Cleveland

Our meeting was not so crowded today.  A lot of friends are gone to Cleveland to the DC.  We are on the border for DC assignments - East Hills is assigned to Cleveland and we are assigned to Reading, Pennsylvania.  We got to go earlier to a city with less major highways, a boon to this navigator all around.

Who really uses the word boon?  Who really types the word Cleveland and thinks that would be a good land for us to cleave to each other?  Yesterday, after all that cleaning, Carly put something in my clean microwave and I said, "You'd better not splatter anything in there."

She replied, "Hence, the paper towel."  Who says hence?  Hooray, that's MY kid. 

All that cleaning meant that I went to bed tired.  Carly says she heard me cut my alarm off.  I slept till 9:10 a.m. and the meeting is at 9:30.  Is late better than missing?  I decided so.  The brother giving the talk was discussing Satan right there in the middle of the meeting, and how Satan gets to know us.  He studies us and he knows therefore how to tempt us with the most success.

Which, I knew that, but it was good to hear it and I hadn't thought of it quite like that.  Satan gets to know us.  I don't want him to, and most of the time I think I am beneath his notice.  But I got that new car radio and all the songs are about love.  On the way to meeting I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot sing but you won't read that book again because the endings just too hard to take ... I don't know where we went wrong but the feelings gone and I just can't get it back.  I have always loved that song.  But instead of reviewing the WT in my head, I was driving along and thinking about last year when I had my eye on a brother.  I have to have a name for him here, but I am not going to use his real name.  He asked me once not to ever write about him.  I said that is a promise you cannot have, but I can write without using his name.  So, since I like A names, let's call him Abel.

I'm thinking Satan got me the new car stereo.  Everything I hear is stupid or wrong or bad.  There is also a line in that song I quoted earlier about a ghost from a wishing well.  I know that it doesn't mean a literal ghost in this instance.  What the song means is that I used to wish for love with you, and now that love is dead, like I'm a ghost there, and I am no longer alive to your love.  Abel never loved me, but I was hanging out at the well anyhow.  And now, I don't know.  He can have the microphone behind my shoulder all meeting and I can forget he is there.  Last year, I had to focus so hard to comment when he was holding the microphone for me that I'm not sure what I said sometimes.  Now, I can go over and talk to him and give him toothpaste (long story) and it doesn't go through my mind to be nervous.  And I'm sad about that.  I wanted to matter to someone.

And I could forget about that if those songs weren't reminding me.  So between that and the Christian rock stations and the anger that wells up inside me over all those macho excuse songs, egghghghghghg.  That's my phrase for all the songs that excuse men from having to take any responsibility for a relationship.  The one I heard this morning after the meeting was Brad Paisley singing that "I'm still a guy."  I'm a guy so you can't expect me to behave better than this.

Yeah, okay.  Not all women are Lucille either, so you and Kenny Rogers need to get together and figure the world out.

But there was also that part in the WT, in the opening section, about being in harmony with Jehovah's standards, being known by him, and I was thinking does Jehovah love me?  Cherri Randall?  I have always thought about Him loving mankind, all of us, but I don't know if I ever articulated the idea as:  does Jehovah love me individually?

I've been trying to get better, live in more harmony with His standards.  Something from the DC really helped.  There are some things I had issues with that I didn't know if I could get over them.  I do have a four-letter word that used to pop out of my mouth too often.  And I couldn't make myself be too bothered by it.  But I started thinking that it makes Jehovah sad, that I am not pleasing my heavenly Father when I do that, and that is more motivation for me than thinking whatever things are chaste and of serious concern. 

Doesn't matter if it bothers me or not. It matters how Jehovah feels.  It's been a month now, and I feel improvement.  I'm not saying that word never pops up, but it is showing up a lot less often, and when it does, I am aware of it.  I taste that word on my tongue, it is bitter, I am conscious of it, and I am sorry.

I have always felt like Jehovah loved me when I was a little girl.  I came into the truth when I was nine years old.  My grandmother was a witness, and I would go with her to meetings every now and then.  In 1971 she brought me a book called "Listening to the Great Teacher."  I didn't read it that summer.  I was not that good of a reader yet.  Then in fourth grade, we started a program called SRA.  I have no idea what the letters stood for, but the system was based on individual reading.  We took tests and then were given a color so we'd know what section to start reading and taking tests over.  I was green all three years after that.  A lot of kids started at red, brown and orange.  Maybe that is why green is my favorite color.  Maybe the Great Teacher Book is why pink and green is a favorite color combination of mine.

I learned reading comprehension and I fell in love with school all over again.  I was so bored with reading as a class.  Baby books.  And by the spring semester I was reading way above fourth grade level.  I was reading voraciously, and one Saturday there was nothing else in the house to read but that pink book. 

I got to chapter ten:  One Leper Gave Glory to God.  And when I finished, I was sorry that I had not been going every Sunday with my grandmother to meetings.  Even then, I knew she didn't go to "church."  But that was the only religion I had any association with, and I was loving that pink book.  So I called her.  I still remember the number.  All the phones in Frederick had the same exchange number:  335.  We were 5092 and my grandmother was 5720.  I called her and asked to be picked up in the morning for meeting. 

