loved to sit and talk.'" All this made him realize there's no such thing as someone who's just a cashier, that everyone and everyone's job is important.
"If I can communicate that to the people in the grocery store, the mechanic, my neighbors, the people in my church, the students at my school, then that's the kind of person I want to be."

For Mullins, ministering to people doesn't end just because he's put his guitar in the case. While he thinks performing is a great opportunity to minister, he also believes simple things like going to a restaurant or even planting a garden give the same opportunity. "Beaker planted a garden a couple of springs ago, and we never got to eat anything out of it. The nuns next door came over and ate our tomatoes. Different people from the community took them and ate them. And I think, 'What a terrific thing!'"

The really exciting times, he says, are when the concert's over, "and you've gone into the lounge at the hotel, and you're sitting there having a Coke, and you end up talking to the bartender, and he tells you how he was in Bible college, and how he got from Bible college to bartending school, and he opens up to you about the confusion he really feels about his faith, about the guilt he has. He really opens up and shares with you, and then during some point he says, 'Man, I have no idea why I just told you all of this.' "And you're able to say, 'Well, I know why. Because you needed to tell someone. Because in a sense, if you take the Bible seriously, I'm a priest, and I came in here to take your confession, to tell you the blood of Christ still washes away the sins of the world; that there is no sin committed too great that cannot be forgiven, and to encourage you, that the Lord hasn't given up on you yet.'"

Although Mullins takes his church membership seriously, he admits to not attending regularly since many concert dates have fallen on the weekend. Pursuing a career in music education would mean leaving the Midwest, and his church as well. "I think that when you join a church, you pretty much throw your stuff in with theirs, and it's kind of like, 'I'm here for the duration.' I hope that the church will continue to be supportive of me when I leave and that my commitment will not be something they thought lightly of. Very honestly, I'm not as committed as I should be, and very honestly, that's part of the reason I came off the road. Because, man, it's easy to talk about accountability when you're on the road. But it's impossible to have, unless you're making the kind of bucks where you can take your elders with you or something. Staying home is where the rubber meets the road for me."

Success has come quietly but steadily to Mullins since Amy Grant recorded his Sing Your Praise to the Lord, earning a nomination as song of the year in 1983. Since then, he's produced a string of top-charted singles for Reunion Records. His long list of nominations for Dove Awards (Awesome God has been nominated three times since 1989) without ever winning is perplexing.

Born in Richmond, Indiana, between two older sisters and two younger brothers, he counts himself blessed to have Christian parents. The solitude of growing up on a farm perhaps stirred in Mullins a desire to look beyond the obvious, to appreciate things usually taken for granted, and use his imagination to amuse himself.

"I spent many afternoons and evenings all alone, back in the field. There were times I was terribly lonely, but I think isolation is good for kids. One reason I have an imagination that is still pretty active is because I was really dependent on my imagination. I didn't have MTV. We didn't watch much television. I think one reason I became a writer is because I spent so much time on a tractor, and I would make up songs and rhymes and dirty limericks and anything else to entertain myself while I was working. It made me a very bad farmer, but that was possibly the beginnings of what a lot of people say is a pretty creative streak."

The first job his father gave him was counting calves. This, he points out, was a brilliant teaching technique. Not only did he learn to count, he learned to distinguish heifers from steers. It was the start of a very wholesome appreciation for sexuality. "Wow! Talk about getting the facts straight! By the time you're ten on a farm, you've seen every animal breeding in every kind of position imaginable. You're pretty much aware."

When the work was done, there was time to learn the rules of fair play. "You couldn't be really picky about who your friends were, and so you learned how to have arguments, how to fight and then have the winner ride you home on his bicycle, that if we didn't work a friendship out, we'd just be without friendship, and that at times it's better to be by yourself than to have to endure someone else's hang-ups."

He thinks that being involved with natural things might also take away some naive notions about prayer. "I think it's possibly easier for people who plant to pray because when you plant, you realize you're not gonna harvest until the right season. Sometimes people view prayer like it's a slot machine; if you put in the right amount of money, cry the right amount of tears, believe with the right intensity, then God will automatically - in the next five minutes - turn the world around to suit you."

Mullins has thought long and hard to find the right words to describe his best friend, Beaker. "One of the things that is most attractive about Beaker is also the scariest to a lot of people: he places a very high premium on honesty. And I respect that very much. It does make him into a bit of a skeptic. On the other hand, he's not gonna dish out a lot of stuff he doesn't believe. He's not gonna tell you what you want to hear, unless you want to hear the truth.

