Some of my favorite gifts have been donkey paraphernalia.
Once I received a set of donkey facts for my birthday, I’ve kept that list in my important documents tab for some years now.
Recently on a particularly rough day a dear friend slipped something in my hand, it was a donkey. I drew strength from that wooden donkey effigy and in the weeks following I slipped that donkey in my pocket and would rub my hand over it when I needed a bit of reassurance. I place him on the bathroom counter next to a tiny Jesus and look at them each and every day.
On really hard days I take the donkey with me and leave Jesus to stand firm.
My love of donkeys began about the time my children were the age where they acted like donkeys. Donkey became a part of the Martin lexicon as noun, adjective and an adverb.
As I’ve aged and my children have as well I’ve come to love and appreciate donkeys for the beautiful creatures they are and it all harkens back to one day, this day, Palm Sunday.
That first Palm Sunday morning the King rode on a donkey into Jerusalem, a sign of coming peace. There were shouts of praise and accolades, knowing in less than a week’s time those same fickle folks would be shouting “Crucify Him!”
I think about that donkey from time to time, the one that had never been ridden, the one that fulfilled an over four century old prophecy, that baby donkey that wasn’t too far from his mama but was charged with the responsibility that would literally mark all future donkeys thereafter. I think about how he ushered in the single most significant event in all of history, in all of mankind, and in all of the world.
Did that singular donkey have any idea what his act of obedience and service would mean for all of humanity?
Do any of us donkeys for that matter?
Palm Sunday was just the beginning, the beginning of out with the old and in with the new, the beginning of a new way of healing, a new way of living and a new way of being.
Palm Sunday was the countdown to the completion of the work that began way back in the Garden. A setting right what our Mom, Eve and our Dad, Adam got so messed up. Palm Sunday was so much more than palm fronds and donkeys, Palm Sunday is the day humility wins, servant-hood prevails, and the evidence is put forth that the donkeys of this world really do make a difference.
I have given her credit for helping me to help save Mama’s life. She has a fairly short resume but saving Mama is on the list for sure.
Back when Dottie had been a Martin for a mere two weeks she and I had a family meeting of sorts. I explained to Dottie that while I understand she was uncivilized, had been institutionalized, and had no idea how to operate within the confines of a family, she was going to have to learn how to acclimate immediately.
Adoption was to be followed by adaptation. Step one was to learn not to urinate indoors.
We were out for a training session pertaining to the evacuation of her bowel or bladder one Sunny September Sunday afternoon when my phone rang and it was my Mama. She was having a medical emergency, had Dottie not needed house-trained training, I would not have otherwise been in a close enough proximity to help Mama.
Dottie helped me help Mama.
Dottie was acquired from a shelter, we were told she was a dachshund mix, we were told wrong. In the words of my Mama, “Dottie is as much a dachshund as I am.”
Dot’s shelter start made her eligible for a largely discounted spaying, she was filed under the “Fix yo’ Mama” heading of the allotted spay scholarship funds.
In the beginning I thought she was the Dumbest not-a-dachshund ever. In the beginning she was Charlotte’s dog, Charlotte’s responsibility, I was merely the homeowner.
Dottie had other plans. I did not give Dottie credit for potentially being smart.
I taught Dottie made up sign language and it is our primary means of communication. Just recently I gave Dottie several commands via our made up language. Maggie marveled and said, “She doesn’t even need words anymore to know what to do.”
Dottie does on occasion need words typically one word, “No!”
Over the course of our relationship Dottie has taught me many things, and everyday if I am paying enough attention she teaches me new things. Today was just such a day.
Dottie loves a ball, not just any ball some particular brand I purchased on discount without a shred of foresight. I never questioned why they were discounted or how difficult it may be to locate similar orbs at a deeply discounted cost in the future.
I never imagined we would need buckets of the balls because Dottie, not being dumb at all, would hide them from us just to watch us assume some variation of a yoga slash pretzel pose to retrieve the alleged misplaced balls.
I can demonstrate our made up sign for the ball and she will bring it to me. She will then wait patiently (most normal non-Dottie owners call this “sit”) for me to throw it. Dottie then bounds toward the ball with such speed and ferocity one would think she is taking part in the Iditarod.
Dottie has failed to master one particular aspect of the ball retrieval. We have been working for quite some time on this skill, nearly as long as we have been fetching the ball.
Release of the retrieved ball.
The expectation is that upon retrieval of the ball Dottie returns to my side, waits and releases the ball so that we can do the whole thing all over again. This is where things get sketchy.
