Mama's Cookbook

I don't recall the toys Santa left under the Christmas tree when I was still young enough to believe. I do remember the days leading up to the big day when we would feast on a smorgasboard of exotic foods, like turkey, tangerines, apple turn-overs, brunswich stew, Brazil nuts, and the fruit salad that Mama let me prepare.


My brother and I would fill a two-gallon lard bucket with pecans found under the trees in our backyard. Apples, picked from the mountain orchards of the Blue Ridge, were brought up from the cellar; along with Mason jars filled with snap beans, butter beans, and canned peaches. The Christmas tree would go up, covered in silver icycle tinsel, so thick you could barely make out the glass ornaments underneath. Plastic candles would go in the windows, each with a different color lightbulb. Lighted garland was wrapped around the metal columns on our front porch.


In the evenings, we would sit at the dining room table and watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas", Miracle on 34th Street", and, my favorite - "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol". We'd use the time to crack pe-cans (not pecahns), walnuts, hazelnuts, and Brazil nuts. Mama stood behind the ironing board pressing the linens for the Christmas table, while Daddy scrubbed the Irish and sweet potatoes we'd grown in our own garden.

Mama prepared the desserts first so that the oven was free to cook the foods that wold be served hot. The graham cracker cake, pineapple upside-down cake, coconut cake, chocolate, pecan and sweet potato pies were stored in the cool, dark closet under the staircase.

We had no original family recipes, except perhaps the fruit salad, which I'll tell you about in a moment. Mama used the Searchlight Recipe Book which she'd ordered form Household Magazine. Today it sits on my shelf along with dozens of other cookbooks. Some of the pages bear stains in the shape of the tablespoons used to hold the pages open to the recipes she wanted to prepare.

There is one stain next to the Ginger Ale Cocktail, a drink we'd serve after the church's Christmas program. The corner of the page is turned down where the recipe for Honey Peanut Butter Fudge is found. Page 160 is stained where a newspaper clipping was used as a bookmark for Water Ices. The advertisement is from 1968, and announces "SINGER presents ELVIS...SEE ELVIS IN HIS FIRST TV SPECIAL! WATCH SINGER presents ELVIS ON NBC-TV...IN COLOR." Elvis was my idol as I was growing up. Mama kept the clipping for me.

The indexes that are curled the most indicate which recipes Mama used the most: Icings and Fillings, Meats, and Pudding.

A pink sheet of notepaper is tucked behind the last page of the dessert section. On it is my mother's recipe for fruit cake. While many people confess they don't like fruit cake, to me the fruit cake is to Christmas what the lighted tree, the mistletoe, and the nativity scene are. In her words, here is Mama's recipe for a Southern fruit cake:


"1 lbs - Negro toes (Brazil nuts)
1 lb - English Walnuts
1 lb - Green Raisins
1 lb - Candied fruit
1 lb - Marsh mellows
1 lb - Graham crackers
1 can of Bordens (condensed milk)
Eagle brand milk
Heat milk in a double boiler then put in marsh mellows and let melt. Then add all to gether and pack firmly in place...in foil paper."

That's all. No oven temperature, no baking time, no prep. Those things were understood by anyone who knew anything about cooking and baking. (Actually, I don't think this kind of fruit cake is baked. There's no batter. The milk and marshmellows must hold it together.)

On Christmas Day the Searchlight Recipe Book would go back in the drawer under the kitchen towels and wash cloths, and the table would be set with linens, placemats, real napkins, and Mama's china reserved for Christmas Day. A platter containing a glazed sugar-cured ham, sliced at an angle and surrounded by slices of fresh tomatoes anchored one end of the table. On the opposite end was a matching platter with a sixteen pound golden-skinned turkey. When carved, the scent of oranges and bayleaves wafted from the turkey. The turkey cavity had been stuffed with whole oranges and its skin had been bathed in a wine-olive oil mixture and topped with whole bayleaves, Italian seasoning, and celery and lemon salts. Thick, brown giblet gravy was ladeled from Mama's white gravy boat over the turkey and mashed potatoes.

Oyster crackers floated in yellow bowls of tomato soup. There were corn fritters in the shape of ears of corn in an oval yellow dish. Blue Dutch pattern serving bowls contained steaming butterbeans, green beans, pinto beans, and brunswich stew, barely leaving room for the congealed salads - one a cranberry, and the other a jellied vegetable salad the kids wouldn't touch.

The sideboard and kitchen counters were loaded down with dinner roles, deviled eggs, collard greens, clam dip, jugs of sweet tea, pies, cakes, pumpkin rolls, cookies, apple turnovers, the fruitcake and my fruit salad. Mama had slaved over every dish, and it didn't matter that it was too much food; none of it would go to waste. But before I could eat the fruit salad, I had to finish enough meat and vegetables to satisfy Mama.

