Hey Friends! Thanks for hopping on your horse and continuing the Country Girl Cattle Drive as we herd 111 verses from the pages of our Bibles to our hearts. (Matthew 5-7)

(If you are new, here’s the scoop: I write down a verse and then write a story to help us remember the verse. If you want to begin at the start of the current story, go to the post entitled “Store Up.”)

Matthew 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

Nia

When Nia awoke, her nose was cold, so she wriggled a little more deeply into her sleeping bag. It was still dark out. Nia grabbed her phone and looked down into her sleeping bag to read the screen: 6:45. Dad’s alarm would go off soon and then they would load up in the van and truck, drive up to the restrooms, and do all the hair brushing and teeth brushing they needed to do. They had all dressed after their showers the night before, donned their coats, and gone to bed. It was just too cold in the restrooms in the morning now to bother with getting dressed. Nia wondered how she ought to regard her family’s current situation. The restrooms at the campground would soon be locked for the winter. Should she worry? Or just be excited to see what doors God was going to open up? She decided to pretend that her father was a great planet, her mother was a lovely moon, and this worry was just a little space dust they would govern with wisdom. She closed her eyes and fell back asleep.

Blaze

Blaze unlocked and lifted the door on the elevator. Its metallic screech pierced the quiet, cold morning.

“I’d better get that oiled,” he thought.

There was a smell Blaze was unfamiliar with. A seasoned elevator worker would have recognized it as the smell of rotting wheat, but Blaze caught of whiff of something slightly sweet and then was thinking about the the little house he’d seen on Realtor.com that morning with the big shop and a hundred acres and a little pond and . . .

Abe

Abe was slipping on his jacket to leave his house when he heard Sapphire’s phone ding. And then ding. And ding again. And then ding ding ding ding ding ding ding . . .

“Is your phone busted?”

Sapphire came into the living room, scowling down at her phone. Her face went pale. “These are all Etsy orders.”

Abe smiled. “That’s great!”

Sapphire set the phone down with a trembling hand, shaking her head. “This is not great. There’s no way I can fill this many orders. I don’t have the supplies. Or the time. I-I-I-”

Abe kissed the top of her forehead. He thought about saying something, but instead ducked out the door. Quickly.

This week I hope to start posting Matthew 5-7 on the @countrygirldrive Instangram account, just a few verses at a time as we continue the Country Girl Cattle Drive, attempting to herd 111 verses from the pages of our Bibles to our hearts. (Matthew 5-7)

(If you are new, here’s the scoop: I write down a verse and then write a story to help us remember the verse. If you want to begin at the start of the current story, go to the post entitled “Store Up.”)

Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

“Roy quit,” Abe said, standing at the front windows of the coop office, watching the tail lights of Roy’s El Camino slip out of sight.

Nia folded the bill in her hand and slipped it into an envelope. “As in, he won’t be at Patterson tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

Blaze hung the elevator keys on the doorframe. “No two weeks notice, huh?”

“Nope.”

Blaze cleared his throat. “What about me?”

Abe turned and looked at him. “I thought you liked being here.”

Blaze leaned back on the counter and folded his arms. “I do. But being a location manager has a nice ring to it.”

Abe shook his head. “We’re a good team here.” He cast a glance at Nia. “The three of us—we’re a good team.”

Nia nodded.

Blaze nodded, too. “I agree, but I really want this, Abe.”

Abe took off his hat and ran his hand over his head. Nia punched her time card, grabbed her jacket and purse, and told them goodnight.

“Goodnight,” they called as she shoved the door open, letting in a cold gust of air that smelled like a fire had been started in a fireplace somewhere in the neighborhood.

Nia’s sneakers were quiet as she descended the concrete steps. The cold air felt good on her hot face. She didn’t want to hear Blaze and Abe’s conversation, but she wasn’t about to leave. She leaned against the 76 Ford and texted her parents that she was going to be later than she had thought. During these long hours of harvest season her mom had been picking her dad up from work.