I give Dottie the sign and say the words and she grips that ball between her jaws and refuses to let go. She will whine and whimper and tell me in Dottie language that she wants me to throw the ball, the only issue, she will not give me said ball to throw. I will occasionally pry the ball from her mouth, wrestle it from her clenched jaws imploring her through my own clenched teeth,
“Release Dotte!”
This lovely Spring morning we were in the backyard. I was looking through the clovers, talking to Jesus about healing and wholeness. I was taking my frustrations and hurt to Him and telling Him how hurt I truly am and asking why He is not doing anything about it.
I kept asking Him how to feel better.
Intermittently I played fetch with Dottie. I would throw the ball, she would retrieve it and bring it in my direction and per her usual she would not let me have the ball.
I bent forward and wrestled with the dog-drool covered ball. She was relentless in her grip. Her refusal to relinquish it was almost comical.
How could I give her what she wanted, another round of fetch, if she refused to let me have what she was holding onto so tightly?
And that’s when it hit me…
The Lord Himself could’ve just said: “Same Aim. Same.”
How can I expect Him to give me healing from the hurt of all the things if I refuse to relinquish them to Him? How can I expect Him to do what I have asked of Him if I am white knuckled gripped hanging onto my issues rather than the hem of His garment?
Dottie helped me to gain clarity that I just hadn’t had.
to usher in healing, I have to loosen my grip, open my hands and let Him have what so deeply hurts. He is not going to pry it out of my hands because He knows I, like Dottie, will only bear down harder.
In those moments sitting on the cool green clover of the backyard, I came to an understanding, to feel better is to relinquish those hurts to Him, to make the willful choice to surrender my hurts over to Him.
I have since added Theologian and Therapist to Dottie’s resume.
“Ohhhh I know this one, but I can’t think of what it’s called. Shelton do you know?” Charlotte was thinking hard.
Shelton paused and affirmed what his sister had stated. He knew it too but couldn’t remember the name.
Almost simultaneously, “Shazam it!” And then the song faded and was gone.
I was walking alongside them when I stated a fact,
“I have Shazam for birds!”
Again simultaneously, they rolled their eyes and the older and darker of the unlikely and unbioligical twins, said
“We know mom. You remind us all the time and it’s not Shazam, it’s some other app, you just call it that.”
Shazam is an app that can hear a part of a song, identify it and let the listener know to whom and what they are listening to. The three Martins all have the app and use it with regularity to identify song titles and artists.
The Shazam for birds to which I was referring is an app that a couple of years ago a dear friend introduced me to. It was a hot summer afternoon, we were taking a popsicle break in the shade and the only sounds that could be heard were the birds.
The app has a real name I can never remember but it identifies birds based on their sounds. It highlights the bird as it sings. I was telling someone about it once and she said, “You have Shazam for birds!” I’ve called it that ever since.
There used to be a time when I couldn’t have cared less for birds, or their songs. I was apathetic towards the fowl of the earth, the class aves. Birds grossed me out. I didn’t love birds but like a lot of things in my life, times have changed for me. I see something in them I didn’t before.
I think that my new found bird-brained intel started long about three years ago when the very atmosphere of my life began to dramatically shift.
I was looking out the window and I saw a bird, the only bird I could identify. A “Robin Red Breast” the only bird possessing the power of time travel and nostalgia. Not really, they just made me feel that way.
I was about nine, it had been a tumultuous time. I was learning to navigate life with corrected vision. Swimming was my favorite pastime, I loved reading and writing stories. Kellie was my constant companion. My Mama’s sister had died the previous July and as to be expected Mama wasn’t okay, none of us were really I suppose. I had no way of knowing it then but things would be okay, never the same, but okay.
When Mama wasn’t at home she was working and while she worked Kellie and I stayed with our grandmother, Mam-Maw.
Mam-Maw loved birds and she loved nicknames.
If you were born Debbie you’d be dubbed “Bean”, born Brian you would earn the moniker “Tapsly” shortened to “Taps”, born Amy you’d be given the name, “Mamie.” A term of endearment that to this day I still carry and only the closest call me.
One warm spring day, much like this one, Mamie sat next to her Mam-maw, they swung in a porch swing. That’s what they did, Mamie and Mam-Maw they swung and they were mostly quiet. Perhaps Mam-maw was doing her own kind of brain dump as she processed in quiet the loss of her child and husband and who knows what else. Maybe the Alzheimer’s was taking its early hold.
