Can I have a pony?

I know at some time in every child's life they ask their parents for a pony. I wasn't one of those children. I liked kitchen stuff. My daddy made us a sink and stove that we kept in a little play kitchen at the back of the Montgomery Wards store in Denver City. Mom and Daddy owned that store so we would go there after school and play in the back. I loved it.
Back before Christmas a couple from our church asked Michael if we would like to go on a trail ride with them. My first reaction was "no". I then remembered the number of times I have shared with newly married girls the importance of doing things their husbands enjoy. So "no" came out of my mouth as "sure, that would be fun"! Okay, it really came out as just "sure". So we loaded up Lily, our big draft horse, and The Old Man, our big old man horse. I love them because they are pretty. I like pretty horses. I rode Lily and Michael got on The Old Man. We got to the end of our trail and turned around to ride the four miles back. When we would go up a little hill, Lily would kind of trot up so she would get both me and her up the hill. I didn't really want her to trot so I would pull back on the reins. We did okay until there were two hills in a row. She trotted. I pulled. She trotted faster. I pulled harder. She kicked. I flew. I did a very graceful Superman impression as I catapulted to the ground, landing on my back. I jumped up to see if I could find my finger I thought I left in the reins, and saw it was still attached to my hand. There are two good things about falling off of a horse. One is that it happens so fast you don't realize what happened until you are back in the saddle. Two is that if someone asks you to go ride and you go with your first reaction and say "no", they completely understand.
People that know me well know falling is something I do often. My kids are never surprised when I tell them I've fallen off of something. I have weak ankles. When I was 28 living in Houston, I fell off the curb while checking the mail and broke my hip. When I was digging a hole in Stillwater to plant a tree, I fell off the shovel and fractured a bone in my ankle. I fell down a step in our bedroom in Snyder and off our sidewalk in the front of our house here in Chatfield. These are only examples of when bones have been altered. There are countless other times you would be bored with. Sometimes my foot even falls off the gas pedal when I'm driving. If I was Indian my name might be something like "Come Tumbling Down". If that is my lot in life, so be it. I'll do it with as much grace as I can muster.
Back to the kitchen/pony stuff. I hinted to Michael a while back that I might want a new kitchen sink for my birthday. The big day was on a Sunday and when we got home from church there was a brand new pony. Actually it was a horse. A very beautiful horse. She is a paint with the thickest black mane you ever saw. Her tail is white at the top and black at the bottom and almost drags the ground. She is so pretty. Someone very dear to us in our church got her because she would be good for me and the girls to ride and we wouldn't have to be afraid of falling off. Thanks, Jim, we thank the Lord for you and love you very much.
It was tough coming up with a name for her. Michael mentioned "Jubilee" because in scripture the 50th year is the year of Jubilee. Her tail kind of looks like a skunk so I was trying to think of some girl skunk names to fit what she looks like. I was trying to think of a name that had something to do with her tail end because it was so pretty. Meet Fannie Jubilee.
I may never have asked for a pony growing up. Now that I have one, there's a certain amount of pride when you get to say "My horse". I'll take good care of Fannie, and I believe she will take good care of me.
Oh yeah, I'm going to Lowe's today to pick out a sink! I love my life.