"He's kind of quiet. He's a lot more off to himself than I am. He wouldn't talk only because he had an interview, but only if he had something to say. So he has a very different approach to things than I do. And I definitely respect his approach and love him because of his values and because of the integrity I see in him. That's a rare thing to find.

"Beaker's even more accidentally a musician than I am. He really has no interest at all in being a musician, of becoming a great rock star or a contemporary Christian star. He's planning on being an English teacher. He does like to play the guitar, and to me, that makes him more interesting to talk to and to work with. He enjoys trying new things. He's not afraid of challenges. In these ways, he's one of the funniest people I've been around."

The only thing not fun about Beaker, Mullins says, is his harrowing pursuit of truth (as he begins to explain, an impish grin creeps across his face, and it's as if he's about to burst out in laughter), "because I can sometimes be real full of bull. And he's got a detector on him that doesn't let me get away with it. So I can go into a Sunday school class and fool every kid in there that I am this great spiritual giant, and then I get back in the truck and Beaker goes, 'Wow! Good job!'"

There are still a few things Mullins wants you to know about himself: that he shouldn't be taken too seriously; that magazine articles about himself sometimes make him look too perfect, like Superman; that there are times when he wishes he were married, and a lot of times he's glad he isn't; and that he admires the Irish for their love of poetry and song, and their adamant stand against change, but any amount of Irish in him is probably pretty negligible.

If you come to Kansas and pull up beside an old pickup at a stoplight, and there's a couple of big dogs in the back and two ornery guys up front, it just may be Mullins and Beaker. If it is, you can smile, knowing they're more than just two ordinary guys with ordinary lives.

Copyright 1993 by Rejoice! Magazine

Laying Crowns at His Feet

'Twas the day before Christmas Eve, and the pastor thought she’d spread some holiday cheer. So she loaded up some Christmas gifts and headed out to the country to make some deliveries. It was raining and lightning and thundering, a strange day for December. The rain was pouring down hard… she turned off the gravel road, to a dirt one.

Pretty soon, she started sliding, the back wheels heading south. She turned on the four-wheel drive. But little did that help. Soon, she was stuck sideways in the road. Hadn’t the GPS said the house was just a little farther?

So she abandoned her vehicle, grabbed her purse, and got out. The mud was quite squishy—it pulled at her shoes. Soon they were caked with so much mud that the pastor didn’t know how she was going to keep walking.

She plodded along, remembering from her childhood how, if you stay in the grass, it will give you better traction and wipe the mud off, all at the same time. Well that worked awhile, until she ran out of grass, and had to walk across the road. She decided to climb up onto a cornfield, littered with broken stalks. That helped some, but there was more mud than anything.

She crisscrossed the road, back and forth, trying to find the best, least wet route. She fell over. She reached out to steady herself, and grabbed a barbed-wire fence, which bit her. How much worse could it get? She thought. How am I to get out of here? There was no house in site… although she kept hoping it would just be over the hill. She began to sing praises and prayers to God—

We fall down, we lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus

The greatness of His mercy and love at the feet of Jesus

And we cry Holy, Holy, Holy

We cry Holy, Holy, Holy

We cry Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lamb

She cried out to the Lord, to help deliver her from this experience. And He reminded her, that this was why He came. To deliver us all… He came as Jesus the baby, born in Bethlehem, after his parents had walked a long, hard journey—just as she was walking, that dreary December day. She thought of Mary and Joseph. She also thought of the wise men, who later made that long journey from the Orient to see the child that was a king.

We fall down, we lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus…

What are the crowns that we must lay at the feet of Jesus? The symbols that make it known to all, how important we are, how powerful we are in this world? One of the most moving scenes from a Christmas program that I can recall was when three grown men, the fathers of the church, paraded down the aisle in flowing garments as wise men. They carried gifts to the infant Jesus, then lifted their jeweled crowns off their heads, placing them at the feet of the manger, bowing in humble respect.

Now I don’t know if the wise men really wore crowns. Some say they were more like scientists than kings. But it makes one wonder: can a king be identified as a king if he’s not wearing his crown? Doesn’t he look just like everyone else? Is a king who lays his crown at the feet of a child who will one day be, for the world, a spiritual King, acknowledging that child’s power, and giving up some of his own? Isn’t that what we all must do, give up some of our own earthly power, and humble ourselves, in order to give Him his rightful place as ruler in our hearts and minds?