Suddenly a Robin came into view. She sang and she flittered about, she tugged a fat juicy earthworm from the ground and she sang. Mam-Maw pointed a slightly crooked finger and whispered,
“Mame, that there is a Robin Red Breast and whenever I see one I think of you because they are like you. Unusual and unique.” Unusual had only three syllables when she said it rather than the standard four.
I studied the Robin and I committed her to memory, when I would see one I would be reminded of what Mam-Maw had said that day long about 1988.
She said I was unusual and unique. I held onto her declaration as I’ve navigated life, remembered her observations of me and the association she made with a bird.
I didn’t know it then and wouldn’t for quite some time, that the American Robin, like most everyone else in her world, had a nickname and that’s what she had taught me, and they are unique but that is contingent on the season they are in.
They are in actuality one of the most common birds in America.
They are typically the first birds of spring, so in that season they are rare until their other bird counterparts begin to make their appearances.
Robins flitter about on the ground, they are dumpy little fellas and gals, they are hearty eaters, kind of particular like, eating worms in the morning and fruits in afternoons and in the fall. They’ve got a bad habit of getting intoxicated from Honeysuckle berries in the spring.
The ladies like to nap.
I reviewed these bird-brained characteristics and I chuckled…forty plus years ago my Mam-maw looked into the future and she saw an accurate representation of her granddaughter as a forty plus year old woman.
This afternoon I took to the back porch for a little Vitamin D and thinking time.
My own bird-brain has been filled to capacity and I needed to empty it out.
I’ve learned a few techniques to assist with the brain dump. I’ve been told it is called “self care” and “processing.”
Call it whatever you like. But for me it is taking time to be quiet, reduced screen time, throwing Dottie her ball and wrestling it back when she brings it to me. It is thinking and talking to Jesus, making myself sit with the hurt and the questions and circling back to there are some things I just can’t understand. It’s having a snack and allowing myself just to be still so that I can know Who is in charge and trust He will make right all the broken things, especially my crushed to bits heart.
About the time my brain was settling down I felt the cool steady breeze, heard the wind chimes ring below me and the birds chirping above me. The truth is they had probably been doing it the whole time I was outside, but my mind was so noisy I couldn’t discern the sounds of peace or feel the breath of Heaven.
I smiled and wondered what bird friends I was hearing.
Maybe the Tufted Titmouse or the Cardinal that’s been making frequent appearances and tweeting the same phrase over and over. He sounds as if he is telling me “Birdie, Birdie, pretty pretty Birdie” he kind of gets on my nerves with his boastfulness but he is correct, he is pretty.
I grabbed my phone, opened my app and let it do its thing, and there I was, or the bird representation of me, the Bird of the Day, along with quite an ensemble this fine sunny spring afternoon. There was a new friend, Yellow-rumped Warbler. “At least I’m not him” I thought.
The Robin signifies change and better days are on the horizon, she is resilient and pudgy and when she is in community with her other bird friends she is indeed unique and at her red breast, I mean her best. She will be okay and she will persevere and maybe in that she is indeed unique and unusual.
Job lost everything…he questioned God, he questioned his friends, he questioned everything not knowing that God had allowed the losing of all the things to demonstrate his purity and willingness to serve the Lord despite the circumstances and loss of it all.
Job was taken to the crucible of tragedy and came through it acknowledging God.
I have declared recently that I sit on a pile of ash and ruin and in my imagination that is exactly what I see, me sitting atop a soot and ash pile, unworthy, dirty, broken, exposed and humiliated. For weeks I’ve tried to figure out exactly how beauty comes from ashes…ashes make soap..maybe something to do with cleaning but I am struggling to make that work in my mind.
“Ashes are good for?…Reminder, do a Google search and find positive uses for ashes.” Google says: “Soil improvement, making soap (I knew that one) and mild abrasive cleaning.”
Surely there is something better, more beautiful?
Work, home, worsening of already terrible life circumstances, conflict, and confusion. I feel stretched and torn, ripped to shreds and still I sit atop the ash heap hoping that some good thing can come of this ugly mess.
I persist in the things I know are good, know are right and have come to understand are the only lasting and truly decent things this world has to offer; those are the things of Christ. I go to church, CBS, continue to encourage and to love those around me, I point to truth and I read the Word per the usual, as part of the routine.
Chronologically I am in Job, the irony of it all makes me chuckle, I’ve often thought at some point God had to’ve said, “Have you considered my servant, Amy Martin?”
Back in the early morning hours of February 1st, February-a historically horrible month. February-the month I dread most, February short in its duration, yet catastrophic in its devastation.
When February was just a few hours old I completed my unfinished January reading. I was exhausted, behind, a day of work, bitter cold, achy eyes and more shedding of tears forced me to abandon my reading just prior to bed. I took up January 31st reading early, I’ve been in Job, lived like Job, was finishing up Job when I began to read.
“Then Job answered the Lord and said: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
Job 42:1-6
The last line hit me square between the eyes: there Job sat and what of all things brought about his repentant heart? Dust and ashes! Well they were a sign of his repentant heart, I reckon but the answer had been given to me.
What good can come from ash and ruin? Repentance, change, reconciliation to God and restoration of relationship. In His kindness the Lord led me to a place of understanding and revelation right atop the ash heap.
Ash, the catalyst for the cleansing of the heart.
Post Script…I wrote this fast and furiously in the wee hours of the morning, in early February. I wrote it using my cellphone, a google doc, and my One Year Chronological Bible, my one and only sidekick, unless of course you count the box of Dolla’ Store tissues that I keep bedside in the event there is the shedding of tears, a nearly daily occurrence, but like Job the Lord has answered me with the declaration of Who He is, in His kindness He is revealing to me the very fact that it is indeed His kindness that brings us to repentance and cleanliness.
I scrolled through my phone and saw the photo taken the previous Tuesday.
I looked at the photo of the two women. One of them I know well, the other not so much.
The lighter haired, shorter one, a bit pudgy around the middle, with blue eyes that are wide open windows to my very soul, left puffy from a day spent in tears. The other woman, a Writer whom until moments before I had only seen in pictures.
I had been waiting in line to meet her, but more specifically so she could sign the books I had brought with me. I had come alone. My very first date with myself.
I had to make myself do it.
Just a few minutes before I had met two other ladies. We chatted in line while each waiting for our turn to meet the Writer. Janice and Whitney were their names, I introduced myself to them first. I introduced them to one another. They were ideal book fans, and spoke of her writings and reputation. I had little to offer. We inched forward in line.
It was my turn, I handed the dark haired Writer my small stack of books. Books that she had written and that I had read and counted as life savers in some of my most difficult days.
None more difficult than the last, or the current one.
My scribblings and notes littered the pages, a random five-dollar bill shoved in the cover of one of them fell in her direction. She moved her hands over my scribblings and said, “I love this.” She recognized, I reckon, that I had made her books my very own.
The top two books she signed without question, she spoke pleasantries and asked me how I was doing. I squeaked out a reply. She asked my name, I said what I always say. “Amy Martin.” She looked puzzled so I clarified. “Amy.” She had written my first name with a big scripted handwriting. I wondered how many times she’d written my same name in books that bore her own name on the cover.
I awkwardly thanked her for signing the books. When she pointed out the magazine in my hand to her cohort, I offered her the free magazine with her picture on the front, but she declined.
She closed the top two books, their messages sealed, I had averted my gaze so that the inscriptions would be a surprise. I wanted to wait and read them later on. She saw the smallest one, I had placed it deliberately on the bottom of the stack. I had deliberately been hiding it for nearly the entire eleven weeks it had been in my possession.
The book’s title felt like a jack-in-box that would burst out at any random time scaring the heck out of me. Once that clown was out he swayed back and forth taunting me with what the revelation of himself meant to me and for me.
The book had been a gift. To: Me From: Me.
Merry Christmas Eve.
“Is this for you?” She had said, I couldn’t make my vocal cords work so I nodded in the affirmative. For the umpteenth time that Tuesday tears began to well up within my eyes. She understood, she knew, for she had written that book from her very own similar journey.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. The tears fell again.
I couldn’t have seen what she was writing even if I hadn’t have averted my gaze. She handed the stack back to me, the smallest and bottommost book now on the top of the heap. I thanked her and began cramming my books back into my bag. For weeks I had been hiding it, if it weren’t for its very soothing pastels across the front, I would have sworn that the Jack-in-a-box book shone like a scarlet letter in my personal library.
A banner flying over me of brokenness, bewilderment and bondage.
“Do you want to take a picture?” I shook my head and said, “No, I’m not really a good picture taker,” in the seconds it took me to formulate my sentence she was standing on her feet. I fumbled with my phone. The new one I had to get, I had to exchange my old simple phone, the “baby phone” as I called it, the one I loved and was used to surrendered for this bulky monstrosity of gigabytes, screens, apps and mass confusion.
So much surrendering.
I managed to open the camera feature, the phone just one more new thing, new way, new and unchartered waters in a sea of heartbreak. The Writer pulled me in close, I did my best to smile. She hugged me, photo snapped and saved in digital format in my camera roll.
My turn was over.
I walked outside for fresh air, soon I saw Whitney and Janice again. A beautiful blonde woman sat on an adjacent bench to my left. Something in me told me we had to have similar stories, she too held the Jack-in-the Box-Scarlet-Letter Book.
She spoke in our direction, we all chatted again, I asked her her name. “Crystal” she had said. I introduced myself, AMy Martin, Whitney and Janice to Crystal. Janice said she was impressed with my name remembering skills. I was too honestly. I confided in Janice that normally I struggle to remember names. My sister can remember names like nobody’s business, in this we are not the same.
I asked Crystal where she lived, come to find out she and Whitney lived in the same neighborhood, they had much in common and their conversation flourished. I giggled, The doors to the main speaking event opened, we said good-byes and each made our way in looking for our own separately purchased individual seats.
I had chosen my seat purposefully in the dark-thirty hours of the day I bought it. An aisle seat, down an exit row in the event the tears were so overwhelming I should need to make a quick getaway. I made my way to my seat and who should be seated in front of me? Whitney and her new found neighbor Crystal. They became even better acquainted.
I wondered what would have happened had I not been the one to formally introduce these previously unknown neighbors and newfound friends? What if I hadn’t gone on a date with myself? What if I had chickened out like I really wanted to just mere moments before I walked through the door? I had unknowingly been the catalyst for the gift of friendship between two what likely would have remained strangers.
I asked the Lord on the way home if that is what this season is for? If this is the why behind so much of what I do not nor can I understand. I asked Him if His plan is to use this season of yet to be named full of its moments of surrender, doing hard and previously unknown things. Is this obedience to Him meant to bring blessing not just to myself but to others as well?
I landed on perhaps. Perhaps so.
When I arrived home, a few hours past my get ready for bed-time, I opened the books one at a time to read their signed inscriptions. They were kind encouraging words and exhortations. I saved the smallest for last. It made me weep.
I rubbed my hand over the cover, The gift for Me from Me, purchased in haste and through tears at the Hobby Lobby in the hustle and bustle this past Christmas Eve. I had just gone through the single most traumatic time in my life. My body still throbbed and was numb all at the same time. My mind spinning and searching every moment of the day. I had gone in the familiar craft store because I knew they would likely have a Martin Family Christmas tradition that I had failed up until that point to purchase, Christmas Crackers. They had them, I grabbed them and made my way to the checkout.
As I stood in the line to checkout, my gaze fell to the books stationed at the front of the store, my gaze can always find its way to the books. It was at that point I saw it, “Surviving an Unwanted Divorce” by Lysa Terkeurst. If there were ever a book title that could make sense of all the nonsense in my spinning mind maybe it was this one.
God alone knew I had just asked myself, “How am I ever going to survive this?” The week’s events had brought me to a place I had not, did not and was not wanting to be. Facing something I never wanted, a divorce. I could hardly say the word, much less acknowledge and accept what it meant for my marriage.
Even now, at this point, I am struggling to write the word, to attach it to myself, d–i-v-o-r-c-e spelled out on a backlit screen with a twelve-point font in front of my face.
To: Me, From: Me. Merry Christmas Eve.
I began reading it almost immediately. Pen in hand, notes in the margin, notes on the sticky notes crammed on the side, book jacket removed so no one knew what I was reading lest I be asked about my…divorce…about the death of my marriage. I saw it coming, and I didn’t see it coming. I most certainly didn’t see how it would finally be put to death coming.
I was left in absolute shock, some days I still am, but the farther I get from Christmas Eve the more I am coming to realize there are some things that I may never be able to understand, to reconcile, to make heads or tails of, that may forever remain a mystery to me.
I am choosing to find the gifts in all of it. The gifts began long before Christmas Eve and have steadily been making their way to me. It took a little while for my vision to clear but as it has I felt like maybe I should share the gifts I have given, the gifts I had been given, the gifts I have surrendered, the gifts I have yet to receive. Share the gifts through my gift of words from The Word.
To: Me, From: Me. To: Me, From: You. To You, From: Me and To: Us, From: The King.
