If not the one who drinks Dr Pepper...

Who am I?  Snapping photos of some photos, I learned a few things...

I am someone who grew up in a world where the highlight of visiting Six Flags was making spin art.

I am someone whose haircuts were done with a bowl and scotch tape for many,  many years.

I am someone who, despite photographic evidence to the otherwise, did not know her father was involved in the space program from the Apollo missions to the Space Lab to the Shuttle flights until his funeral.

I am someone who firmly believes that you should wear socks with all shoes, even sandals.

I am someone who began her love affair with Toyotas at an early age ... especially GREEN ones.

I am someone who liked to wear her grandmother's jewelry, even if she did not understand the proper location for a broach.

I am someone who is a Wiley Coyote.  Mrs. Wiley made a bet for lunch with the other 5th grade teacher, the winner being the one whose students collected the most aluminum cans during the annual school drive.  The other teacher's class collected the most in school history: over 5000.  Our class collected the most in the history of America: nearly 50,000.  We spent afternoons and weekends combing the side of the local roads and highway and driving down to Galveston to clear the beaches, riding on the back of her station wagon as she drove slowly, hopping on and off whenever we spotted a can.  We had can-stomping-pizza parties with her husband.  We achieved the impossible.

I am someone who is a Texan who vacationed in Colorado every summer,

riding horses,

hiking,

and jeeping.

I am someone (the one in the back) who was given the gift of faith upon hearing the Living Word at a summer camp ... years before being allowed to go to church and decades before being baptized.

I am someone who believed in high fashion, even on 50-mile bike tours.

I am someone who stitch-witchery sewed a clown costume and visited children in the hospital.

I am someone you shouldn't dare to climb the mast of a sailboat ... unless you want to lose the bet.

I am someone who practiced being a mother whenever she could ... and who fervently believed that you do whatever it takes to have curls, even if that means sleeping in a bonnet dryer in the 80s ... and 90s.

I am someone who learned that what goes down

must go back up,

and who did not take herself seriously as she taught children to do the same.

I am someone who regularly lost to her Scrabble partner whilst getting her master's degree.

And I am someone who made a matching hat and choker and dressed in linen for her graduation, taking her own photo, too.

I am someone who always sees the invisible ... because she feels invisible herself.

Someone who all but disappeared from photos from her master's graduation until she just couldn't stop taking photos of her beloved fluff ball nearly two decades later.

Except for when her best friend felt the need to take one.

I am someone who prayed the Jesus prayer over and over and over again, because she was afraid that that she was not really and truly and actually saved until she learned the pure doctrine of the Christian Book of Concord.

And I am someone who does the same with the Psalter, now, because the fear remains that Jesus will say, "I never knew you." when she dies.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!