Days of Lore

Dennis and I were on vacation last week. I am now allowed to reveal to you the secret location of our get-away: home.

There were a lot of reasons we decided not to spend thousands of dollars on a beach vacation. But mostly, we just couldn't pass up the chance to be home alone. Since Ben was on a mission trip and Matt has moved to Mississippi, we had our first chance to be home alone in about 18 months!

We love our house, though it is not fancy, and it needs to be painted and updated. We love our neighborhood. We've lived here for 21 years. We moved in on the weekend of July 4. Matt was 6 months old.

We recently discovered that Jon Acuff has just moved to our neighborhood. (Stalkers, I know where he lives, but I won't tell you, 'cause I'm a good neighbor.) Not long after they moved in, he wrote about their decision to buy their house:

During this process, we made a pretty important decision about the way we’re going to make decisions. You see, we found a perfect little cottage that was near an elementary school. It’s so close to the school that the girls can walk every day instead of riding the bus or getting dropped off.

The house is absolutely adorable and we love it, but it’s just not as big as some of the other houses we looked at. Some of the other houses had bigger living rooms or more closet space or newer kitchens. But in picking the house to live in, we decided that when it comes to our life, we’re going to make “lore decisions.” We’re going to pick the option that someday will enable our kids to tell really great stories, the option that will add to the lore of their childhoods.

That probably seems a little silly, but for me it’s not. I know when my kids are grown up, they will not tell their friends, “You know what I loved about my childhood? The ample closet space we had.”

No, they will say, “When I was a kid, we could walk to school. On the weekends, we’d ride our bikes to the playground and play kickball. In the morning before work, my dad would walk me and my sister to school.”

The words might change, but they’ll hopefully be able to tell great stories because we made great story decisions.


Lore. This house is full of it. Long before it was featured in The Time Closet and Plot Device, Seth was dressing up the neighbors' kids and bossing them around the back yard with a camera in his hand.

That back yard had no garden, no plants, just a cement slab of a patio when we moved in. It has hosted numerous camp-outs and birthday sleep-overs. (Like the birthday camp-out Seth had, when I heard giggling at 2 a.m. and flipped on the outside light to find a row of middle school boys peeing into the ditch.)

There are still dead spots in the grass that remind me how we marked the beginning of summer: Dennis would set up the tent the first day after school was out, and the boys would drag their sleeping bags, pillows, toys out there. Dennis would run an extension cord to it so they could watch videos and have lamps. The tent stayed up all summer, 'til the final camp-out before school started in the fall.

Dennis is a master at wiring the back yard with lighting, hanging box fans in the trees on still summer nights. He finally had to install plugs on a separate breaker to run his "party" extension cords without tripping circuits in the house. We've thrown some serious parties out there - all those 4th of July cook outs with the choir & orchestra and all their families, when Back Yard Burger pulled their trailer into the yard and filled the neighborhood with delicious smells. And our talented friends filled the neighborhood with beautiful music at the "open mic" set up on the driveway. We've lived here through 21 summers of fire crackers and sparklers. 21 years of Christmas trees and exterior illumination. Including the Christmas after Dennis had been in a car accident and was incapacitated. Kind church members brought over the biggest dang Christmas tree on earth. When they untied it, it took over the playroom. We had a Griswold family Christmas.

We've been through 3 trampolines. When the first one wore out, the cul de sac got together and offered to help pay for a new one! It has been full of kids over the years. When they were little, I kept a tub of assorted socks and shoes left there - a neighborhood Lost & Found. On many summer nights, I would hear them as teenagers laughing and talking as they lay on the trampoline looking at the stars. (I hope that's all they were doing!)

Matt Worley used to run buck naked through this house like a puppy after his bath every night. (He was only 3. It hasn't happened recently.) By the time he was in middle school, he & his friends were such big lugs that when they ran and jumped on the furniture, they broke the legs off my living room furniture! Then there was the December night when Seth, Matt and Ben decided to make a short film, "The Fight Before Christmas." Matt, as the most bizarre Santa since Dan Ackroyd, literally knocked things off the bookshelves in my bedroom when he crashed into the other side of the wall.