The Southern fruit salad is simle. In a large bowl, throw in bite-sized chunks of slicked oranges, tangerines, apples, purple grapes, canned pineapple chunks, and sliced bananas. Next, add a cup of Duke's mayonaisse, the juice from one can of pineapple, and a cup of sugar. Stir until all the ingredients were covered, then taste. Add more sugar - this is Southern fruit salad. When it's to your liking, sprinkle with a handful of coconut. If you like raisins you can put them in. I don't, so I didn't. Then you grab a cereal or soup bowl, not one of your mother's crystal ice cream dishes, and kick back in front of the TV and watch "It's a Wonderful Life".

Christmas, to Mama at least, was more about family than about gifts. She and Daddy had survived the Great Depression, so material things never had a hold on them as they do on us today. We ate simply all year long. We were never hungry, but Christmas was the one time out of the year when our parents splurged. They did it for the kids, and as we grew older, they did it for our wives and their grandkids. Mama tried to make that Christmas table look like the dishes depicted on the inside cover of the Searchlight Recipe Book. It was how she expressed her love and devotion to her family.

The Juggler

Imagine yourself as a juggler. You've got all these objects that you're juggling because there's not enough room in your hands to hold them all at one time. Although they're the same size, some are different colors, different weights, different materials; but you're juggling them all at once, treating them the same.

We spend our lives juggling things. The older we get, or the more motivated we become, the more things we have to juggle. One of the things we juggle is our free time. Another is our jobs. Another could be our spouse and depending on how many children we have, there's an object to juggle for each one. We juggle our friends, our dreams and ambitions, our responsibilities, and we juggle our health and our sanity.

There is so much going on in our lives, it seems we spend all of our time putting out fires. Occasionally we drop the ball. There are some things that we can drop and it's no big deal. Others, and it seems the end of the world. With so much to juggle, how do you decide what to drop and what you need to keep going?

Your job is like a tennis ball. You can drop it and most of the time it will bounce back. It may bounce away and you have to chase it awhile, but for the most part, you can keep a job. But what about a spouse or a child? These aren't made of rubber - they're fragile, like a Christmas ornament. Drop these, and there's no fixing them. They're gone for good. You can drop a habit and never have to pick it up again, but drop the trust someone has bestowed on you and you may never get it back.

We've all got the same number of hours in the day. The way we choose to spend our time and the number of objects that we choose to juggle reflect what's important to us. When we keep making room for something new, something else gets less of our time.

We juggle career and ambition and drop that precious little girl who adores her daddy. By the time we turn our attention back to her, she's hanging out with someone who doesn't care about her, and she accepts it because her dad didn't care either. Or, we juggle things - the latest gadgets that make us look cool, and we ignore our health. Before we're eligible for AARP, we're wearing a pacemaker and taking insulin shots.

What's really important? What do we really need to juggle, and which ones should we drop so that we can better handle the ones that matter most? If dropping something will break it, that's probably the ones we need to keep.

When my second youngest child was battling cancer, I was juggling work, marriage, my other kids, my grandchildren, church, my own spiritual growth, my own dreams, living up to what I thought people expected of me, too much personal debt, growing older, and worried about what sort of future I would have if I dropped any one of these things. As a result, my sick daughter had to be self-dependent at a time when she really needed to be dependent upon me. And when she passed away, all the things I thought I was juggling for all the right reasons were simply not worth what I gave up. A relationship with my daughter was as fragile as a Christmas tree ornament; and its loss is something I'll never replace.

Among the many balls I was juggling was faith and wishful thinking. I believed God could heal my daughter, but I wasn't sure He would - or that He had, for scripture says that Christ was wounded for our transgressions and bruised from our iniquities, but that by His stripes we were healed. Jesus spoke about faith the size of a mustard seed that could move mountains, and I never understood it until I confronted the certainty of mortality and the hope it wasn't my daughter's time. I felt I lacked the faith necessary to bring the healing Christ had already accomplished into a daughter I saw dying in front of me. But by not dropping that ball of faith, I was able to handle her death with the certain knowledge that I'll see her again - as I prayed she would be: well, whole, safe, happy.

My dad was 44 years old when I was born. I knew he loved me and that he did the very best he could to provide for his family, but I don't remember a time when he ever tossed me a baseball or came to one of my track meets. We never went fishing or had a dad-son talk about becoming a man. He was too busy doing what men were expected to do in his time. When he wasn't working at the hardware store, he was working in the garden, mowing the lawn, attending deacon's meetings at church or meetings at the Masonic Lodge or the Shrine. Did I need to play catch or have Daddy hold my hand when we walked down the street? I still wonder 'what if'? Would I have spent more time with my daughter if my dad had spent more time with me?

Perhaps it was the lack of intimacy between my father and me, and the example he had set of working hard to provide for his family as his number one priority, but near the end of his life I felt uncomfortable watching a man of such strength weaken until he needed help pulling up his pants. When Mama could no longer care for him and Daddy had to be put into a nursing home, I would go for weeks at a time without visiting because I didn't want to see my father wither away. Perhaps my mother resisted going into a nursing home when we could no longer care for her because she feared we'd forget about her and she would die alone.