Her mom and brothers and sisters had been going to downtown Wichita to Uncle Cyrus’ office during the day while her dad worked. Uncle Cyrus had an office suite with several offices. He had cleared one so that her mom could use it as a classroom for her siblings. Nia was thinking she would ask for a day off after harvest so she could go with them. How cool it must be to be in downtown Wichita during the day.

Blaze descended the steps and was heading toward his house when Nia’s truck caught his eye. And then Nia, with her arms folded.

“Hey,” he said uncertainly. “Won’t your truck start?”

“I think so,” she said. “I just wanted to hang out and see if Abe talked you out of leaving.”

“This Patterson thing is my ticket.” A crooked smile broke across his face. In the distance, a fire truck siren sounded.

“Your ticket to what?”

“Nice house. Nice car. The American dream.”

Nia glanced over at the little green house across the road and the little Sundance parked in the driveway. “You have a nice house and a nice car.”

Blaze gave her a condescending smile. “That’s really sweet, but . . . “

“But what?” Nia narrowed her eyes. “The other night you asked me what I wanted. I was going to ask you the same thing, but I guess you already told me.” She turned her back and opened the door on the truck; it groaned loudly.

Blaze threw up his hands and stalked across the parking lot.

When Abe got home that night, Sapphire was standing at the oven, stirring a steaming pot of chili. She had exchanged her frosted hair for emerald green. She flashed him a smile that quickly changed when she saw his pained expression. “Did one of the truckers hit the spout again?”

Abe shook his head. “I would just about exchange my birthrite for a bowl of that chili.”

Sapphire was already pouring him a bowl. She grabbed a bag of cheddar from the fridge and added a sprinkle on top. Handing it to him, she whispered, “The princess is watching herself dance on YouTube. I’ll see if we can borrow the TV for a few minutes.”

Abe nodded and spooned a bite of the chili.

When he heard the music on the TV change, he walked into the living room. The local news was on the screen. Eleanor was gathering up her math book, pencil, and phone but suddenly froze when the newscaster said the name “Douglass West.” Eleanor’s head shot up and she stared at the screen.

“Plans for expanding Wichita’s Old Town district will mean that The Foundry, a ministry to the homeless on Santa Fe, will have to relocate or face possible closure. When asked for his comments on the matter, Mr. West said that this has come as a great shock to their community.”

A brick building was in the background of the shot. Above a small side door with bars over the window was a metal sign that read “The Foundry.” A dozen men and women with jackets and some sort of bag or cart stood in a line, slowly filing into the building.

Abe and Sapphire looked over at Eleanor, but she just looked down quickly, hugged her school things to her, and hurried up the steps.

“Did you know her grandparents ran a homeless ministry?” Sapphire asked Abe as they settled into the couch.

Abe shook his head. “They were pastors of a church when Giles and I were in high school. Great people. They helped me get my priorities straightened out.”

“I guess we know where to find them,” Sapphire said.

Abe nodded. “And so does Eleanor.”

Hey Friends! We are continuing the Country Girl Cattle Drive, attempting to herd 111 verses from the pages of our Bibles to our hearts. (Matthew 5-7) If you are new, here’s the scoop: I write down the verse and then write a story to help us remember the verse. If you want to begin at the start of the current story, go to the post entitled “Store Up.”

This week we’re looking at Matthew 6:22-23 and I will readily admit that I have been pondering this verse for about a year. Now, I know how to research, but there are some things I would just rather ask real, live people about. This particular thing, I had been wanting to get my husband’s take on. He grabbed Clarke’s commentary, read it, and passed it on to me. What I read there was so lovely, I wanted to share it with you. So here are our verses today, followed by the words of Adam Clarke, followed by my story.