There are a lot of bangs, dings and smudges that are testimonies of lore. Like the bright blue & orange door at the top of the back stairs that Arley randomly decided to paint when she & Seth were dating.

The playroom with the floor I painted bright red has been stuffed with Legos, dinosaurs, bean bags, a pool table, video equipment, guitars and sound gear. The garage has never housed a car, but it has been a holding cell for bikes, trikes, stolen shopping carts, lawnmowers, tools, athletic gear, footballs, basketballs, baseballs, gym equipment, sound equipment, video equipment. It's been a shop where Dennis and his Dad built bookshelves, a work-out room, a staging spot for zombie make-up.

We've set up cribs, bunk beds, twin beds, king beds and now cribs again. We've brought home babies to this house and grandbabies. We've come home from surgeries to this house. We've recovered from having three sets of wisdom teeth removed and spent countless nights running vaporizers, battling croupy coughs.

Last week, it was a great vacation spot. We asked ourselves, what would we do if we went to the beach? We'd sleep late, pack up a cooler with shrimp salad and spend the day in the sun & water, come home and clean up and go out to eat. So that's what Dennis and I did. I made buckets of shrimp salad. We packed it up and went to the neighborhood pool every day, the pool where we taught our boys to swim. We went out to dinner, and we stayed in for dinner. We watched DVD's. We did no projects. We did not fix or paint anything, though it needs it. We did "pimp" the fort in the back yard, the fort where Elliott plays, the fort that we built for his daddy, the fort where his daddy invented a lot of stories, the fort that makes an appearance in The Time Closet.

Mostly, we just enjoyed being home alone. A home that has very little closet space, but is full of stories.

Dorothy said it best: There's no place like home.

Time machine

My son Seth and friends have had quite an exciting ride. If you aren't aware of it already, they were hired by Red Giant Software to create a short film demonstrating the features of Red Giant's Magic Bullet Suite. Red Giant released the project, Plot Device, several weeks ago, and it has created quite a social media stir.

So today, Seth leaves for a two day visit to LA to meet with representatives (managers) and producers who are interested in him.

My advice: Try to enjoy your big adventure.

My prayer: Whether you turn to the right or left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, "This is the way, walk in it." (Isaiah 30:21)

As I was trying to express thoughts and prayers to Seth this morning, I came across these words:

"There's consequences to everything. Everything. But your gut will tell you whether it's incredible enough to take the risk."


This is the character Matt speaking to the character Gill, at the very end of Seth's short film The Time Closet.

But it's really Seth Worley 2009 speaking to Seth Worley 2011. Talk about building a time machine!

So, Seth: God has already been speaking to you about this moment. You've been taking notes. Keep listening.

We are all praying for you.

Guest House

Does anybody else need this affirmation? I know I do. Lately I'm just a bunch of feelings on parade.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house
empty of it's furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

- Rumi

The man with no hat

Here's what's going on in my life all at the same time:

Ben graduated from high school
Seth's short film has become an internet success, opening BIG possibilities
Arley is having a baby in a few weeks
Matt moved to Mississippi yesterday

I've been dealing with lots of feelings. It's been an emotional roller coaster. So yesterday when Matt drove away, I stood in the driveway until I couldn't see his truck and then at least ten minutes longer just to be sure. And then I ran inside, got the comforter off his bed, the one that I made for him out of his high school t-shirts, and I cried. I sobbed. I wailed. I whimpered. All afternoon. Until my head hurt so bad and my whole face was puffy.

I am feeling very vulnerable these days. Fragile. I feel the fragility of life, that every moment of joy and wonder and pain is poignantly thin, like eggshell thin. Like bubble thin. And so intense. Life is swallowing me whole.

I have on-again/off-again battled depression over the course of my life. For a long time I was medicated for it. I remember when I stopped taking medication and I wasn't being "regulated," every little thing felt startlingly intense. I remember describing this to my doctor.