These are regrets I can no longer do anything about. I dropped the ball on opportunities to care for my parents after they'd spent their lives caring for me. Most of the balls I juggled during this period were distractions to keep me from facing the loss of my loved ones.

During my 24 years in the Army, I sold out 100% to my career. I took pride in being the best at what I did. My career decisions dictated my decisions for my family - where we would go, how long we would stay, where we would live. During those 24 years, I was married and divorced three times, and had six children. Now, as I approach 60, there are some things I wish I'd not done and lots of things I wish I had done. The things I regret the most are the things that affected my relationships with the people I love the most. No career is more important than your family. What good does it do to be the best and not have someone to share it with?

Now that I'm approaching the winter of my life, I can appreciate the importance of priorities: God, family, others, and self. In any other order, the results lead to regrets. Another ball we juggle is trying to limit life's regrets; but we must be careful that in trying to avoid pain, we miss out on the joy such pain can bring.

The Pin-Up

When it came to learning about the birds and bees, the only thing I remember Mama telling me was, "Watch out for women. Once you get them pregnant, you're stuck." Daddy never had that talk with me either, so my first introduction to sex education came from 'National Geographic' magazines. It wasn't long before some of my classmates were passing around girlie magazines with close-ups on the topless models. I knew it was wrong to look at these pictures, but no one really told me why except that God was watching and He had forbidden it. My curiosity was greater than my fear of the Lord, and since no one had come up with a better reason than "God said so", I did what most teenage boys did. I learned to hide nude pictures inside the pages of my school books, because I knew my mother would look under my mattress and through my dresser drawers and I didn't want her to find out I looked at pornography.

In pictures more revealing than this one, where young women strike poses only because they're paid to do so, I learned everything I thought I needed to know about the opposite sex. As it turned out, I didn't learn anything, and when I had my own kids, I gave them the same spiel my parents gave me about sex - which amounted to nothing. So maybe here I can teach my grandchildren something that will make their lives better.

Imagine that you had the actual photograph of the girl above. Draw a circle around her face, then another around her chest, and a third one around her hips. These are the three areas that need the most protection. If you will focus on the face inside the circle you've drawn, what do you see? That face could belong to a girl named Katie or Ashley. She's some dad's little princess. Her mom probably drove her to soccer games and put bandaids over scraped knees and elbows. She and her siblings played with Barbie dolls and played make believe dressed in their parents' clothes. Her parents sat through boring and painful piano recitals just to watch their little girl perform - even if her feet could barely reach the pedals and her fingers weren't long enough to cover the keys to create a note properly. No matter how beautiful she becomes, her father will always see her as that 11 year old daddy's girl who dressed like a tomboy and who never left his side. He is torn between pride and fear of the day he has to walk her down the aisle and give her to a man he hopes loves her every bit as much as he does. The hopes and dreams for this girl's future is what motivates her parents to sacrifice and to try to prepare their little girl for a world beyond their ability to help her navigate.

While it's the face that first attracts a boy's (or man's) attention, it is the area between her hips that ignites male passions. The male doesn't see a vaginal canal that leads to the uterus which contains two ovaries that some day may produce an egg that becomes another human being. The male doesn't care that at least once a month this part of her anatomy that they obsess about is dirty as it carries away impurities from her body. Most males don't know that a woman in childbirth is far more beautiful than a woman who simply spreads her legs to satisfy their lusts.

The area around this girl's chest draws almost as much attention from a guy as does her vaginal area. What guys don't see when they're looking at a woman's breasts is what lies behind them - the most important part of any woman, or man. Looking at images like this one, especially over time, imprints on the mind, and on the heart. Most men imagine what they would like to do with this girl, but few give any thought as to what they would do once their passions are sated. When done, most men would try to figure out how to get rid of her until they wanted her again.

Kids - grandkids - when you look at images such as this one, it affects your values and your opinions. It's why when a man has been married a few years, he will think back to the images he's imprinted on his mind and start wondering about all the green grass he's missing outside of his marriage. This mental attitude affects his emotional attitude - his heart. The person that he promised to love and cherish and cling to gradually becomes a nagging ball-and-chain that robs him of any pleasure. He starts to look at other women, and if they pay attention to him, and if they present to him what he used to lust over; this man will leave his wife and kids for another woman. And the cycle will repeat itself because the grass will always look greener. To men like this, women become a piece of meat, a recepticle of pleasure - little more than a tool that can be disposed of at will. Love is not a tool.