We fall down, we lay our crowns, at the feet of Jesus…

At one point, when it seemed all hope was gone, when the pastor’s legs were so tired she didn’t think she could go on, she looked down through fogged-up glasses, and saw two long sticks laying on the ground. In her mind, she heard the 23^rd Psalm—“Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” She picked them up. One was sturdy enough to be a walking stick. The other was just a bit smaller. They steadied her, and instead of avoiding the mud, she finally gave into it, shuffling down the road like a cross-country skier.

She remembered how her grandfather, a hunter, a trapper, a miner, a skier, had been caught in a Colorado avalanche a hundred years before, and how he’d made it out alive… how his persistence and God’s saving grace was the reason she was here now, two generations later.

She thought of the people in the Bible who remembered their ancestors and all that God had brought them through, and how that had given them great strength, in their own affliction.

She wondered if her grandfather, buried alive in snow, had called out for his God, for

help… for a way out… for the strength to keep on going. "Just one more step. Carry me, Lord… carry me." And in that moment, she felt compassion for every person who suffered and wondered if, and when, their God would show up, delivering them from a time of great trial.

Finally she saw a gravel road in front of her. The end was in sight… she was almost there. No more sloshing through the mud! When she reached the road, she thanked God over and over. Hallelujah! Praise Your name!

She had faith that someone would drive by and stop to help, for she was pretty certain she had heard cars traveling along. Just a few minutes later, she spotted a truck coming toward her. She waved both her sticks in the air. A man in the pickup stopped and asked if she needed some help. She dropped her sticks by the side of the road, and climbed up into the cab.

On the way back home, she learned he didn’t attend church, hadn’t grown up in church. She told him how she didn’t know how anyone could go through difficulties without having faith that God would be there for them, and would help carry them through whatever came their way. He was a Godsend, she told him. No matter what he believed, she knew that he had come to her that day because of God. And he agreed with her.

There is an old saying, “In traveling in strange areas, it is well to have both a good map and a good guide. The Christian has both; the Bible shows the way; Christ has promised to go with us all the way. He is the Way.”

Amen.

A flash from the past... once, I started a blog, when there were but a handful online, I suppose... 2004. Six long years ago... was I working at the ad agency then? Were they drilling through concrete right next to me, to open up a stairwell? Somehow, we did work through it... now it is so quiet where I work, we can hear the coyotes howl at night. No trains... no sirens... only an occasional car passing by, a dog barking... and the wind howling, at times.

Some dreams you leave along the side of the road. Others you never knew were in you, until something pops the top off of them. At some point, when you take a lefthand turn at Phoenix, you run into new dreams that seem to fit like a glove.

For a decade or more, the thought of becoming a pastor had entered my mind. At least, I tried to find books about it at the Wichita Library. And I did ask my spouse what he thought of the idea. (It wasn't a good one, in his mind.) Eventually I found myself standing in front of a lectern in the chapel where I went on the Walk to Emmaus, looking down at the open Bible before me, reading the story of Phillip helping the Ethiopian eunuch understand the word of God. Never did I think that I might be that person in someone else's life, one day.

And then I found myself buying books on pastoring, for heaven's sake, at the local used bookstore. What was I thinking? Who (or what) was causing me, prodding me, to do all these strange things? It certainly wasn't a part of my plan.

The time I spent lying in a hospital bed, which I've recounted here, in an earlier post, gave me this incredible passion for people 1. who find themselves in a similar position, and 2. who experience longterm, physical pain.

When my job at the magazine came to a sudden end, I used the time to have a second surgery. Now I have something of a kevlar vest across my gut, a big hernia repair from the first time around. I cannot complain. It has been several years ago, I feel much better, and things are not the same, but it all worked out.

At some point, I had an amazing day following a hospital chaplain around St. Jo hospital, during which I felt as if I were walking on holy ground. Then a stint as a marketing director, and a long-searching process to continue my candidacy for ministry. (Along the way, I became a certified lay speaker.) Just when I was wondering if I needed to do ministry part-time or full-time, my marketing position was eliminated... and I received the answer I was looking for.

Again I shadowed a hospital chaplain, only this time, for a longer duration... something of an internship. I would walk into a room, identify myself, and some of the most amazing conversations would happen... me, just sitting, listening... and I knew this was something I truly wanted to do, if life really was short, if life really needed to be spent doing something meaningful.