Half a Century

A couple of weeks back, my sisters, nieces, cousins, Mom and Aunt Nancy all got together at Grapevine to spend the weekend together. We had such a good time. A few days later I couldn't figure out why my hip was hurting so bad. I battle with arthritis in that hip but this was a different kind of pain. I bent over to pick something up off the floor and as I was contemplating my next move (how to get back up) it suddenly hit me why I was in such a painful mode. I flashed back to the hotel swimming pool. Someone had the bright idea to do a synchronized swimming routine. I don't know if you can call one move a routine, but nevertheless a routine was in the works. We all stuck one foot up in the middle of our circle and held on to each other's shoulders. That is when the hip cramp reared it's ugly head. If I hadn't been holding on to someone, I might have drowned one week before my 50th birthday. I didn't drown, but it is quite amazing how long a muscle will stay sore if it hasn't been worked in awhile and all the sudden it works real hard.
Christy sent me an email the other day to let me know that 50 years equals 600 months. That is a lot of full moons. It also equals over 18,000 days. There are several of those days I wish I could take back. I don't want to do them over, maybe just photoshop them a different color or maybe soften them a little. I know that even all the mistakes I've made in these many moons, have helped write my story. Thankfully, the Lord never left me. No matter what I did.
Speaking of photoshop, enjoy the pictures of the weekend with the girls and one boy. Little Eli came to celebrate with us. He's so beautiful. We also had little Avery there. She is my cousin Allen's granddaughter. She is precious. Allen's wife Gini is such a good grandma to this little doll. We set the lights up in the lobby of the hotel and took lots of pictures. The folks there were very gracious. Too gracious, if you ask me. They also let the girls put pictures of me all over the wall. Don't worry, girls, the tiara is in a safe place ready for the next 50th. I hope Randy won't mind wearing a hot pink shirt and let the rest of us wear black. I'm sure he'll be a good sport.
Maybe the whole hip thing means I really am getting old. Maybe the fact that I'm wearing pink and red glasses down on my nose to type this means I really am getting old. Cary Ann gave me a card that said " You're not old until the fat lady sings". You open it up and there is a picture of a fat lady with an opera voice holding a high note until you close the card. It is hilarious. I've been told that being old is just a frame of mind. So I'm going to take off these glasses (as soon as I'm done), take me some Tylenol Arthritis, ask Michael to rub my feet and forget that I ever heard that fat lady sing.

I Had A Dream - We Had a Dream

Last night I had a dream. Actually it was this morning right before I woke up. I was in this small house and there were lots of church people there. When I say church people, I mean people from previous churches and our Cowboy Church now. We were packed in this house. I went into the bedroom and made my way through the laughing crowd of people to take some pies and put them on the bed because we ran out of room in the kitchen. There was so much love in that place you could feel it. I was trying to hurry because I knew I needed to get to the church service when I saw a woman dressed in a very expensive, beautiful dress. She was someone I hadn't seen in while so I went over to hug her and when I did I knew her hug wasn't genuine. I kissed her right on the cheek and stepped back. Her beautiful dress had become wrinkled and ugly and it was too big for her. She was still smiling like, as the girls would say, "she was all that". I told her I had to go, and as I was leaving the room she was shouting compliments at me and she said "I can't wait to eat the cheesecake!" I don't make cheesecake, I make pies.
I walked out the front door and to my left was a young girl running my direction in the middle of the street. She was slender and she had long tangled hair hanging in her face. All I could see from her face was a tootsie roll pop stick hanging from her mouth. As she got closer, she slowed down and I saw that she was filthy. I looked down the street in the direction she was walking and saw a huge stadium packed with people. Kinda funny to me that I could see lots of orange in that stadium. That stadium was our new church. I was worried because I didn't think she would be able to find her seat because she was a freshman. Weird, I know. I felt a little relief to think that the sections of the stadium were numbered, but knew I needed to go help her find her way. About that time, a very overweight boy (I watched Biggest Loser last night) came running around the corner to get to the stadium. He was filthy too. We all started running to the stadium. Then I woke up. Pretty stange dream. Strange in many ways, but one specifically: I don't run.

About five years ago God gave Michael and me a dream. A dream to be in a place where hearts were fertile soil that we could plant His Word into. We hoped it would be with people who wouldn't go to a traditional church. We have been packing 200+ people into our quadruple wide mobile building for the last month and a half. Yesterday the bank here in Ennis approved our request for a loan to start building our church to hold all this precious family. Praise You Father! I wish I could tell you all the little things that have taken place in the last 6 months to let us know God was ready to give us our new home. When we first came here, Michael took off his watch and told the people we were now on God's time. We would not step out of that. Some people left because we didn't have a building on the ground as soon as they wanted. We HAD to wait on the Lord. I'm so glad we did. After Michael talked with the bank yesterday, he called to tell me the loan was approved and that the timing of everything was continuing to show that we are in God's timing. He said that the government had even lowered the interest rate the night before. Isn't it nice that the whole country gets to benefit from us building our building when God told us to!

I don't know the significance of the dream this morning, except the obvious. I do know the significance of the dream about five years ago. Thank you Lord, for giving us your dream and for letting us live it out in real life. As we go into the building time, protect us, guide us. My prayer is that we are here in this "dream" until You call us home! You are so good to us.

