Love, Jimmie

Redeem – (verb) repurchase; to buy back, regain possession of.  Synonym: Ransom – (verb) redeem a person from captivity by paying a stipulated price, or to redeem from sin by sacrifice; free, liberate; rescue, save

I came to stand before Him, broken. 

“I am lonely,” I said. 

You are not alone.  I am always here.  

You can rest in Me. 

I took the shards of my life and offered it up to Him and said: 

“Here.  I made a mess of it.  I understand if you are disappointed in me.” 

Then I knelt and waited.

I love you. 

“You love the whole world.  I know.”

I love you. 

“I know.”  Yet I turned away, knowing I was part of the whole.  Not special.  Not me. 

Everything under the heavens is Mine. 

“Yes, I am under the heavens.  I know who I belong to.” 

Stand boldly before Me.  Listen for Me. 

Child, I am your Father.  I sustain you.  I give you strength.  You have power.

“I know.” 

And still, He told me: 

I created you.  I am jealous for you. 

I delight in you. I think about you all the time.

I know every hair on your head.

I know your heart.  I made it especially for you.

I am your beginning and your end.

I am your healer.

I have loved you with an everlasting love.  Nothing at all, ever, can take that love away.

I fought for you.  I died for you.  I won for you.

I’ve called you.  I’m coming for you.  Wait for Me.

I stand in the onslaught of that love, head back, arms held out wide and the love pours onto me.  I stand in the outpouring, in the whirlwind of love, of passion, of gentleness and mercy and compassion and rejoicing and again, love, and I accept it.  I love back and I am filled. I am not alone.  I am loved.

Zephaniah 3:17 – He rejoices over me.  He quiets me with His love.

Lately I’ve been enamored of the sky.  I leave my office almost every day and stare in wonder at it.  I drive places on the weekends and just soak it in.  My heart feels full, sometimes to overwhelming notes, as I look at it and appreciate the beauty that I see.  I wish I could explain it.  I cannot. 

I can tell you some of what it is.  It’s the great puffy white clouds that roll lazily across the blue expanse.  It’s the proud arc of the rainbow after a thunderstorm.  It’s the small cloud, the size of a fist, in an otherwise clear sky.  It’s the sunbeams that break through the cloud cover like the most perfect horizon during midday.     

I try to take pictures of it often but can never quite capture it; it’s too big. 

My heart is so full of this beauty and these feelings are bigger than I expect – I’ve wondered why the skies have affected me so much lately.  I’ve always enjoyed a beautiful sunset or sunrise.  Who hasn’t?  They are glorious.  It just seems as if every day, I find something new to sigh over, to marvel at and it dawns on me that what I feel is bigger than the feelings evoked from a pretty sky.   

Slowly, I’ve realized it is the Something in me, responding to the Something up there, like they call to one another.  Slowly, I’ve realized that, like the landscape that is too large for my camera to embrace, my fascination is something larger than what I can see with my eyes.  It’s not the tiny cloud that promises rain. It’s not the colorful rainbow that promises no more water destruction.  It is the meaning behind those things, the promises made.  I see my God, my Savior. 

I imagine Him saying to me:  

Look up and see Me.  I’m here.

 Look up to see what you search for. 

Look up, to Me, to find your Happy, your Beauty. 

Stop looking in your world, for it is not Mine.  It is only temporary. 

It is not your Beauty.  It is not your Happy. 

I Am.  I Am, forever.

So I look up to the beauty that He gives me.  I look up to the promises made to me.  I look up and know that I am loved. 

In return, all I can say is, “I love You”, and I am thankful. 

This is the picture of being a grown-up.  Isn’t it gorgeous?  I’ve got three more just like it.

Here’s the deal with these gorgeous rubber circles I now call my own.  I spent a couple of months slightly worrying about needing them.  Once I resigned myself to the fact that I needed them, I spent a couple of weeks agonizing about buying them.  A co-worker spent a few hours of his time and some energy doing the research for me and then explaining it all to me so I knew what to buy. This was no easy task as I am not what you would call “tire savvy.”  Or “car savvy.”  Let’s just get down to it – I’m not “machinery savvy.”  Probably even better would be to say as long as my car goes in a forward motion of its own volition, I am happy, regardless of the tire tread I leave behind or the exhaust that fogs up our roads coming from the back of my car.  Anyway, we spent the better part of a day churning through that miasma.  I took a couple of hours to shift money around so that I could buy them.  I then paid for them and spent three days waiting for them to come in. This was a long process, months even. 

And last Wednesday morning, I arrived for my appointment to put those tires on my car with a book in hand, a make-up bag and plans for catching up on my correspondence with friends.  I had breakfast in my bag, my laptop and some nail polish, just in case I ran out of things to do.  Sixteen minutes after I sat down in the lobby, the service people called me back up to drive away in my safer, new tire-adorned car. Sixteen minutes.  I must say, I feel slightly cheated. 

