"Going Into Panic Mode"

What sends you into panic mode?  I hate to admit it, but I go into panic mode on occasion.  It is said that confession is good for the soul.  I say that it is bad for the ego.  My coworkers once said that I was Mr. Cool when trouble was raging.  What they did not know was I was just as scared as they were.  I could conceal it by pretending to be in control.  If they only knew the truth!

The other day I went into panic mode and it was not a very big event.  I had driven to the local gas station to fill my new zero turn mower with gas.  As I reached to open the tank, I noticed that the right gas cap was missing.  I had checked the gas before leaving home and that’s when the panic started. 

Where was the gas cap?  A new mower and I have already lost one of the two gas caps.  I can’t believe I lost a brand new cap, will they have a new one at Slayton Brothers, will they have to order it, how long will it take, how will I explain how a lost the cap, where is it, how can I keep the gas from jumping out, did that mischievous looking young man get my cap while I was not looking, can I find it if I back track my path, did it come off when I left the shed. . .  Did I mention I was about to panic?

After filling both tanks, I borrowed a plastic bag and rubber band from the store clerk and temporarily stopped the hole of the missing cap.  Then in a frantic, not panic, I was calming myself with possible answers to the mower salesman, for losing a gas cap.  I backtracked the quarter mile journey back to my shed.  With no gas cap, I retraced my trail back to the store.  I could not enjoy the sweet fragrance of kudzu blooms; they seemed more sickening than refreshing or reassuring.  During the retracing, I saw everything a person could imagine but no gas cap.  I turned around at the store and retraced the path back home again.  Three trips and no cap.

I began a journey of panic recovery.  It was silly of me to panic over a plastic gas cap.  Then, I thought of other times I panicked.  There was the time when Aaron, a seven month old in a baby car seat locked the car door.  It was December, it was cold, the car was running, and I was trying to get to my college graduation rehearsal.  I imagined the headlines: College graduate so stupid baby dies in locked car from carbon monoxide poisoning.  Yep, I panicked.  I tried to find another key, I picked up a brick to knock out the car window, I googooed and gagaed trying to get Aaron to hit the electric lock again, and I finally decided to break into the car.  I got a clothes hanger, jimmied the car door, and pulled the lock open.

My mind continued race as I returned home and began cutting grass.  I thought about the time I could not find the laptop I had checked out of the Samford Library.  Several of us who were working on our doctorates used laptops to take notes.  I remember having it when I got into the car for the forty-five minute trip to school.  Where was it, did I put on the top of the car when I loaded my books, did it fall on the driveway, did it fall on the highway, how much will it cost, will it cost me my graduation, will they take a credit card, will I have to work off the payment. . .  All these things raced through my mind as I frantically searched the back seat and the trunk over and over.  When I finally decided to face the music by breaking the bad news to the library, I realized the laptop was in its bag and on my shoulder.  Did you know that laughing at yourself relieves panic?

As I giggled about the laptop, I resolved to bite the bullet and suffer the consequences of losing a cap.  I would tell everyone that I was just a dummy.  It was a trivial and insignificant loss and could happen to anyone over age fifty.  There are more urgent matters, such as adjusting my seat.  The seat belt was hung so I had to step off the mower to make the adjustment.  As I reached between the seat and mower, there was the lost gas cap.  I laughed as I said, “Thank you Jesus.”  I thought that sometimes it is silly what sends us into panic mode.

An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up (Proverbs 12:25 NIV).

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you (I Peter 5:7 NIV).

Little Old Lady From Lawley

Granny Hopper was an amazing Christian.  Born in 1892, she was one-eighth Native American, or as she would say, “Indian.”  She was Creek or Cherokee.  I do not remember, but I was proud to know I had “Indian” blood. 

She married at age thirteen and was a mother at fourteen.  She always said she went from changing doll babies to changing real babies.  She would have a total of nine children, one of those dying as an infant.  There were five girls and four boys. 

In 1935, during the Great Depression she became a widow.  Her husband, my granddad, committed suicide after a bout with depression resulting from an accident where a longhorn steer gored him.  The injury crippled him and he had severe health problems.  My dad was eleven.

By this time, Granny was helping raise six grandchildren.  One daughter’s husband was killed and another abandoned the family.  Granny was caring for fifteen family members, one her aging daddy, as a sharecropper with no government assistance.

Granny Hopper never had any modern conveniences.  She cooked on an old wood-burning stove, drew water from a well by rope and bucket, washed and scrubbed clothes in an old iron, black wash pot.  She did have a nice two-seater outdoor toilet with a bucket of corn cobs and an old Sears catalogs for tissue.