One Final Rose

How in the world do you take 86 very colorful years of a man and condense it to under 45 minutes? That was the dilemma Michael faced as he tried to prepare for the funeral of our beloved Rex. This man had done, seen, and heard it all. He'd been all over the world, and brought that world to life for us who haven't stepped on other borders. We had only been in Chatfield a couple of weeks when one day we heard the doorbell ring and there at the door stood Rex with a dozen roses in his hand. Our house sits at the back of our 3+ acres, and he had parked at the gate and walked up the drive to welcome us to this place. He said people would always open the door to a bouquet of roses. He was right. I opened the door to those bouquets five or six times over the last two and a half years. There was even a couple of times he sent a bouquet home with Michael after the men's prayer breakfast on Thursday mornings.

I once told Michael that every Sunday morning Rex would hug me and tell me how much I brightened up the place. He kind of hesitated a minute then told me that Rex said that to everyone. He made everyone feel so special. Since about the middle of November, Rex hadn't been able to get out to church because the pain from his cancer was getting harder to bear. His front row seat was so obviously empty. About two weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon, I was in town and Michael called to say someone had come by the house to see me. I drove home and as I pulled in the gate, I saw a bouquet of roses up on the toolbox of Michael's truck. I knew it was Rex. His last outing. Always thinking of ways to make others feel special. The next time he got out of that bed was when the funeral home came to get him. His step daughter said the night before he died he said "I see him standing at the gate". They didn't know what or who he was seeing. I think I do.

Michael didn't use an abundance of scripture at the funeral. He didn't have to. Rex' life was the scripture. The night before the funeral, a friend of Rex told Michael of an outing that he took with Rex five years ago. Previously, Rex had told this friend that his grandpa was buried in a county east of us near a brush arbor. This friend told Rex that he had gone to the courthouse and there was no cemetery registered in that county, but he knew of a brush arbor out on a ranch. They took a day to see if they could find that cemetery. They found the brush arbor, walked up to it and Rex showed his friend where he sat, where they brought his grandpa in, and also told him that he had walked down that sawdust trail to accept Jesus when he was a small boy. This man was surprised because he had tried to talk to Rex about the Lord before and Rex never wanted to talk about it. Rex thought he could find the cemetery from where they were standing, so they got in the truck and headed that direction. The road had grown up with goldenrods. They slowly drove through, stopped the truck and looked over and saw the sign "Brooks Cemetery". Rex took his hat off, stuck it out the window and yelled "I'm coming Grandpa!, I told you I would come back!" He opened the door of that truck and started running as an 81 year old might run, with his bony arms a pumping, yelling, "I'm coming, Grandpa!, I'm coming!" Rex stood there telling his grandpa everything that had gone on in his life from the time he was a skinny 11 year old until that present day. His friend asked him if his grandpa was a christian man and Rex assured him that he was. This friend told Rex that if he would live like his grandpa had, he would see him again one day. When Rex was a young boy he had accepted Jesus, but like a lot of us, had wandered off the path. The beautiful thing is that Jesus never leaves us or forsakes us. After that visit to the cemetery, Rex found a church. He loved this cowboy church. He loved the people here. He fell in love with Jesus once again.

I believe with all my heart that when Rex took his last breath on this earth that Thursday morning, that his next breath going towards glory was shouting "I'm coming, Grandpa!, I'm coming!" I also believe that he was probably seeing his grandpa standing at the gate waiting for him. In the book "90 Minutes in Heaven" by Don Piper, Don said when he died and went to heaven that the people waiting for him at the gate were not just family members and friends, but that it was the ones who had made a spiritual impact on his life. The ones who had led him to the Lord and encouraged his walk with the Lord. So the question I must ask myself is not "Who will be waiting for me?", although I know who those will be, but "Who will I be waiting for?" Will I be called for "Gate Duty" once or twice, or will it be more often? The way to determine that is how I live my life right here and now. Who am I putting into spiritually? Forgive me Lord, when I think I'm too busy to encourage or be there for someone who needs me. I pray that I make people know they are so special. Put a servant's heart in me, because I can't help but think that Gate Duty would be so sweet. Oh so sweet.

When the service was over at the cemetery, the big bell chimed seven times. Complete. Perfect. Rex heard it. He said he would. He probably had just told Jesus that He really brightened up the place.

His step daughter got a rose off the casket and gave it to Michael. "He would want her to have it", she said. One final, beautiful rose. Thank you, Jesus, for giving us Rex. Thank you, Rex, for giving us Jesus.

It is Rexford Marion Brooks, for Whom the bell tolls.