When God commanded that a man love his wife and cling to her and she to him, He wasn't trying to spoil our fun. He was trying to show us a better way to live. God's love never tries to hurt us, but to protect us from settling for less than His best in our lives. There are things that nobody but our parents when we're young, and our spouses when we're older should see and experience. There ought to be in marriage images imprinted on your heart of secret things that should belong only to you: The way your wife sits on the side of the tub and bends over to towel dry her hair. The scent and feel of the lotion she smoothes on her legs after a bath. The location of a birthmark or scar; her ticklish spots, or the places where your kisses cause her to tremble. You should know the way she snores when she sleeps and miss her snores when you're spending the night alone away from home. Instead of paying to see something that doesn't belong to you, it is better to wait and let her show you what she's been saving for you alone to see. These images ought to be reminders of what you love about the person you have chosen to be in relationship with. If you find the right soul mate, the memories you'll make will last a lifetime.

Guard what you allow your eyes to see - appearances can be deceiving, and the anticipation is usually more exciting than the actual experience. Guard your virtue - give it to the one you plan on spending the rest of your life with. And finally, guard your heart. Don't let the wrong kind of person break it so that you can't give all your love to the right person.

It's Not God's Problem

In his State of the Union address, President Obama promised the American people that he would give them an accounting for how their tax dollars are spent. Our society is complex and no one knows where our taxes are going, only that we seem to be paying too much. Recently, the White House released a website where our citizens can go and plug in their own numbers and get an itemized report of where their tax dollars were spent. Check it out here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/taxes/tax-receipt

As our economy struggles and it appears that things will only get worse, Americans are turning to prayer out of desperation. We can’t seem to learn the wisdom of turning to God before we make bad decisions and thus avoid desperation. But, God is not obligated to provide for wants that we’ve turned into needs.

Many Americans are proclaiming the end-times as the cause for all the wars, corporate corruption, lack of morals and character, and all the ills that seem to be threatening our lives. I suggest that we’re just harvesting what we've sown.

People ask “Why is God letting me go through this?” And the answer is, “Because you got what you asked for.” For generations now, Americans have turned to the government for sustenance rather than to Him. Every time we’ve told our representatives we wanted something, it’s come with a price tag in the form of taxes.

We demand clean water; our politicians say “I can provide that”. We demand highways so that we can travel and conduct business and they say, “Sure – no problem.” We demand safer working environments, and the government legislates the workplace. We demand protection from danger from enemies foreign and domestic, and our government supplies a military and police/fire protection. We demand a minimum wage and the government requires businesses to pay more, so the cost of payroll causes prices to rise for everyone.

We want the elderly and poor taken care of, but not out of our wallets - let the government provide for our seniors and the impoverished. We don't know our neighbor well enough to lend him our chain saw when a tree falls on his house, let him call FEMA for help. We don't have time to monitor our kids' activities, the government must screen movies and rate music for us.

We demand healthcare, and the government gets to decide what your life is worth and it tells you what to put in and on your body. We demand compensation when we are injured or feel slighted, and the government forces businesses and individuals to purchase insurance to cover lawsuits. We demand the right to parade our sexual preferences or our racial and cultural differences – things that have nothing to do with our character or our worth, and the government writes laws banning hate-speech. We demand the right to not be inconvenienced with unwanted pregnancies, and the government funds groups like Planned Parenthood. We demanded an income in our retirement, and the government gave us Social Security. We demanded medical care when we’re retired and have no health insurance –and the government gave us Medicare/Medicaid.

If we can’t get what we want for free from the government, we steal it, and the government provides prisons and guards. We demand the right to buy houses we can’t afford and the government guarantees the loan with taxpayer’s money. We demand the right to have what we want now rather than wait until we can afford it, and the government regulates how much interest the credit card lenders can charge you. We demand equal opportunity, and the government forces businesses to hire employees based on affirmative action rather than qualifications. We demand the right to a free education and the government tells us what can and can’t be taught to our children. We demand that our kids be able to go to college even if their grades aren’t worthy, and the government provides student loans and grants.

Worse, even if you don’t want the government involved in any of these things, your tax dollars are funding them. You may be employed, but you’re paying 4.4% of the costs for those who don’t work. You have always worked to support your family, but 10.7% for those who can’t or won’t. You don’t mind the 26% spent on national defense, but you do mind the 1.7% spent on aid to foreign countries.

America has gotten what we’ve wanted, but it’s cost us more than it’s worth. We are paying for things we never benefitted from, and we’re passing along to our children and grandchildren a debt that they can’t afford to pay. America has been selfish. We were not satisfied with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness –we wanted more. We ignored our founders when they warned about giving government too much power or about entering into entangling alliances that serve us no useful purpose. We ignored the fact that they were dependent upon the Creator for the foundation of our nation, and their prayers for our continued success, and we allowed our government to be everything to everyone.

Now we turn to God and expect Him to ignore what we’ve demanded all these years. We expect Him to help us choose the right lottery numbers or give us an idea that will make us wealthy. We want out of our circumstances; but we don’t want to let go of the things that are keeping us enslaved.

Whether God chooses to come to the aid of any of us is up to Him. We chose to put our trust in compromisers and power seekers. God just let us have our way. We have no right to expect most of the services that our government supplies, but if we’re going to demand them; we’ve got to pay for them. If we don’t want to pay for them, let’s get rid of them. It’s not God’s problem, it’s ours.