She raised pigs, cows, and chickens and worked a garden for food.  Talking about food, Granny Hopper could cook the best “Gumbo” soup.  She always had a pot on the stove and in the two warmers on top of the old wood stove were cornbread and biscuits.  Later in life when she was unable to raise livestock and garden she used commodities to make the gumbo and it was still good.

I used to help Granny Hopper stir clothes in the wash pot.  I helped her sling chitterlin’s when we killed hogs.  She loved them and canned them.  She canned everything in glass jars that we called “fruit jars”.  She canned fried sausage.  She would fry sausage, put them in the jars and pour hot lard over them.  They were good.  She canned collards which she had pickled and they were good.  If it was edible, Granny Hopper canned it.

Granny Hopper was a worker.  I remember one time daddy and I went to cut her some firewood for her large pot-bellied stove.  Daddy cut the pieces of a big red oak for me to split.  I was sixteen years old and Granny was seventy-six.  Granny and daddy taught me how to split wood.  The key is to slap the axe against the wood rather hit it straight.  I was splitting it and loading it.  Going too slow for Granny, she took the axe and split it faster than I could load it.  It was embarrassing for this big Jemison football star to be outworked by his 5’ 4” granny.  She told me that I was sorry and that I had better learn how to work.  I guess for her my loading paperwood by shoulder and throwing hay did not qualify as work.  She almost worked me to death.

Granny Hopper toted a pistol in her apron when working around the farm and in her purse when she traveled.  It was a long barrel Smith & Wesson 38 caliber.  I have watched her empty the six-shooter target practicing.  With all six shots she could keep a tin can bouncing.

She went everywhere.  Sometimes when we went to her house there would be notes saying, “Gone to Cecil’s in Death Valley, California, gone to North Carolina, gone to Mobile, or gone to visit Clifton in Illinois.”  She traveled by bus.

She wanted to drive, but she did not have a license.  Her family did not want her driving, but a nephew taught her how to drive.  Granny bought a 1961 Ford Galaxy.  She trained in an old pasture somewhere in Perry County.  She kept it secret.

At eighty-three years of age she went to the Bibb County Courthouse and tried for her license.  She failed the driving test.  She tried again and again.  After eleven attempts, she got her license.  I never will forget her picture in the Centreville Press.  Granny and her sisters posed as Granny held her license.  She was not the “Little Old Lady from Pasadena”, but the little old lady from Lawley.

Her tenacity for getting a driving license is a testimony of her life and her faith.  She is listed as a messenger of Rehobeth Baptist Church in Baptists of Bibb County, A Denominational Salute to the people called Baptists, in Cahawba (Bibb) County, Alabama 1817-1974 by Howard F. McCord.  Rehobeth is one of the churched burned by Birmingham Southern students.

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint Isaiah 40:31 (KJV).

Falling Short

We used to take sweet counsel together, within God’s house we walked in the throng. Psalm 55:14

My friend was dying with raging pneumonia.  There was no hope as his family stood by his side in the last moments of his life.  His nurse said that she could not believe the love that friends and family had shown this young man of thirty-two. 

Most of her patients did not have anyone who would come to visit.  She cared for AIDS victims.  She saw most of her patients abandoned and left to die alone.  Yes, my friend had AIDS.  He was one of the first victims of this worldwide tragedy.  My friend was a Christian who adopted the sinful lifestyle of homosexuality.  Before he died, he repented and returned to the house of God.  He died at peace with God, family, and friends.  Not all of his friends supported him.  At a time when his family needed support, they deserted my friend and his family.  I learned a valuable lesson from that time.  When sin enters our lives, we need trusted Christian friends to support and encourage us.

Many churches have forgotten that all sin and come short of the glory of God.  We need to strengthen our relationships and begin to treat one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Ignorance

But we do not want you to be uninformed brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may grieve as others do who have no hope. First Thessalonians 4:13

Bubba used a crosscut saw to cut pulpwood.  One day a chainsaw salesman asked Bubba if he had interest in a chainsaw that would increase his productivity.  Bubba did not know about productivity, but he did want to cut more pulpwood.  

Bubba said he could cut about a cord.  The salesman convinced Bubba an increase to three, maybe, four cords with the chainsaw.  Bubba borrowed the money from the bank and bought a new chainsaw.  Working as hard as he could work, Bubba could only cut a half cord of wood. 

A week later, Bubba told the salesman.  Thinking it odd, he gave Bubba a new spark plug, but Bubba only managed three-fourths cord.  Not satisfied, the salesman told Bubba to take the saw to the local repair shop because the saw was under warranty.  Bubba told the repairman his dilemma to which the repairman turned on the switch and pulled the cord.  Bubba said, “What is that sound?”

Paul informed the Thessalonians concerning the Lord’s Return and pagan hopelessness of future life.  Bubba had the resources for a better life, but was ignorant about what he had.  Do not be a Thessalonian Bubba. Share the hope of Jesus today.