“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”

We cannot draw more than one straight line between two indivisible points. We aim at happiness: it is found only in one thing, the indivisible and eternal God. If the line of simple intention be drawn straight to him, and the soul walk by it, with purity of affection, the whole man shall be light in the Lord; the rays of that excellent glory shall irradiate the mind, and through the whole spirit shall the divine nature be transfused. But if a person who enjoyed this heavenly treasure permit his simplicity of intention to deviate from heavenly to earthly good; and his purity of affection to be contaminated by worldly ambition, secular profits, and animal gratifications; then the light which was in him becomes darkness, i.e. his spiritual discernment departs, and his union with God is destroyed: all is only a palpable obscure; and, like a man who has totally lost his sight, he walks without direction, certainty, or comfort. Who can adequately describe the misery and wretchedness of that soul which has lost its union with the fountain of all good, and, in losing this, has lost the possibility of happiness till the simple eye be once more given and the straight line once more drawn.

Blaze parked among the three cars, two trucks, and the Gary Fisher bike that were parked around Abe and Sapphire’s house. As he walked around his old, red Sundance, he wished he had a black, Dodge Charger, but as he opened the passenger door, he decided Nia made the Sundance look pretty great.

Abe threw open the back door as they stepped onto the little porch. The smells of brownies and nachos wafted out to them.

“Yes!” Blaze cried out, walking past Abe, both hands raised in the air. “Brownies!”

Abe grabbed his arms and pinned him against the wall. “Don’t touch those brownies, little brother.”

Blaze laughed, wrestling him off, lunging for a brownie. The metal legs of the table screeched across the floor as Abe caught Blaze’s arms again and they plowed into it. Sapphire ran into the kitchen, shouting, “Penalty!”

A crowd of college age guys followed her, chanting,” Fight! Fight! Fight!”

She beat them back into the tiny living room. “Interference!” Nia had met Sapphire briefly at the coop and had liked her athletic, casual dress and snarky banter with the farmers.

Blaze wrestled one arm free and snagged a brownie, lightning fast, and stuffed it in his mouth. “Bicterry!” he shouted, crumbs falling to the floor.

Abe released him, shoving him away. “You’re making a mess in my house, man.” He walked back to the living room and stood by Sapphire. “Why do invite these people to our house?” he said.

Blaze picked up the crumbs, grabbed a napkin off the table, and extended his arm toward Nia, whispering, “Are you sure you want to meet these people?”

She smiled and followed Blaze into the living room.

“Hey, everybody,” Blaze said, “This is Nia.”

“Oh good!” Sapphire said. “Check it out, Eleanor. Another female!” Nia gave a friendly smile to the sullen young woman across the room, sitting on the bottom step of a stairway leading to the second story. Abe had talked about Eleanor at work, but Nia had hoped the girl was just quiet, like Io. Not so. Io’s quiet didn’t shoot barbs like Eleanor’s quiet.

Abe pulled chairs in from the kitchen and everybody got situated. Abe nestled into a couch by Sapphire who was now holding an adult coloring book and pulling red pencil from a cardboard box. He cleared his throat. “Prayer requests?”

A guy with a goatee wearing a Chief’s jersey raised his hand. “Chem is killing me. My parents don’t have an insurance policy on me. Please pray about my funeral expenses.”

Abe nodded and started writing in a notebook. “Pray for Roman’s family. A lot. Anybody else?”

“Nia’s family needs a place to live.”

Nia blinked. “Yeah. That would be nice. But we’re not, like, poor or something. My dad works. We have money. We just have a big family. Mom calls places and they say, ‘How many people?’ and Mom says ‘Seven’ and they say ‘Whatever.’” ”

“So there are five children in your family?” Sapphire asked, not looking up from her coloring.

“Yeah,” Nia said. “And Mom’s expecting.”

Sapphire’s pencil lead broke.

“Let’s pray,” Abe said, slapping his notebook shut. They prayed for Roman and Nia’s family, for the farmers and corn harvest, for Aunt Min as she settled into her new life at the Mt. Hope care center, and for Blaze as he continued to make decisions for her.

It was dark when Blaze and Nia started driving back toward Cheney Lake.

“What did you think?” Blaze asked as the final house of Mt. Hope slipped past their vision.

“It’s a fun group,” Nia said. “Thanks for taking me. Sapphire’s painting was amazing.”

“Yeah, she’s really good. She’s got her own Etsy store.”