Why the Fear?

The bike you see above belongs to Pastor David Smith. He has donated his bike to raise funds to help a ministry to the homeless that he started about a year ago in Durham, North Carolina. It's a beautiful bike, and it means something to David; but he's willing to part with it if it helps us feed, clothe, and most of all - share Jesus with hurting people.

It's late Sunday night,the end of a long and emotional weekend. We began on Saturday helping David and a wonderful group of volunteers with Meet Me At the Bridge. The weather was cloudy and a bit cool, and the weather prevented a lot of the regular guests from showing up for a meal or some clean clothes. Still, the worship music and the message were wonderful. My first tears came during one of the worship songs, an old one we used to sing when I was a child in church.

I talked with one of the homeless who shows up to help sort clothes...or rather I talked at him. His name is Dan. Dan's on the small side. His beard is graying, but he's clean and dressed in clothes suitable for the weather. Dan once worked for a business for more than 20 years. I suppose they paid him under the table due to his poor hearing. They never took out social security or offered him a retirement plan; so when the company closed down, Dan suddenly found himself jobless and homeless at the age of 52.

Dan walks a lot. He's tireless. Sometimes he's helping the homeless in Durham and sometimes he's in Raleigh. The Bridge has come to depend upon him to let us know who needs help and who might be looking for something they can sell to support their habit. I mentioned that I talked at Dan, because I didn't know until today that Dan has a serious hearing problem. He read my lips as we talked about where he was from. He spoke about telling other homeless people about coming to the Bridge for help. Dan told me that some of them wore the same clothes for a week at a time, and he'd tell them that there were clean, good clothes if they'd only come down to the park to get them. He talked about people needing to take responsibility for themselves, to keep themselves clean, to have some pride even if they didn't have a roof over their head.

As we were packing up to leave, I found a nice leather bag laying next to a hedge. I took it to some of the other volunteers to see if they knew who it belonged to. Pastor Smith was heading our way when one of the volunteers called out, "Does anyone know who this belongs to?" David nodded and said that it was his. He kept his iPad and minnistry tools in it. However Dan, because he can not hear well, only saw the volunteer holding up the bag and said, "Man, I could sure use that bag!" Without hesitation, David turned to Dan and said, "Brother, I brought it just for you." Dan quickly moved the few items he had in plastic Wal-Mart bags into the leather bag, gave David a hug and went on his way. That bag probably cost him more than $50, but it was just a thing God gave him so that he could bless someone else. I don't think anyone noticed the tears in my eyes. That's the kind of man David is.

David once pastored a church of several thousand; but about a year ago he felt that God was calling him to do something completely out of his comfort zone. He has a doctorate degree and has spent a lot of time as a traveling speaker. David lived in a nice house, drove expensive imports and wore a Rolex. Those things are just about gone now, but David never asks for help for himself. He has no income and takes no collection...not that the homeless have anything to give. Day after day, David walks the streets of Durham, earning the trust of the homeless, and trusting God not just for his ministry needs, but his own as well.

Today we had our semi-monthly meeting of volunteers. As busy as David is, he likes to bring his volunteers together to talk and joke as well as plan the next meal or opportunities he sees for Meet Me At the Bridge. David knows that many people are compassionate, but very few are passionate enough to sacrifice their time and resources indefinitely, so he's building a spiritual family so that we can continue to meet the needs of people that Jesus cares about. David is soft-spoken and gentle. Everything he says points towards God's love for us. His FaceBook posts are always uplifting. He's given just about everything he owns to be able to do what he knows God has called him to do. David lives by faith, not knowing where the resources and the help might come from - but he knows what God called him to do.

I say all of this because I want to ask you for a couple of things. First, Dan needs a good hearing aid. We can find someone who will fit it for him, but we can't afford to buy one. Dan deserves a hearing aid. He's a precious man.

Second, I want to ask you to make a donation in return for a raffle ticket with a chance of winning David's bike - a limited edition 1996 Harley Davidson Bad Boy. Notice that I emphasized it's a donation. The bike is great if you happen to be the one who wins it, but more importantly, your donation is going to help people like Dan - many of them veterans, some with addiction problems, some with mental issues. Our purpose isn't to come up with a bunch of programs - there are many of those available. Our purpose is to let hurting people know that God loves and cares about them.

Would you consider donating $20 to help David and Meet Me At the Bridge? If you will, we'll enter you into the raffle. Donate $100 and we'll send you six tickets. You can contribute on our website: www.meetmeatthebridge.com. Just enter "Bike raffle" in the note field. You may not care about a motorcycle, and that's fine. We have no corporate sponsors or government assistance. Everything comes from the pockets of the volunteers. We could use some more volunteers, or we could use your financial support. Dan is just one example of the people helped by Meet Me At the Bridge. There are hundreds that need our help.

Today, as we sat outdoors eating together and enjoying the beautiful weather, David mentioned that all of the revenue streams we've had seem to have dried up. So, what does all of this have to do with fear? Well, as I've tried to sell raffle tickets or ask people to donate, I'm getting a lot of excuses. The economy is awful, and many people worry about their jobs. They have a lot of personal debt that causes stress. Many are at the point that their charitable giving now goes to help their immediate family. There is a sense of hopelessness and fear in our nation, even among the faith community.

Fear immobilizes. Fear interferes with creativity. Fear keeps us from taking risks. Fear is a sign that our faith is in crisis. Courage is not the absence of fear - but the will to do something in spite of fear. I'm looking for some courageous people who can see beyond your circumstances and recognize God's plan for David Smith and Meet Me At the Bridge.

$20 is a lot of money to risk on a chance to win a bike. You can buy a quarter tank of gas with that much money, or go to a movie by yourself. It might buy your lunch for two or three days. May I suggest that you're looking at this the wrong way. $20 will buy enough bread to feed 60-80 people. $20 will buy enough pasta to feed 100 homeless men and women. $20 will buy toiletries for five homeless people. $20 will buy a pair of sneakers for someone who's using cardboard to cover the holes in the soles of their shoes. $20 is a lot of money, especially when it's given away.

To thank you for your $20 donation, we'll send you a chance to win that beautiful bike pictured above. Would you tell your family and friends about Meet Me At the Bridge and ask them to help. If you don't ride a motorcycle, you could sell it. If I win that bike, I'm giving it back to David because he's willing to give it away. Some of you could become sponsors of Meet Me At the Bridge. A few people giving $20 per month goes a long way. David might not ask you to help, but I will because I love David and I love what he is doing.

Thank you for reading this long post. I can't describe to you what it's like to be part of Meet Me At the Bridge, and to be around Pastor Smith and my own pastor and his family as they minister to the poor and homeless. It certainly has provided perspective in my own life. If you're local to the Raleigh/Durham area, please come out and volunteer with us. If you know of a hearing aid that could help Dan hear again, please contact me here, on FaceBook or David at the MMATB website. And please, help us sell all of the raffle tickets and raise money so that Meet Me At the Bridge can continue to feed, clothe, counsel, and disciple the homeless in Durham. "Fear not, says the Lord, for I know the plans I have for you...."

The Ant and the Contact

I read this story elsewhere but wanted to share it with people on my blog.

Brenda, an amateur climber, was almost halfway to the top of a huge granite mountain. She had stopped for a breather on a tiny ledge, but as she rested there, the tension on the safety rope caused it to snap in her face, dislodging one of her contact lenses.

Desperately she searched the small ledge in the hope that it had fallen close at hand. Brenda was at the point where it was almost as far back down as it was to the top. She didn't want to quit, but she needed her contacts to see clearly. After an unsuccessful search, Brenda decided to press on rather than waste all that effort already put into the climb.

Climbing was difficult with her impaired vision. Brenda fought panic and fear until she reached the top. There, a fellow climber searched her clothing and hair in hopes of finding the missing contact. As tough as the climb had been, going back down was equally frightening, so Brenda prayed.

Brenda thought about the scripture that said 'The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth.' The beauty she had expected to see at the top was instead blurry. She thought, 'Lord, You can see all these mountains. You know every stone and leaf, and You know exactly where my contact lens is. Please help me.'

When she felt calm enough to begin the descent, Brenda continued to pray for her safety. Finally, on a trail near the bottom of the cliff they passed another party of climbers on the way up. One of the climbers shouted out, 'Hey, you guys! Anybody lose a contact lens?'

Brenda was stunned. How did they know she'd lost her contact lens? It turned out that the only reason they had spotted it was because it was seen moving slowly across a twig on the back of an ant. What are the odds that someone would have noticed an ant had it not been on that twig at the precise time they were passing?

The story doesn't end there. Brenda's father is a cartoonist. When she told
him the incredible story of the ant, the prayer, and the contact lens, he drew a cartoon of an ant lugging that contact lens with the caption, 'Lord, I don't know why you want me to carry this thing. I can't eat it, and it's awfully heavy. But if this is what you want me to do; I'll carry it for you.'

This is a true story, and there are many lessons we can learn from this story. Perhaps chiefly among these lessons is this: We don't always, in fact we seldom, understand why we're stuck carrying the loads we are shouldered with. We can't see any potential for good, and often our burdens are heavy and heartbreaking. We can complain and ask God to remove the circumstance from our life, or we can accept our burden and say, "If You want me to carry this load Lord, I will."

Another lesson is that even when you don't sense the Lord moving in your life, He is. I can imagine that contact lens fluttering hundreds of feet down the side of that mountain only to land where it would never be found; but God saw where it went, and even before Brenda prayed, He sent that ant as an answer to her prayer. The ant couldn't eat that contact. It was heavy, it was awkward, but God used what was available to get the help to the person who needed it.

God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called. He is our source of existence and our Savior. He keeps us functioning each and every day. Without Him, I am nothing, but with Him...I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. (Phil. 4:13)

Becoming a Ditty-Bopper

"Action is the real measure of intelligence." - Napoleon Hill
"Private, you're behind every student in this class. If I don't see some improvement soon, I'm going to kick you out of my course and recommend you be sent to the Infantry and to VietNam." (I left out the expletives in this 'pep'-talk, but feel free to use your imagination.) As I stood at attention before the senior instructor, my fists were clenched and tears of anger and embarrassment blurred my vision. It was bad enough to be cursed at by the sergeant, but to listen to the giggles from the junior NCOs present in the room was worse. Fortunately, my fellow-students were wearing headsets and could not hear the chewing out I was receiving.

For three weeks I had struggled to learn the sounds of Morse code characters. Although I had exceptional test scores on my vocational aptitude tests, the only low scores I had were in the area of foreign language - yet here I was trying to learn what was essentially another language - even though the vocabulary was limited to three distinct sounds: di, dah, and dit. While the rest of the class had learned the Morse alphabet, I continued to struggle. Little did I know at the time that the instructor's pep-talk was the motivation I needed to succeed; or that I myself would become a Morse code instructor one day.

I returned red-faced to my seat and put the headphones back on; but I could not concentrate on the sounds I was hearing. I fumed over the way I'd been called out and determined right there to get out of this class as quickly as possible. That night I lay in my bunk, listening to classmates dream about Morse code. "Di-dah. Alpha. "Dah-di-di-dit. Bravo," and so on. We spent the first hour every morning reciting this code and it became so repetitive that we'd dream about it at night, verbalizing the code in our sleep.

We had a nick-name for students of Morse-Code: Ditty-boppers. We had a habit of tilting our heads or using one hand to hold the headset tighter against the ear to better hear the sounds coming through the radio. In class you'd look around and see heads bobbing back and forth as students found the rhythm of the code - thus ditty-bopping. Back in the barracks, we'd talk to each other in Morse code: "di-di-dah-dah-di-dit" meant "What's up?" We cursed in Morse code. Some of us made the pilgrimage into Boston one weekend and paid homage to Samuel Morse by urinating on his grave. In a way, we were being brainwashed.

In order to learn Morse code you have to be young - meaning that you can't already have your mind filled with distractions like family, responsibility, etc. You must also learn to use a certain part of your brain. When you hear a sound, your mind instantly associates it with a character on your keyboard.

The morning after the sergeant chewed me out; I went into class and passed two lessons. The sounds started making sense to me. The following day I caught up with the rest of the class. Within two weeks I was so far ahead of the rest of the class that they cut my class time to two hours per day. I ended up graduating four weeks ahead of my class along with the previous class and was promoted to Specialist (equivalent to Corporal). Then I was selected for additional training because they needed replacements in Asmara, Ethiopia. The requirements to pass the course were to be able to copy twenty words per minute of Morse code. The requirement for assignment to the spy station in Asmara was twenty-five words per minute. I was copying thirty-five words per minute. Of the eighteen replacements needed, only nine of us would qualify. While the rest of my class was ordered to service in Viet-Nam, the nine of us headed to North Africa.

It was in Ethiopia that I met my first wife. She already had a son by another American soldier. Because he was of mixed race and parentage, he had no rights and no protection by the Ethiopian government or its society. I adopted him and brought him and his mother to the United States, where he now serves in our military. I used my ditty-bopper skills under the American consulate in Berlin, Germany during the Cold War, intercepting Soviet and East Germany radio traffic.

That over-weight, foul-mouthed Sergeant didn't teach me Morse-Code, but he did teach me to hate failure. Whenever I made mistakes after that, I made sure that they never had reason to chew me out for the same thing a second time. As a result of that painful experience, I became a Radio-Teletypewriter instructor at Fort Gordon, Georgia; and later I became the Army's authority on personnel records. Adversity is a great teacher. Although I have not used Morse code in the past thirty years, I still remember it. My kids get a kick out of asking me to 'Say something in Morse code, Dad!"

Mama's Hands

The first photo is a 3x3 black and white photograph of my mother holding me in her arms outside the rear of our peeling white clapboard house. I’m a chubby baby of about six months. Mama is 40 years old. Her dark brown hair is permed and she’s wearing a dark dress, so it must be a Sunday.

The second photo is of my mother holding my grandson as she’s sitting in her recliner. Josh is lying in her lap. He’s just a little thing, but Mama is 91 years old and lacks the strength to hold him in her arms. Mama’s hair is snow white and thinning, and her pink scalp is visible in places. Yet what I’m drawn to most in this photo are Mama’s hands. The fingers are long and thin. The knuckles and joints are protruded, and there is evidence of the arthritis that has pained her for the past twenty years. The backs of Mama’s hands are covered in age spots and thin blue veins; they are dry like parchment paper and almost translucent.

Mama is touching Josh’s face with the tips of her fingers, and I suspect she’s marveling at how smooth and soft his skin is. I imagine here that she is remembering touching my own face a half century earlier. "Where has the time gone?" she thinks. Perhaps we both know that she won't be around to see Josh start school. Somewhere in between, I’ve given her six grandchildren to hold; my brothers have given her seven more - but perhaps in this moment, her mind is on her own babies – five in total: Roger is the oldest, then James and John - twins who died at birth; next there is me, and eighteen months later, my youngest brother, Ray. If we weren’t enough children to raise, Mama and Daddy adopted two brothers and a sister from the orphanage rather than allow them to be split apart in other foster homes.

Mama was the oldest of twelve children. When she wasn’t laboring in the tobacco fields, she was helping her step-mother raise her brothers and sisters. How many diapers have those hands changed? How many spoons has she held to feed her loved ones? How many hours has she spent washing and ironing clothes, kneading dough for biscuits, sewing clothes and quilts for her family? When Mama had her own children, she milked a goat to feed Roger because he couldn't keep cow's milk down. She raised chickens, skinned rabbits and squirrels because it was the only meat they could afford to feed the family.

Mama’s hands smoothed the linens on the communion tables – linens she washed and ironed; she poured the juice she sliced the communion bread in service to the Lord. Her hands held the Bibles and Sunday school books she read and taught from; and they wrote out the tithe checks no matter how much she needed the money for groceries and prescriptions. Those hands scrubbed floors and walls to keep her home clean. They planted flowers and vegetables, shucked corn, shelled beans, stirred pots, and twisted canning jar lids. Mama’s hands bathed us, buttoned our clothes - clothes that she had sewn herself, and tied our shoes. They bathed and shaved my father after his stroke, and they took care of her sister who suffered from Alzheimers and emphyzema. Those hands were constantly in motion doing what God created a mother’s hands to do.

In the end, I was holding Mama’s hand as she slipped into a coma. Three days later, I was holding her hand when she passed into eternity and took the hand of Christ. My own hands are showing signs of aging. I only hope that my hands will reflect my character as well as Mama’s hands reflected hers.

Who's To Blame?

It didn't take 30 seconds after the shootings by the madman in Arizona before people started placing the blame on everyone and everything except the shooter. We are a world of irresponsible and illogical humans. Jared Loughner himself plead not guilty despite numerous eye-witnesses and video footage capturing the murder of innocent people. He may be complicit in the murders, but both he and certain members of society want the guilt shared with Sarah Palin, Christians, Tea Partiers, Loughner's parents, friends, the authorities, classmates and even the gun itself.

If blame is to be laid on anyone and anything remotely connected with acts of evil, then let's blame....

The pencil for mipselled words.
The car for drunk drivers.
The spoon for making Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Hawaii for not producing a valid birth certificate for our President.
The hammer for smashed fingers.
The parachute for skydiving accidents.
King James for authorizing an English version of scripture that no one can agree on.
Thomas Edison for the high cost of our electricity bill.
Ray Kroc for America's obesity.
The school teacher for failing grades.
The coach for lost games.
Minoru Yamasaki for those who died in the World Trade Center.
God for allowing evil to start with.

Of course, if we're going to blame people and things for the way they were misused by others, we ought to give credit to those people and things that have done good.

The pencil for it's contribution to literacy, math, and art.
The automobile for making it possible to commute to our jobs and to visit loved ones.
The spoon for feeding starving children.
Hawaii for romantic vacation destinations and the popularity of Spam.
The hammer for driving nails that hold homes together.
The parachute for giving soldiers the ability to attack behind enemy lines.
King James for a poetic and accurate translation of ancient scriptures.
Thomas Edison for not having to use lanterns and candles to light our homes...and so much more.
Ray Kroc for the Ronald MacDonald House and hundreds of millions in charitable giving.
The school teacher for educating our children, and us.
The coach for inspiring teamwork and teaching life habits that lead to success.
Minoru Yamasaki for designing the tallest and largest office building in America which in turn employed thousands of Americans in hundreds of businesses.
Finally, we need to give God credit for giving us brains, even if we don't yet know how to use them.

When I make wrong or stupid choices, the responsibility lies solely on me. It's not the bank's fault that I'm in debt; it's my own greed. It's not the creditor's fault when I'm behind on my payments; it's my character that is in question because I promised to repay money they advanced me. It's not my employer's fault that I don't earn what I think I'm worth, it's mine for not doing the work that earns the wages I want and expect. If my kids struggle in school, it's my fault for not being more involved in their homework or finding them the help necessary to succeed academically. When I stand before God, I do not have to give an account for the wrongs of others, but I do for my own. He will not accept my passing the blame on others for my own sins...and I'm tired of hearing others blame me because I'm a white conservative Christian male and fall into their catch-all fault depository.