"It's like this", I said. "It's like you were a man wearing a hat for ten years. And one day you went out for a walk without the hat. And the feel of the wind on your bare head freaked you out because you hadn't felt wind for ten years."

He looked at me like, "You'll be back."

My friend Ashley blogged about feelings today:

here's a quote for you from my reading from "how al-anon works" yesterday, page 90. it is also important to be reminded that feelings aren't fact. no matter how intense the feelings may be, they are only feelings. they are reactions to, rather than reflections of, reality. therefore, they are not necessarily the best basis for decision-making. other people can help us to value the experience of our emotions without acting on them in ways that we might regret once the feelings have passed.


This is why I hid under Matt's covers and did not make any decisions yesterday. I was nothing but a bundle of feelings. I was not to be trusted out in the world. I was a raw nerve ending, and everything was too hard.

But at the same time, this is how I feel:

The harder life gets, the more God reminds me of his love. It's a strange thing but I'm so grateful.
- Donald Miller

When I was a little girl, I imagined the wind was God running his fingers through my hair, like my mother did at night. God telling me he loved me.

Have you ever felt loved and vulnerable at the same time? Grateful and fragile?

That's how I felt yesterday when Dennis came home from work with flowers because he knew I'd been home alone crying, even though I didn't tell him.

That's how I feel when I look at Arley's beautiful baby belly and try to imagine what a Worley girl will be like.

That's how I feel when I watch Seth and Ben's wonder and happiness over their great success.

That's how I felt when Matt scooped me up in his big arms before he climbed into his truck and drove off.

Like a man with no hat, in a stiff breeze.

Wish you were here

Cindy Sterling jump punched me yesterday with her recent post "Snapshot Daddy." No fair. I was reading along, and then I was doubled over at my desk crying and trying to catch my breath. Read it.

I have many snapshots of my Daddy and me, but my favorite is this one, taken circa 1957 on the sea wall in Tripoli Libya. We lived there for the first years of my life, because my dad was stationed at the Air Force base there. This picture hangs on the wall over my bed, but I've been taking it down a lot recently and contemplating it and crying.

I had many more years with my daddy than Cindy did with hers, but Dad died suddenly without any warning. There was no long goodbye or sitting by the bed singing hymns. There was just the stunning phone call on the morning of Jan 2, my mother's voice: "I think your Dad has died." It's been several years, but I cannot get used to a world without my father in it. I want him to be at the table when the whole family gets together. I want to see his corny green sweatpants. I want to see him in his immaculate jacket and tie at the end of the pew every Sunday. I want him to barbecue ribs. I want him to be here right now to help me raise young men. I hold this picture and I remember he used to sing to me:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
You make me happy when skies are gray.
You'll never know, dear, how much I love you.
Please don't take my sunshine away.

I want my Daddy.

This past few weeks at church we have been in a sermon series called "Family Tree." We have talked about the importance of passing on our faith and our stories to the next generation. I sat at my desk doing the research for these sermons and crying. I thought about the line of faith I have inherited. I thought about my great grandfather and grandfather Cox, who were preachers and revival leaders, I thought about the recordings we have of my father and grandfather singing on my grandfather's radio broadcasts. I remembered how my Granny Ruth's house always smelled like peas or beans. She always had a huge pot of them simmering. She was the preacher's wife in a little Louisiana town, so when the "hobos" would come through town, she was the one people would send them to. She was a very fancy lady who loved fine things, whose house and clothes were immaculate, who told me repeatedly, "Never marry a preacher; you won't have any money." I remember trips into the big city I think was Monroe, where she defined the phrase, "Shop til you drop." But she also made vats of peas and cornbread so there was plenty on hand.

Whenever I shell peas, I think of my mother's family, of summer at my great-grandmother's farm in Arkansas. My grandmother was the second oldest of 8 siblings. When they would all return to the farm with several generations of family in tow, there was a lot of cooking. They started at dawn making full breakfasts, requiring baking and frying, then clean it up and start baking and frying for lunch. (I'm sure this was the way you ate when you were out working the fields all day, but there was no one working the fields by this time. Still, there was flouring, baking and frying for every meal.) After lunch on a summer afternoon in Arkansas, it's nearly 100 outside. The kids were made to come in from our afternoon play and "cool off," which we did by sitting off the kitchen, where it was nearing 120, shelling peas for dinner. (No air conditioning.) In the evenings my aunt Thera would play the pump organ, while the sisters danced with my uncle Junior, who was a dance instructor at a Fred Astaire dance studio, I remember how strange and wonderful it was to see my grandmother act like a silly girl. My grandmother was sad most of the time, though she was a wonderful grandmother to little children. But with her sisters, she was transformed. They were a floor show.

I miss these people, just as a I miss my own babies, who are now men. We have lived in the same house for 21 years, so all around me are the ghosts of summers past. Every morning, I see neighborhood kids riding off on their bikes with towels around their necks, heading to the pool. I remember those days when wet towels and goggles and floaties hung on the pegs by the back door. Next week Matt will leave for Mississippi State. He's left for college before, but this time somehow I know it's for good. He won't live here again. Yes, I cry about that. I cry because I will miss this tall handsome man, but also because I miss the little tow-headed boy who sat on the front porch swing with me in the evenings and sang, "A whole new world..." from Aladdin. Elliott plays on the same fort we built for his daddy's fifth birthday. HIs daddy, who looks so much like my own daddy sometimes that it takes my breath away. This morning I was brushing away the last of the cicadas from my garden steps, and I thought about how they attacked us just a few weeks ago at Ben's graduation party. Then I thought that the next time they come out, Elliott will be graduating from high school. And there I was, standing in my flowerbed, crying over the future.

I cry a lot these days. I cry while watering the garden. I cry while shelling peas. I cry in my office. I cry during the evening news, because the Libya in that photo is no more. I cry over cicadas, for Pete's sake.

I often cry at the end of vacations. You know, at the end of a wonderful week at the beach, I slip away that last evening and stand with my feet in the surf for one last time. I say goodbye to the beach. I know we will be back again, but it will not be the same next time. We will be different. It will be different. And we can't know how. I feel that way lately.

I am not sad, but I am grieving. This is how it is with humans; we are finite. We cannot have it all, past, present and future. We cannot have the Tree of Life. Yet.

Is this how we know we are meant for eternity? If so, then I long for the day when the old order of things has passed away and time, as we know it, will be no more.

In the meantime, life is beautiful. But I wish they were here.

What next?

You aren't known as one of the best composers of all time because your last name is Mozart. It's because you can play the hell out of a harpsichord.
- MeLissa Gavarrette

I'm having a midlife crisis. I'm pretty sure of it. It's a little late to be having one, as I don't expect I will live to be 110; thus it is more like a 2/3-life crisis. Or it's a bout of ennui. 

It's not an identity crisis. I'm not wondering,"Who am I?" I'm wondering, "Who am I now?" 

When you're in your 20's you are in a rush to know, "Who will I be?  What will I do with my life?".  There is absolutely no way you can know the answer to this at this age, even if you've known you wanted to play the harpsichord since you were 3. Life will throw you curve balls. Someone will invent the Fender Rhodes. You can't imagine. 

Also, life will reinvent you. Several times. Just since I was 20, I have been:

An English major
A drama major
A music major
A member of a singing group
An advertising copywriter
A special events planner
A marketing manager
A studio singer
A songwriter
A bride
A mom
A recording artist
A backup singer
A concert artist
A speaker
A book author
A PTA volunteer
A church choir member
A Sunday School teacher
A minister's wife
A band parent
A football mom
A church staff member
A worship leader
A missions volunteer
A grandmother
A poet 
A painter
A runner
A gardener
A blogger

Okay, blogging didn't exist when I was dreaming of who I would be at 20. So. 

A mid-life crisis, if that is what I'm having, feels like this:  "Who have I really been in life?" And, "Who will I be now?" And "Am I done?"  (That last question is particularly terrifying. And ridiculous. Of course I'm not done. Although sometimes it feels like it.)

Here is a typical week in my mid-life crisis:

On Monday, a friend is taking her grandkids to the park, and I think, "Yeah, that's what I want to do. I don't want to work. I just want to stay home and garden, have lunch with my friends and pick up my grandson after school.  I just want to be Super Grandmother.  I need some more playground equipment in my back yard."

On Tuesday, I sit next to a woman in her seventies who is an awesome prayer warrior, has taught women's Bible studies for fifty years. I watch her and think that's what I want to be remembered for. That's what I want to be doing in my seventies. I'm starting another Bible study next week for sure. 

On Wednesday, we have a guest songwriter at choir, a woman who is not quite my age, who has just written her 50th choral work. I think, "Why did I stop songwriting?  I think I've written probably 35 choral works. What the heck?" I also think I want the really cool blue top she's wearing. 

On Thursday, I read something about Beth Moore. "Damn," I think. "I wanted to be a big time Bible teacher like that.  I could be hanging out with Anne Graham Lotz.  There could be a whole Karla Worley workbooks section in LifeWay stores."

On Friday I see an ad for the Tony Awards and realize what I really wanted to do was be a Broadway star. 

When I catch myself thinking like this, I know I have started living a Me-Story, not a God-Story, that I am looking at my life at "I"-level, which is a miserable vantage point, whether you are starting out in life, midway through or nearly to the finish line—even if, or especially if, you are a hell of harpsichord player. I rather doubt that anyone in the Bible wondered, as they were in the thick of it, how their chapter would turn out. They could not have imagined the Bible. And the Bible is after all God's story, not theirs, not ours. Jesus, who only lived to be 33, came to the end of his life and was able to say, in the garden of Gethsemane, "I have finished the work You gave me to do." 

I have finished the work You gave me to do. 

I am, in fact, at a kind of "What next?" place in life. Change is afoot. But the truth is, though we don't always feel it as keenly as at major milestones, we all wake up and live out that question every day: "What next?"

And I do want to be a super-grandmother, an award winning songwriter, a powerful Bible teacher AND a Broadway star.  But here is the measure of success:  "I have finished the work You gave me to do."

Why there were no words

Dear Reader,

I'm sorry I've left you hanging for two weeks!  You may have wondered, "Where is she?"  You might be thinking, "Yeah, she did that thing that bloggers do;  she started well, then she got tired and lazy and quit on me." 

I assure you, I did not.  However, you dear faithful reader, deserve an explanation for the past two weeks.

Here it is:

Ben/David Graduation from Dennis Worley on Vimeo.

On Sunday, May 29, 2011 Ben Worley graduated from high school.

Look at that face, that sweet hopeful face.  When he crosses the stage, moves the tassel over and then stops and looks up at us sitting in the stands—well.  What you can't see, but he can, is that we are, his whole family—mom, dad, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandmothers—sitting in a row, leaning forward, glowing with love and pride.  Our faces are saying, "We believe in you.  You will change the world."  Tomorrow he will go back to being the regular, remarkable Ben Worley.  But in this moment, he is a Promise.  He is all Possibility. 

He did not have to stop at that moment and look up.  How beautiful that he did.

There were no words.  I, who am full of words, had no words.  My son stole my heart.

His brothers have done the same thing to me.  Your children will do that—without warning, without the cap and gown or Pomp and Circumstance.  They might just come through the door, or round second base.  You might catch them playing with a toy or smiling over their cereal.  And suddenly you can't breathe.  You are overcome. Sometimes, they have you at "Hello."  This is what happened to me that Sunday.

On Monday, I felt like I had been beaten with a 2x4. 

On Tuesday, I slept for 24 hours.

On Wednesday, I could work the TV remote.

On Thursday,  I combed my hair.

On Friday, I puttered.

On Saturday, I attempted to read a book.

On Sunday, I ate pancakes.

On Monday, I went back to work.

And that, dear reader, is why you have not heard from me.  I like to think that you missed what I might have to say.  But know this:  Sometimes, there are no words.