I read the rest of the book and asked to go the following Sunday.  Grandma asked me if I wanted a Watchtower.  I said yes, but if I could only have one thing, get me a pink songbook.  The paperback was 25¢ and the deluxe leather cover was 50¢.  I had a dollar in my wallet and I asked for a deluxe.  Grandma said nevermind, she would pay for it.  The Watchtower was a nickel.  I got a green Bible too.

That week at school, one of the other girls said she was going to choir practice for her church that night.  We were talking about religion because I invited her to the Kingdom Hall with us.  I guess I thought my grandma would go pick her up.  She said no, but it worked out well for me because when I found out she went at night too, I called my grandmother (this being Wednesday) and said can I go with you tonight?  Especially did I want to go if there was singing practice.  I was trying to learn 119 songs. 

Thursday night, Grandma said.  And Tuesday. 

I had one dress only.  I didn't care.  It was blue cotton with a sailor collar and red necktie.  After a few weeks my mother decided I was going to need a few dresses, and she started sewing.  The summer of 1973, a pioneer sister moved to Frederick to work all that vast seldom-worked territory, and I promptly adopted her and she me, and she became my Aunt Margaret.  When she met my mother, she offered to study with her. 

My mother declined.

"Okay," Aunt Margaret said.  "But let me see your hands," she prompted.

My mother looked perplexed but held out both hands.  Aunt Margaret was that way.  Like Lydia, she would just make you come or do anything else she took into her head.

"Okay," she said, letting my mother's hands go.  "I just wanted to get a good look at your wedding ring, so when I see it on a skeleton after Armageddon I'll know it was you.  But don't worry, me and Ida will take care of this lovely little redhead."  Ida was my grandma's name.

Well, my mother started a study after that.  I got baptized on April 14, 1974, and she got baptized at the DC in July of 1974.  I remember when the elders asked her for permission for me to get baptized since I was a minor.  I was mad about that.  Who was she?  I never did recognize her as a spiritual head, and I'm sorry for that sometimes now, but we let each other down in this and many other profound ways.  To this day, I am a sorry disappointment to her.

When Ida is back, I can't wait for ya'll to come over and eat her fried chicken and if we are not carnivores in the new world, I'm thinking it'll be alright to have her yeast rolls by themselves.  I'm having my Little Ruth over and Dot and Jo and it's going to be wonderful.  Aunt Margaret will be there.  Once, I was at the door with my grandmother and this old goat told her our Bible was not right, that the name Jehovah was added there, and so Grandma said well, get your Bible.  So the guy brings the KJV to the door and she says look up Psalms 83:18.  The guy did, (took him awhile but I was 11 by then so I kindly pointed out Psalms was in the middle of the Bible) and when he read it silently to himself, he looked up like a raging bull, and ripped that page out and said, "Well it isn't there anymore."

My grandma smiled her sweetest and said, "Well, it is there three other places."

When we got back to the car and she told this story to Aunt Margaret, Aunt Margaret said, "Well, you didn't tell him where the other three places were, did you?"

"Oh heck no," Grandma replied.  "I told him it might do him good to read through there and look for it himself."

We all laughed.  That's the kind of girls we were in the 70's. 

***

Later, when I moved from West Fork to Farmington, Arkansas congregations, we had a get-together and someone had a karaoke machine there and we had microphones and sound.  And another couple had just moved back to West Fork from a Fayetteville Congregation, although they had lived in Arkansas their entire lives and everyone knew them.  So one of the elders interviewed this new couple, the brother also being an elder, asking how they came into the truth, welcoming them back to the congregation. 

On the way home, Carly says:  "We are new in this congregation.  Nobody interviewed us."  

Hence, the worst part was that I was thinking the same thing as my baby girl.  How much I love that story of how Jehovah drew me at age nine with that little pink book.

I have always known Jehovah loved that girl.  I have always prayed fervently for him to love my two little girls.  And I was thinking on the drive home after shutting the volume off on stupid songs was that Satan knows me too well.  I have never been tempted by smoking or drugs or alcohol.  I have not had a problem with gambling, and so far I've managed materialism pretty well.  I fought off eight hands from a forward brother successfully and once, when Kimberly was five and heading for emergency surgery in the middle of the night, I told the doctor he did not have my permission to give her blood.  He said if she needed it he would pump her full of it and get a court order.  Thankfully, she didn't need it, but I still remember standing there as her gurney slid through the doors marked authorized personnel only praying for that outcome.

It's always feeling like I don't belong.  That no one loves me.  That I'm unlovable.  My mother hates me, no brothers want me, and it is hard to remember I have value to Jehovah in the face of all this negativity, especially when it's a week when even my daughters hate me.  This morning, coming in late, I headed for a row that looked empty.  When I got there, on the seat was a song book, and on the floor, a book bag.

I picked the speaker's row.  After he finished, he came and sang the song and then left.  He did not stay for the WT.  For a moment I thought did he really leave rather than sit by me?  But he drove quite a distance, and maybe his own meeting was in the afternoon.  I don't know.  I was both relieved and upset that he left.  I didn't take it personally, not everything is about me, but I couldn't help noticing, could not stop that from being the first thought racing through my head.  He left?  His bag is gone?!

I'm not really a blogger.  I suppose you have noticed by now I'm an essayist with a blog.  And I cleave to the strength it brings me as I write.  I live for the emails some of you send back saying me too.   

You are going to love having yeast rolls with us someday.

Hence, my girl: