Mississippi

Once a week, I click onto HGTV and watch a couple of favorite DIY shows. One is Home Town with Ben and Erin Napier. They are transforming their home down of Laurel, Mississippi, by renovating old homes. It’s a fun show with lots of creative ideas.

My other current fave is Good Bones, another redesign of a town — Indianapolis — with a mother and daughter team. Mina is the driving force behind each project while Karen, the mother, is a creative artiste a la retired lawyer.

One of the reasons I like Good Bones is because one of the stars is in my demographic. It’s encouraging that a mature woman is able to power through a wall with a sledgehammer or kick through slats to open a space.

The other reason I like Karen is because she is always finding hidden treasures.

When each segment begins, Karen and Mina tour a nasty old house, dreaming of ways to redesign it and sell it for a profit. Some of these houses have become shelters for hoarders or for squatters. Some are incredibly nasty. I can almost smell the horror of those bathrooms filled with — well, you can imagine.

But Karen searches through the junk and often finds an old window, a piece of furniture, a tapestry, an antique bottle, even a musical instrument. She takes them home, in spite of Mina’s insistence to throw them away, and restores them to their original luster. Then she returns the treasure to the house as a gift to the new homeowner.

I love the idea of restoring what was considered trash. In fact, I’ve done the same myself. Dumpster diving in a college town often produced treasures my son and I could use after we cleaned them, fixed broken screws or painted something a new color.

But hope joins the restoration process when we seek to find the hidden treasures all around us. Even daring to look for treasures within our own souls.

What is a treasure we can find from the traumas of 2020?
- more time with family
- working from home
- safety in our own four walls
- a commitment to do life differently when everything opens.
How can we look for treasure in each other?
- accept differences of opinion
- embrace diversity
- guard the hearts of those who are disrespected.
What are the concrete treasures we can find around us and restore them to dignity?
- an autumn leaf to frame
- stones that become art – like a cat made out of rocks
- native grasses to bring inside and feature in a pottery vase
How does God remind us we are his treasures?
- By giving us a verse for a particular moment
- by sharing his presence through music or nature
- by keeping us in a constant state of readiness for heaven
- by strengthening us through one struggle so we can meet the next one

Someone at a writers conference once told me I was a treasure. It took me a while to journal through that compliment and fully accept it.

But it IS true. Each of us is a treasure to God and to the people in our personal world. Each human being is a treasure no matter what the gender, the skin color or the choice of political platform.

As we look for the treasures around us, let’s be more cognizant of how we can share hope with each other.

Let’s strive for restoration rather than trashing another. Let’s build on how people and things were originally created and work to make them even better.

Let’s find hope in the hidden treasures.

Check out these invisible women who were NOT treasured. Then find ways to treasure others. The Invisible Women of Genesis.

As a writer, I know better. But it happened anyway.

As we prepared for our recent family vacation, I packed all my paper goods – legal pads, journals, notepads in a special bag. Then helped my sister pack up her Subaru Forrester and carefully secured my “writing” bag in her trunk. Other luggage piled on top, including my brother’s tackle box and fishing pole.

About two hours into the trip, I decided to write some notes about the scenery – something I might blog about later or use in research. But as I searched through my purse, I realized none of my usual notepads were inside the car. They were all packed in the back of the Subaru and there was no way we were going to unpack everything just so I could write down a few notes.

My creative juices seemed to be on overdrive and along with them, the fear that I might forget the words and phrases that peppered my mind. I noticed the Oklahoma red dirt, stained as legend tells it by the blood and tears of the Cherokees who were forced to travel from Mississippi to Indian Territory. Their broken hearts and wounded spirits forever colored the soil of the new land where they were enslaved on reservations.

As we drove into the Oklahoma panhandle, I saw corn growing tall (“as high as an elephant’s eye”), combed straight by the row crop planter that sows the corn seed. Each row was impressive as the corn plants reached their blades up to heaven for nourishing sunshine.

The horizon in the panhandle seemed to blend right into the soil so that I could not discern where it divided until we drove farther down the road. The turquoise sky shook hands with the red soil, accessorized by the green corn and the occasional brown coyote. A colorful land indeed.

All these sights I wanted to record while they were fresh, along with any ideas that surfaced about the novel I am currently writing. But alas – no notebook in my purse. What to do? How to record my thoughts before they disappeared as readily as the flatland when we approached the foothills of New Mexico?

We stopped for a snack at a Love’s store. With words swirling in my subconscious, I quickly ran to the ladies room, finished my business, then grabbed extra toilet paper which I folded into a pallet of paper. Then I grabbed extra napkins by the checkout and hurried to the car. A receipt from a previous gas purchase also fell out of my purse when I searched for a pen. Thank goodness I had packed my pens in my purse.

Armed with TP, napkins and the back of a receipt – I quickly scribbled phrases and sentences onto my makeshift notepads, then sighed with contentment that I had finally captured my thoughts before they disappeared into word netherland.

One week later, when we returned home, I gathered all my little notes together to file where I could best use them. Then I vowed to never be caught without paper again.

RJThesman.net

Author | Coach | Speaker | Editor

Paper, Please