TIM E HOLDER

I’m a child of the 60’s. I don’t mean I was old enough to be a hippy. But, literally, a child of the 60’s. As a child of the 60’s, I remember how great the toys were back then. And how imagination was a huge predictor of how long those toys would last. I loved the slinky. Not the cheap plastic ones they make now. The heavy ones, made out of metal that made that awesome, well…slinky noise when I held one end in each hand and passed it back and forth…for about 10 minutes and then forcing my little brother to hold one end while I saw how far it could be stretched, rendering it completely useless from that moment forward. I remember Mr. Machine Robot, the windup mechanical man that you could watch all of his innards move as he marched across the floor. And then you could take him apart, bolt by cog by nut by wheel. And then theoretically put him back together again. Mr. Machine Robot sat in a bag in the back of my closet for 5 years because all the Kings horses and all the Kings men…well, you can guess the rest.

 

Then there was the miracle that was Chatty Cathy. The wonder that spoke 3 or 4 classic lines when you pulled the noose attached to the back of her neck. I also remember the big ole can of whoopin’ I got for , with precision, surgically dismembering Miss CC to accurately identify where her voice was, in fact, coming from. And there are so many words and southern phrases from that time period that I loved that have gone out of style, or never should have been in style.

 

Many of them I still use today when opportunity arises. For instance…

1. Southerners don’t claim “territory”…we claim “old stompin’ grounds.”
2. Southerners don’t say “you guys”…we say “y’all.” (And “all y’all” for five or more people.)
3. Southerners don’t say “catty-cornered”…they say “cattywompus.”
4. Things in the South aren’t “broken”…they’re “tore slap up.”
5. Southerners don’t say “oh, wow”…we say “good gravy.”
6. Southerners are way to descriptive to simply say someone is ugly…we say “he fell out of the ugly tree and on the way down, hit his face on every branch.”
7. Southerners don’t get treated “unfairly”…we “get the short end of the stick.”
8. Southerners don’t change channels with a “remote”…we use the “clicker.”
9. Southerners aren’t “anxious”…we’re “like a cat on a hot-tin roof.”
10. Southerners don’t think too highly of themselves…we’re just “too big for our britches.”
11. Southerners won’t tell you that “you’re wasting your time”…we’ll tell you that “you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
12. Southerners don’t hand you a Coca-Cola when you ask for a Coke…we say “What kind?”
13. Southerners aren’t “about to do” something…we’re “fixin’ to.” Or “go fix your plate.”
14. Southerners don’t use the “toilet”…we use the “commode.”
15. Southerners don’t “suppose”…we “reckon.”
16. Southerners don’t push a “shopping cart”…we put our groceries in a “buggy.”
17. Southerners aren’t just “broke”…we’re “so broke we can’t afford to pay attention.”
18. Southerners don’t call people “unintelligent”…we say they’re dumber than a sack of rocks.”
19. Southerners don’t check for food in the “fridge”…they look in the “icebox.”
20. Southerners don’t eat “dinner”…we eat “supper.”
21. Southerners aren’t “caught off guard”…we’re “caught with our pants down.”
22. Southerners don’t “pout”…we “get our feathers ruffled.”
23. Southerners don’t “fly into a rage”…we “throw a hissy fit.”

“This is the south. And we’re proud of our crazy people. We don’t hide them up in the attic. We bring them right down in the living room and show them off. No one in the south ever asks if you have crazy people in your family. They just ask what side they’re on. “. Suzanne Sugarbaker

 

Y’all may remember a few weeks ago, I told y’all about my trip to the Fort Worth area to visit my dad. While we were there, my brothers and sister and I drove around Hurst and visited some of the old houses we lived in when I was about 10 years old. On that trip, I started thinking about all these old southern words and phrases that add such richness to the language I grew up with. We drove by one old house on Patricia Drive and even the old white screen door looked like the same one that was there when I was young. Everything looked so familiar. Except for one thing. I said, “I don’t remember that big old tree being over on the side of the house like that.” My older brother, Steve, said, “Tim…we lived here 50 years ago.” I said, “I know…but it’s so big. I don’t remember it at all.” “Tim…that was 50 years ago…a half century.” And even now, that doesn’t compute with me. I guess part of the mystery is that I can still see myself looking out the front window of the kitchen while I washed supper dishes that I could barely wait to finish so I could go around the corner and find all my neighborhood friends to play hide and seek with until Mom called us home, which was way after dark and fairly close to bed time.