He Giveth, and Taketh Away

It was just before Christmas, less than eighteen months into my dream job. The phone call came about 4:30 pm and I hadn't conversed with our publisher in a couple of months. He had news to deliver: he'd sold the magazine, and the new owner would be here in the morning to talk to me.

Well, that was fine... I guessed. The next morning I thought, well, I could work with this guy. I'm not entrenched in any editorial focus/slant... I'm pretty flexible. A week later, he told me he couldn't afford to pay me what I'd been making, and gave me 90 days.

Wow. This was the dream job I thought I'd been waiting for. Sure, it had taken a toll on my health. Yes, it had been a rather weird situation, with the owners living several states away. But I'd waited a long time for the opportunity.

The Lord giveth, and He taketh away...

The circumstances were so upside down—I'd finally mastered the massive task of managing the magazine process, of being creative on demand and writing a bulk of the articles—that I knew God had to be in this somewhere.

Then I remembered a prayer I uttered under my breath as I lay in the hospital bed last September. (Oh, did I mention? A perforated bowel, in ICU a couple of days, another week in hospital, 50-some staples, opened up from bottom of rib cage to down yonder...). It was this: "Something has to change." My life had become so crazy, work was consuming my time, my thoughts, which was good to the point that it left idle time for me to wonder, and the process and circumstances I was expected to operate under were making me a bit wacky. (Read: grumpy.)

So, something WAS changing... and nine days before I leave here, something still IS changing. I have no idea what lies ahead. I only know I'm open to God's leading.

Because here's the deal: this health crisis was a true emergency. It could have had fatal consequences. But it turned out to be quite miraculous. I shouldn't have walked away without at least a temporary colostomy. But I did. I should have had some infection as a result. But I didn't. I should have been shaken beyond recognition. But I wasn't.

What I was, was surrounded by an amazing presence of grace. Not only was my healing miraculous, but I never could have fathomed the outpouring of love expressed and shown by my church peeps. Women were hanging out at my house, cleaning. Guys were out there in my .65-acre yard, sucking up leaves and mowing. People were slotted to bring in food, every other day...

The best, was an angel that came just when I needed her. Yes, I had a low moment, laying in that hospital bed. And has it prepared my heart to serve patients and their families? You bet.

I'd gone from being told I'd have my appendix removed to having a clipboard shoved at me that gave them permission to open me up exploratorily... because they did not know what they'd find. I'd experienced the shock of looking at the metal track up and down my belly. I'd handled a MAJOR loss of control... "But I don't have time for this... I have deadlines, I have kids, I'm a single mom..."

The final straw was a misunderstanding about some pain meds. With a nurse. That I'd had issues with, when my mom was in the hospital. Definitely I would not allow her in my hospital room, or anyone I care about, again...

So I finally broke. I put my earplugs in, and wept with my back to the door. And then she came. "Is there something you need?" she asked. The mother of a very dear friend, a very dear friend herself... a pink lady. Delivering newspapers. So I pulled out the earplugs, and told her everything.

God has such a lovely way of putting people in our path that we need, just when we need them. I thank God she was open to His leading that day... and hope the next time you feel his tugging on your sleeve, you answer the Call.

I'm trying to answer mine, by formally (and quite fearfully) entering a candidacy program for ministry in the United Methodist Church. No, I don't want to be a full-fledged preacher with a big congregation. But I want to serve... because, I think, there was some reason my life was spared that day/week in September. Obviously, to care for my two boys... but what else?

I think any brush with the near-death can put us on an existential path. Why am I still living and walking in this world? It also puts everything into perspective. Makes one think about doing something worthwhile, and enjoying it. Because we all have a finite amount of time...

Bearing another's burdens

There's something about cancer that can shake you to the bone. It keeps coming up like a bad ugly penny... Dad suffered through several bad months with lung cancer, that kind they show on the TV commercials, asking people to call if they have it. Well, it ain't no lottery you'll be winning, if you do. As my mom will tell you, whatever the class and the action, it's never enough payment for a loved one's life.

Then just before Christmas, Mom was diagnosed with colon cancer. Well, I thought quite deniably, they'll simply cut out the tumor, sew her back up and she'll be good as new.

If only it were that simple. Typically I'm a Homework Hannah, surfing the ends of the Net to find out everything I can about anything conceivably possible. But just entering this new job, my career, for heaven's sake, I did not take the time. I couldn't afford the distraction. Plus, I was trusting all would be okay.