Several really good things happened to me on Wednesday.  I want to focus on those – that is what this is about.  We can find good in lots of things if we just look for it and honestly, I didn’t have to look hard for them.

I’ll go in reverse order, mostly because I want to get it all down and the last thing is the shortest thing.  I’ll get long winded later on. 

Third of all, I bought my house about 18 months ago and was lucky enough to get one that didn’t need much fixing-upping.  The woman who lived there before me had decorating tastes similar to mine and with the exception of the putrid red shiny wall, I didn’t have to change a thing.  The house came complete with a pretty little tree in the front yard.  A crab apple tree. Which really, why a crab apple tree?  What purpose does the crab apple serve anyway?  I suppose a quick Google search might teach me something but right now I’m too lazy for that.  But the tree is pretty in the spring and for that I’m grateful.

Monday I noticed a lot of tiny red buds on the tree. And on Wednesday all of those buds had fully blossomed.  It was gorgeous!  Very pink and some green – very flowery. 

While it is a beautiful tree, it has its flaws that thrill my neighbor as much as they thrill me.  All of those blossoms on that tree mean that the crab apples are coming.  It also means that those thousands of crab apples will rot and fall off and produce a shit ton of tiny little crab apple sprouts in his yard and in mine which have to be mowed down regularly so as not to have a forest of crab apple trees overtaking our postage stamp yards.  I suppose I could pick the apples out of our yards before that happens but again, I seem to be too lazy for that.  Actually, only as I was writing this did it occur to me that I should do that. Maybe I should take lessons on being a good neighbor.

Upon reflection, though, I would call us pretty laid back neighbors.  Our introduction went like this, a day after I moved in: 

<ding dong> (this is my doorbell for those of you wondering)

Jimmie:            Hi!

Neighbor:        Hey, I’m Luke.  I’m your neighbor.  We have moles.

Jimmie:            I . . . okay . . . . well, should we, ah, do something about that?

Neighbor:        No, I took care of it.  I just wanted to tell you.

Jimmie:            Want me to go halfsies on that?

Neighbor:        No, I got it.  Okay, nice to meetcha. See ya around.

And then a year and a half later, he finally came over when I invited him for dinner to hang out with me and my friends.  That didn’t take long. 

Secondly, I drove home in a monsoon.  The sky was a bit cloudy when I pulled out of the parking garage and before I had driven a mile the bottom dropped out.  The raindrops were so hard and heavy that it sounded like I was being pounded with giant rocks inside my car.  That is called “hail”.  I only realized how loud it was when I decided to call Phranke to chat on my way home.  I spent most of that conversation yelling about my day and not hearing a word she said in return.  I’m sure she had a good day, though.

It was difficult to see for much of my drive home but when I got off my exit, the skies cleared enough for me to see a huge rainbow!  I love the hopefulness of the rainbow.  I love how each color fades into the other and how perfect those colors look together.  I always heave the biggest sigh of pleasure when I see one.  Had I had a camera and a view not obstructed by power lines and not been driving (because I would never do something to distract myself from my driving, like yell on a cell phone to Phranke), I would have snapped a picture and posted it here.  But I can draw one for you, so you know what it looked like. See? 

And firstly, I got into a scuffle with Louis, our security guard at my building at work.  Louis is an adorable older gentleman who wears a coat and tie every day as part of his uniform.  I call him a tiny thing which infuriates him. His neck is the approximate width of a toothpick and the collar of his shirt is most likely the smallest size he can get and still wear adult clothing.  When he ties his tie, it pleats up the collar of his shirt like a plastic grocery bag and the flaps of the collar overlap.  He looks handsome in his uniform and I have a sneaky feeling he uses it as a medium to drive his lady-friend wild.  He sits on the first floor of our building and speaks to those he likes while ignoring those he doesn’t as we all come in and out for the day.  He is perfectly pleasant at all times, though.  I can tell when he is in a mood because those days he just grunts and waves.  I know better than to be chatty with him those days.

A couple of weeks ago he asked another co-worker for a ride to the bank.  It is only a couple of blocks away but he struggles with the hills and the traffic.  Downtown Nashville is no place to play.  She didn’t have her vehicle that day and couldn’t drive him but asked if I could.  Of course!  So when we went down to get him, he offered to pay me for the ride. 

“The bank is three blocks away.  No way.  I’ll just drive you,” I say. 

And he says, “Jimmie, no now.  I’m going to give you some money.” And he is stern and I can tell he will be offended if I don’t take the money.  So we depart for the bank, drop him off, circle the block and pick him up again.  He gives us each a sucker and gives me $6.00.  For a three-block drive.  We had Words. I told him it was too much but he insisted.

Wednesday he asked if he could get another ride.  “Of course,” I said.  And off we go.  And when I circle around and pick him up, he hands me a $10.00 bill.  Ridiculous.  I try to say no and he is affronted.  We argue.  He tells me that I cannot tell him what to do and that he is older than me and that I need to respect him.  This argument has worked for me when I want to get my way, usually with my younger sisters.  So I take the money because while I am happy to drive him, he is happy to give me the money.  And I honestly believe it is important for him to pay me.

The joke is on him, though, because on Monday I am buying ice cream for the three of us and paying for it with his tenner.  This just makes me want to hug his skinny little neck but I’m not sure which of us would be the most embarrassed about that.

So, this is my introduction to the world at large . . . . I never quite pictured it this way.

I’m a friendly person overall and let it never be said that I’m shy. I don’t suppose I’ve ever met a stranger. But I’m strangely nervous about this. I’m putting myself out there in all my glory and improper grammar. What if it’s a bust? What if I’m really lame and no one told me? And what if I put all of this effort forth and then (gasp!) get bored with my own thoughts?

Luckily, today I am not bored with my own self and am feeling adventurous. I’m courageous. And you can call me Jimmie. There is a story behind that name which will be told another day. But for now, I’m just Jimmie. Nice to meetcha!

A bit about me first . . . I’ve been going through a bit of a rough patch lately. Everyone goes through it. Everyone gets their heart trampled on at least once in their life, right? Everyone loses a job, a family member, a home, something at some point. What kind of childish humans would we be if we floated through this life unscathed and whole? Pretty weak, I would bet. And boring. Life would hurt less, sure, but a life filled with unicorns farting rainbows breathing big puffy pink clouds would surely lead to some sort of breakdown. You can only have too much cheesecake before a heart attack brings you to your knees. We’ve got to grow, to learn, to gain wisdom, to fight.

Mostly because of this rough patch, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my life and feel slightly disgruntled by it. I spend a lot of time being ordinary, even boring. Certainly nothing special.

Work is, well, work. I’m not challenged there but I’m not sure I want to be. I’m smart, yes, but also lazy. I have a fantastic job that lots of people would be thrilled to have. I realize that I’m one of the lucky ones and I have zero complaints about that. Sorry to anyone who was looking for that sort of complaining forum. You won’t find it here.

I have a home.  My house is nothing special right now and I don’t fully appreciate it. I allow it to be messy and haphazard. I take it for granted. I don’t even mow my own lawn. That’s what side businesses are for, right?  But again, I am one of the lucky ones. I have a home that keeps me warm and dry and houses all of my super cool stuff.

I have two cats, Murphy and Seamus. I thought about giving them fake names but they don’t even answer to the names they currently have.  I’m thankful that Murphy still sleeps with me at night and that Seamus will wend his way around my legs of a morning, but really, they piss me off more than they comfort me what with their meowing and clawing at my furniture. It’s irritating. Plus I have to clean a litter box which I am sure will make my house smell like cat urine at some point. I don’t want that. I also don’t want to be covered in orange fur on a daily basis like I currently am. I’ve roller-brushed my coat so much that the nap is starting to get threadbare, yet I still have little orange and white hairs sticking out of it. Like horns. It’s embarrassing.

I’m overweight. Sigh.  I want to eat crap all the time. I haven’t been exercising lately and apparently will use any excuse to get out of it. My stomach is starting to pook out again and I’m afraid all of my hard work of late will go down the toilet.

I’m surface nice but deep down, I’m not sure I’m all that nice. I’m not mean. I just don’t want to fully commit to being that person that goes the distance for you.

In short, I am just ordinary. I don’t want to be just ordinary. If you know me long enough, you will learn that you don’t have to tell me how you feel about me. I’ll tell you how you feel about me. “I’m your favorite.” I say it often. It is bold and sassy and I want it to be true. I want to go the distance for you, my family, my friends. I want to live the life of happiness and contentment and excitement and comfort and challenge and philanthropy and goodness and love and all of it.

So I propose this. I’m beginning a journey. I’d like for my life to be special. I’d like to have an extraordinary life. Yes, that’s it. Extraordinary. I want things to be exquisite. I want them to mean something and get me somewhere and I want to wring every bit of goodness I can out of this life. All the love and all the funny and all the poignant moments and all the memories, all the good stuff. I want love. I want passion. I want friendship. I want joy.

Sometimes the bad comes, yes. It, too, can be something special. I want to experience it all. I want to look forward to all of it, as much as I can, because it all will happen. I want to not let life pass me by or take for granted all of the beauty and goodness here. I want to have a life that is full, positive or negative, good or bad.

I am Jimmie. I want extraordinary. And this is my journey.