 

And, sitting in front of the house that day, I remembered my favorite southern phrase. My dad was a preacher. So, usually, on Wednesday nights after prayer meetin’, we’d have someone over, or we’d go to someone else’s house and us kids would drink cherry kool-aid while the adults drank hot, thick, aromatic coffee. There would be a cake or cookies and if we were really lucky, doughnuts. The only time I ever got to taste coffee when I was little was on the rare occasion when mom would let me climb into her lap at someone else’s kitchen table and acquiesce to allowing me to dunk my doughnut into her coffee. As a matter of fact, the morning I woke up while visiting my mother when I was in my early 20’s and mom asking me if I wanted a cup of coffee was a total “passage to manhood” moment for me. I took a heart picture that day.

 

As we were leaving the home of our friends, after the goodbyes were said, I distinctly remember standing in the dark, just outside the glow of the porch light where I instinctively slammed my mouth shut for fear of kamakazi June bugs, and my dad turning around and saying to the hosts, “y’all come go with us.” It was, in my 10 year old mind, the perfect tagline to a perfect evening. It said, “We loved being with you and we wish it didn’t have to end.” To which the recipient of this declaration of friendship would reply with something like, “Well, I wish we could. But, we better stay here and get the kids ready for bed.” As a kid, I thought it was the best idea EVER. The reality never dawned on me the horror that would befall my mother if they actually said, “Well, okay. Honey, go get the kids.” I’m thankful that even at that early age, the Lord was granting me the gift of taking what I now call heart pictures. Moments that would be framed in my mind and soul, benchmarks of remarkable relationships and perhaps even profound truth that wouldn’t be realized for decades.

 

It’s so much more acceptable in today’s climate and our Christian culture to realize, possibly due to our not understanding when we’re younger, that we must rigorously, deliberately seek out and nurture community. That we were never meant to walk this journey alone. I don’t think it was so easy way back then. The best my stoic parents could muster to make someone feel important, that they were needed and valued, was a simple declaration of unity, an acknowledgement of friendship that guaranteed “you are not alone,” without actually having to be vulnerable enough to say it. “We are in this together.” “Y’all come go with us.” Jesus said in John 15: My command is this. Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. James 5 puts it in a more nuts and bolts configuration. “Make this your COMMON practice.” He didn’t say, “when you have committed a major, public sin and need to repent…” He said, make this a common practice. “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.”   ‘Something powerful.’ I wonder sometimes, what draws non-believers to us. Or what should draw them to us. In a world that has become so isolated and compartmentalized and cubicle, it’s imperative that they see us love each other.

 

Jesus said they will recognize Him because of our love for each other. And he said that just after he washed the feet of his disciples. And just before the confession statement, John said in James 4, “Friends, wait patiently for the Master’s Arrival. You see farmers do this all the time. Waiting for their valuable crops to mature, patiently letting the rain do it’s slow but sure work. Be patient like that. Stay steady and strong.” One of my favorite things to talk about about with my friends, possibly my very favorite thing, is how much I look forward to His Arrival. And what that moment will usher in for those of us who are His. And I wonder if we lived out the truth that our redemption is a sure and solid thing that we know is dependable, and if we encouraged each other with the accuracy of that truth, fervently excited, what would others who don’t know think? I know that when I talk about heaven and all the fun we are going to have, and I make plans to meet people for supper on a certain day 100 years from now, trust me. That’s not idle talk. I have a hope that it is real and that God is faithful to live up to His promise. And as time ticks by and I realize that this motor of mine will one day stop it’s ticking, the anticipation deepens. I think about all the people who will welcome me when I get there, especially Jesus.

 

I think about my friend Greg whom I’ve talked to you about. He’s in Nashville in Vanderbilt hospital after 50 rounds of chemo over the past 4 years and just 2 days ago sustained a massive heart attack, with blood clots and fluid on his lungs cutting off 50 percent of his heart function. Thousands of friends and family all over the world have covered him and his family in prayer and have sacrificed countless acts of service to comfort his family. At the end of his past post on FB, and filling everyone in on his current condition, instead of lamenting his circumstance, this was his last paragraph. “Today, will you take your neighbor a muffin or a potted plant? Will you buy that homeless guy a coffee? Will you linger a little longer over breakfast with your family, tell these people you appreciate them or, of you’re bold, that you love them. Make today different while you’re able.”

 

And then I thought of the guys I come in contact with at the prison. Those outcasts who need and secretly long to be freed from the bondage of self-loathing and guilt and shame who refuse Jesus, not necessarily because they are callous to Him, but because there is no way He could ever love them, much less forgive them. We all probably know those people, imprisoned behind their own walls of inadequacy, self-condemnation and selfishness. And when I hang out with my peeps, it’s just a comfortable, mostly unspoken addendum to our journey together that this doesn’t end here. We will enjoy this company and joy and laughter and looking after each other forever. My prayer is that those living in silent desperation will see those moments of eternity in our eyes, and give all of us the chance to share with them where the surety of our future comes from, who our precious Jesus is, and with certainty, turn to them as we’re leaving and say, “Y’all, come go with us.”