Well, 'tweren't okay. Weeks later, she was still in hospital, as the Brits quaintly say...fighting for her life. No, I take that back, she wasn't fighting. That was the problem. So I whisked in my boys to her bedside, first in photos, then in real life. Boy, were they scared out of their Nintendo-playing trances. She did finally recover...is at home, and yes, she's living on her own still. But fragility reminds me of how close we came to losing her, and how thin the threads are, on the end of her life.

So last night, as I knelt before my closed-lid toilet, praying not to the porcelain god but to my heavenly father, cancer was once again on my mind... for three different reasons. (Why was I in the humid prayer closet? My 16-year-old had already barged into my bedroom unnannounced as I was trying to go deep inside and reach out and up to the heavens.)

Two Marthas, and a very special friend (no, her name isn't Mary) are wrestling with cancer and scary health issues right now. One just received news she's to have a double masectomy, not sure what else afterward; the second is in for one to three days of iodine treatment, in isolation, for a, get this, MICRO cancer cell. One teeny tiny speck of dust... but of course that could grow into a larger problem. The third is just beginning chemo, headed for radiation later.

You can bet I am learning all about breast cancer this time, and there are still so many unknowns that I'm not relying on much that has to do with mankind this time. Doctors are well-schooled and experienced; machines are remarkable, but some things are best left to prayer. Like a person's sense of well-being...

I don't know what to pray for them, I say, I cry as I kneel there. I plead for help. For mercy. And somehow, the words come... and stumble out of my mouth. More mercy. And tremendous blessings. Asking in Jesus' name.

I get up from the floor. Every joint in my body aches. But at least I am cancer-free. What have I to complain about? And I wonder: is this what God means about bearing one another's burdens? feeling the pain as if it were your own? tormented grief and unending questions and worry? long walks at twilight so no one will see the tears spill from your eyes and wonder what is wrong?

Last year, as I turned 40, I begged off my first mammogram. Not this time. Not this year....

God be with you, my three wonderful friends, whom I treasure very much. May you feel Him touching you in places you never knew existed.

Time heals most wounds

I haven't written on this blog in a heckuva long time... in fact, it was another time, another place. I was a PR editor at an ad agency, waiting for my big break. I didn't think it would ever happen (faithless). But, I still had a pinch of hope. So, last October, more than four months ago, I made a little inquiry about a magazine I'd interviewed with before. It's Wichita's city magazine... the Wichita Register. I really thought I had a good shot at it, the first time (more than a year ago). But, God was silent. So I waited.

When things happened, they happened quickly. Before I knew it, I was in Minnesota, interviewing with the owners. Going to the country club. Seeing St. Paul for the first time—an amazing, quaint old city that merits a much closer look sometime. And before I knew it, I was finally a magazine editor. The thing I'd dreamed of for oh, so long.

Wow, has it been a lot of work. But also a lot of fun. My life has changed immensely. I gave up the part-time choir directing job I had at church. I sure miss those folks. They shared a lot of love and hugs. But I'll get back to it one day again, once more as an alto in the choir pew.

My boys don't see me as often as they used to. They have to fend for themselves some evenings, as I go to these fundraising events and snap photos to put in the magazine. People are very receptive to what the magazine is about, what we're trying to accomplish. Already I can feel the forward momentum. And I think it will only continue and pick up speed. All it takes is openness, professionalism, and, as Dr. Seuss said:

"If you want to catch beasts you don't see every day, you have to go places quite out of the way. You have to go places no others can get to. You have to get cold and you have to get wet, too."

I like the freedom to explore ideas and people, and develop them into stories. This is a great place to be, at a great time.

Thanks, God. For giving one of your little children the desire of her heart. Help me to do the work You would have me do, in a manner that is consistent with Your message.

Amen.

The wait of responsibility

Being entrusted with words is a big responsibility. I was just thinking this today, as I was trying to find the right words to tell the story of an inspiring 99-year-old woman from Rolla, Mo., who has crammed so much into her life that it makes me feel like a lazy Susan... her story is so big, it's hard to wrap my thoughts around, and do it justice.

Being entrusted with telling someone's story... what an awesome, ominous onus. I've been writing for 20 years now, and somehow this part of writing never ceases to make me stumble. Or at least to pause and reflect. Oh, I'll get there eventually... and give it my best shot. But there will always be one final thing I wanted to say, a feeling that I didn't pack the story with all the power I'd hoped to.