Christy and Cary Ann

I think the wind chill on Saturday morning was below 0 when we went all over downtown Lubbock to find places to take pictures of Christy and Cary Ann. Christy is my sister and Cary Ann is her beautiful daughter. I have to say, though, that every time I looked through that camera, I saw Cary Ann at one year old with her hair in dog-ears, wearing denim shorts tied up with a rope and freckles painted on her face at Kyle's hobo birthday party. Cary gets a lot of grief from us for her spelling abilities and her excitement over things she has learned at Tech this semester, like how we lost at the Alamo. We give her grief, but she is the one of all the grandkids that calls on birthdays, and keeps everyone connected. She learned that from her mama. Christy keeps the office going at UMC for the Vice Presidents of Nursing Services. She is so good at what she does, and cares so much that patients are happy with their stay at her hospital. She also is in charge of our "girls' trips" we take with my other sister Cathy. Our next trip is in February and all of us "Dorman" girls are going to San Antonio. Christy got all the organizational skills in our family. The rest went to Cathy, and I got left with a very few. Enjoy these pictures of Mom and Daughter. Oh yeah, and get a load of our daddy's blue eyes.

Supermom to the Rescue!

When my big kids were little, the word "supermom" became a new word in the world's vocabulary. It was my quest in life to one day own that crown and scepter! Kayla was born on a Friday. On Saturday morning we left the hospital, went to the mall for a couple of hours, then to another store and finally rolled into Snyder right in time for Kyle's soccer game. When she was 10 days old, Adam fell and broke his leg. He was almost three years old and, with that body cast, weighed about 100 pounds. My daddy brought me a refrigerator dolly and let me borrow their car with a hatchback. I would prop him up on the dolly, roll him to the car, lift the hatchback and lay him in the back. We didn't miss church, a soccer game, or one of Kayla's feedings. As the boys grew, they both loved baseball and I was their pitcher. I noticed when Kyle was in the 2nd grade he didn't ask me to pitch as much. I asked him to go out one day to play and he told me I couldn't throw hard enough. I was a little sad and a little relieved, because they were beginning to throw pretty hard. They all got bigger, had more games, events, and eventually three little sisters. They had their own little cheerleading squad. We took the girls to everything, knowing how important family is.
Now with just the three younger ones in the house, I hadn't thought of the "supermom" thing in awhile. Until the other day when Leah ran into the house to tell me there was a snake outside. A bolt of fear quickly ran through my short body as I realized I was the adult in the house. It was the day before Thanksgiving and I knew all the kids would be in that night. Kyle hates snakes and Adam hates spiders. Kayla hates both. When I know they are coming, I make a concerted effort to rid the premises of anything that could possibly resemble either of the two. The fear in me turned into adrenaline, and I ran out and grabbed the shovel. I raised that thing high above my head and came flat down on that snake. That booger turned back and looked right at me. Scared me to death. The shovel came down again. And again. And again. I honestly don't know how many times I hit that serpent. I was in a frenzy. I had to save my home.
When I was positive it had gone to be with the Lord, if that is where snakes go, I picked it up with the shovel and was going to throw it in the pasture. With all my might, I twisted back with the shovel to sling it as far as I could. It hit the tree right in front of me. Reminded me of my cheerleading days when we threw the little footballs up in the stands. My daddy asked me to never stand in front of their section because he knew if I did he would never get a ball. I would hit the fence in front of me, I believe now it was because of the "follow-through". Sometimes I could get it up to the second or third row. Anyway, back to the snake. I threw it so hard it wrapped around a vine and just hung there dripping blood. Not looking at me any longer. That evening after the kids were here I went outside and called the boys over to the tree. They both (approximately 480 pounds) drove up in the girls little go-cart. Envision the Incredibles, if you would. I showed them my trophy snake, much like David probably did with that melon trophy head of Goliath that he took back and placed at the Jerusalem city limit sign. I, like David, had defeated the enemy. The boys thought it was quite funny, I was quite proud. The enemy had gone down. That snake is now a symbol for all other snakes to know this is protected property. Tremble snakes, tremble! They can't pass through our place any time they please. Not this place. No enemies allowed here.
I haven't always done the MOM thing right. I've made many mistakes. There have been times, though, that I fought off the enemy successfully with the Word of God. I know the importance of that now more than ever before. If I take that job seriously, protecting my family, through prayer, from the evil one, there could one day be a crown and scepter set aside for "Supermom - Snake Killer".