The Bible study that night had been on the eye being the light of the body. Partway through the lesson, Abe had reached behind the couch and pulled out a canvas. Sapphire had been coloring and didn’t notice at first, but there was a stunned silence as everybody looked at the painting and then she realized what was happening and acted a little mortified.

But the painting was awesome. It was the mirror image of a person, facing opposite directions. Everything in the middle was kinda stretchy and weird. One face had a light bulb for an eye and the other had a charcoal briquet. The light bulb body was full of green vines and bright, colorful flowers. The charcoal body was skeletal, ashen, and eerie figures loomed in shadows.

The lake was coming up sooner than Blaze wanted it to, but that fact didn’t make it any easier to come up with something to say. He wondered if Nia would notice if he drove just a little bit slower.

“So, what do you want, Nia?”

She shrugged. “I’m good.”

“I mean, like, big picture stuff.”

Nia felt her face get hot and laughed. “Gotcha. Ummm, I don’t like to talk about it a lot because people like ninety degree corners and four year degrees and I want the messiest thing in the world.”

“You want glitter glue?”

“I was thinking sloppy joes.”

“Maybe watermelon.”

“Yeah. A thick slice on a hot day. No fork.” Nia laughed. “It sounds so stupid, but I want love. Whatever that means. I want God’s love. I want a life of love. If that’s feeding people in some slum in a dark corner of the universe, fine. If it’s having my own family, fine. But if it’s the family thing, I want a home. A real home. Not an airport where three-year-olds are walking around with boarding passes in the pocket of their suit coat, ready to head out in their own direction while the rest of the so-called family goes in their directions.”

“Three-year-olds in suits,” Blaze said.

“I’m serious,” Nia said. “I don’t want a three-year-old in a suit.”

“Let’s face it, nobody wants a three-year-old in a suit.”

They were now pulling ino the state park, with all of its reflective metal signs, ninety degree angles, and numbered rules. “Hey,” Nia said, pointing in the opposite direction of her family’s site. “Do you want to drive down that way and get out and throw rocks in the lake?”

“Sure.”

They pulled into the same area where Nia’s family had been flooded out two weeks ago. The waters had receded now. Gentle waves lapped the shore. The trees had lost enough leaves that their feet crunched them when they got out of the truck and walked toward the shore.

“I don’t want to mislead you,” Nia said, throwing the first rock into the water.

“You brought me down here to sell me Tupperware, didn’t you?” Blaze asked.
Nia laughed. “No, I’m serious. I don’t want to mislead you on who I am. I make myself sound like a great person who wants great things, but I’m honestly in this weird spot. I spent a lot of the last year trying to help out my aunt and uncle and I feel totally used up and the last thing I feel for them is fluffy, fuzzy love. It feels more like a barbell in a winter garage. Right now, I’m afraid of God and what He might want to do with my future.”

Blaze nodded, threw a large stone a very long ways, and was rewarded by a nice splash.

“My aunt had this waterskiing accident and broke her hip. They have three kids and I wanted to help out. Help out. But my aunt checked out. She could have been doing so much—planning meals, putting in the Clicklist order, helping with homework, listening to her husband when he got home from work, but she didn’t. She expected me to clean and shop and cook and she just laid there on the couch for six months and cooked her brain on painkillers and Netflix.”

Nia pulled her arm back to cast a stone and stopped. She stumbled, brought her hand down, and looked at the stone. Tears filled her eyes and she sank to her knees.

Blaze noticed, but just stood nearby, hands in his pockets, looking out at the moon rising over the rocking water.

Thanks for coming along for the ride today! The Country Girl Drive cattle drive continues–moving 111 verses from the pages of our Bibles to our hearts. If you are just joining, the idea here is to memorize Matthew 5-7. I write stories to help us think about and memorize these three chapters. The story I’m in the middle of now starts at the post titled “Store Up.”

Matthew 6:19-21“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Abe

“Eleanor, what are you doing?” Abe asked.