I guess all I can do is be as present and open about it, and as honest as possible. Here's to you, Mildred Leaver... I hope I can tell your story with as much inspiration on paper as it exists in reality.

Remembering 50 years ago

Well, it's over... this huge event we planned and stage in Newton, Kansas. Last Saturday, we read the names of about 50 men who helped move Santa Fe Engine 1880, a Prairie-type steam locomotive, into Military Park.

The older guys were surprised we had such a large turnout. I can't say I was surprised, but I was especially pleased. For months I'd worked to track down these men, their wives and kids, in hopes of finding people to invite. Turns out only about six of the original movers survive. We did pull in about three of them into the event, along with wives and children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The best thing to come out of it? I can say all the hard work was worth the looks on the faces of kids standing in front of the engine with proud looks on their faces, waiting to have a photo taken. We've reached yet another generation. They've bought into it all... Newton railroading history, Engine 1880... assuring a loyal group who has emotional ties now, and no longer will think of the engine as a heap of black metal in the park.

Gotta love it.

Well, it was ALMOST healed

Remember when I posted last time that I had hurt my knee and it was almost healed... Well, it was... almost. And then it got worse. More pain. And better. Then more pain.

An MRI later, and I found out why all the pain. Torn meniscus, torn ligament. Now I'm scheduled for the doc to take a look and smooth out all the rough places.

He's kind of like the Great Physician in that respect, don't you think? Smoothing out the rough spots... taking away some of the pain... trying to undo what we've done to ourselves.

In this place in time, I am learning to rely more. Not only on the Great Physician, on my knee physician, but on the friends who surround me. It's the only way we single moms can survive.

January was a lesson in leaning on something besides my own strength. Of leaning on a crutch. Of leaning on friends who saw I was leaning on a crutch, and decided to help out on their own, offer to help in any way.

I will need their help. God is helping me to appreciate health and wholeness, once again.

At the Palace 

A blanket of ice

Just got out from under a blanket of ice... boy, was that cold!

Newton and the surrounding areas were covered in a nice, thick layer of ice last week. I had just messed up my leg on Sunday, given three days of bedrest from my healthcare giver... Tuesday, things started getting messy.

Throughout the neighborhood, trees snapped like twigs under the weight of the ice, sounding like gunfire or thunder. I stood out on the front porch and watched one-third of our tall tall cedar snap like a matchstick and fall to the ground.

By 1 pm the boys were home from school, thanks to my friend Marilyn picking them up. By 3 or so, we were without power... and getting chilled. There is little insulation in a 100-year-old farmhouse, and only one storm window upstairs makes things even worse...

We loaded up blankets and clothes and flashlights and toys and headed over to Marilyn and Eric's house, which was toasty from a gas fireplace. They also have a gas stove. Marilyn cooked scrambled eggs and breakfast by flashlight... it got even colder. The best bed in the house (my opinion) was a sleeping bag by the fire. Stifflers braved it out in bedrooms across the house.

We woke up two mornings to the same view out the living room window... ice, a couple of Cox Communications trucks, some city/park trucks, NO Westar electric vehicles of any kind... it was rather disheartening.

My mother decided to tough it out in her home with a fuel stove, shutting it off overnight. On the coldest night, I lay at Stiffler's house, worried beyond comprehension. The next morning I called her, trying to think of someone she could stay with. The night before had shaken her so, that she called my sis and headed to Wichita for the night. Her power came on the following day.

We loaded up the car and headed to another friend's house... this outage was stubborn, and the power wasn't coming on anytime soon. Grateful for a hot shower and a heated recliner, I finally got my leg up again and relaxed.

Then I got attacked by a big, white bird. Kathi inherited Luna from someone who inherited it from our mutual friend, Madeline... for some reason, Luna decided to lunge at me in the kitchen, and wrapped her claws in my hair. I came undone. Kathi said she'd never seen Luna WANT to GO to someone... (read: attack!).

Three nights at Kathi's house, and Sunday evening, our power finally came back on. What a relief. We'd all had enough of each other. A few hours before, Stiffler's power resurfaced. I can't tell you what a mess it all is... tree limbs everywhere. I know Newton will return to its Tree City, USA glory one day, but it will take years, I'm sure.

My knee is almost healed. What an ordeal. The boys have been especially helpful. I owe so many people a debt of gratitude.