“That picture doesn’t please me.” She sat down on the couch with a plate of salad and crossed her legs, looking at the TV. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Abe set his plate on the coffee table, got up, and turned the frame back around. His sister’s eyes stared back at him, a huge, silly smile on her face. Eleanor used to smile, Abe thought, And her smile looked about like that. In the picture, Eleanor’s mother, Lucy, stood between Abe and Giles, all of their arms interlocked over each other’s shoulders. Their faces were still wet from a dunk in the Arkansas River at North High’s Water Fest. One of the other teams had overturned their canoe when they came in dead last. It was the first time the three of them had been a team at something—and it didn’t go so well. Fortunately, they didn’t all give up there.

I miss you, man, Abe thought, looking at Giles. His friend’s brown eyes looked so young, so fired-up, so alive. Like he could never die. But you did, huh? And now we’ve got a mess on our hands. What am I supposed to do with your little girl? She needs you. We all need you.

“This picture means a lot to me,” Abe said, trying to reign in the anger, not looking at Eleanor. “It will stay facing us.”

Eleanor was silent.

Abe resumed his seat. She must be pretty mad at her mom, Abe reasoned. He could understand. An idea occurred to him. “Eleanor,” he said. “I hadn’t even thought about the fact that your grandma and grandpa live in Wichita. I can call them up and see if they would like to come up here and visit you.”

“No, thank you,” Eleanor said crisply. “They do not seem to have much interest in me. Therefore, I do not have much interest in them.” She stuck a forkful of salad in her mouth and continued to stare down the TV.

Abe ground his teeth as he settled back into his recliner with his plate. What poison has my sister been feeding this child?

Blaze

Blaze put an 11 hour video of the coral reef up on YouTube for Aunt Min, situated her tray and bowl in front of her, and then settled into his chair at the table with a bowl of cooked cabbage and ham. It was the same thing he made for Aunt Min at every meal; it was the only thing Aunt Min ever wanted to eat. It was about the only thing she had cooked for him since his mother died. The other kids had complained about school breakfast and lunch, but Blaze, who knew enough to join in the joking, was actually thankful for the break from cooked cabbage and little bits of ham.

That had been one of the tough things about losing his mother—the food she cooked. She was always cooking whatever she thought he liked—macaroni and cheese, lasagna, pizza, chicken nuggets. She was usually right. Except that she really loved baked sweet potatoes and butter and was always thinking he should, too.

His mind turned to Carriage Crossing—to the sweet waitresses and the fried chicken, mashed potatoes and apple pie. He looked out the front screen door, at the clouds gathering south of town.

Nia

Nia was going to go back for another helping of cinnamon applesauce, but Uncle Nick was at Grandma’s stove, filling his plate again, so she shoved her paper plate in the trash and headed outside with the kids.

They were running around with water guns and bomb pops. Everyone but Io. She was walking along the fence where Grandma’s roses had intertwined in the chain link over the years. Nia had missed Io and the others so much, but being back around Io had been difficult. In their months apart, Nia had had to grow rhinoceros skin to survive her time at Aunt Karen and Uncle Nick’s house and had grown to appreciate the protection.

When thieves break in and steal, we must put thick bars in the windows of our soul.

Io was totally messing with the rhino skin and threatened to melt the thick bars. Io felt everything so deeply.

She’s an octopus—tentacles floating all around her—reaching out to feel—reaching out to love.

How will she ever survive in real life? Nia wondered. She watched Io stroke the petals of a rose. Nia didn’t dislike Io, but she couldn’t let her too far in, either. Maybe when she’s older, Nia thought.

Thunder rumbled. Nia looked to the sky, wondering if she should encourage the kids to go in. Aunt Karen appeared at Grandma and Grandpa’s back door, leaning on her walker. “Time to come in, guys!” she called.

The kids ran past Nia in a blur. Drops began to fall and Nia walked farther from the house, down to the wooden platform anchored in the cottonwood trees. She grabbed the rope swing and spent the afternoon jumping from the platform, swinging back and forth, back and forth in the warm rain.

Hello, friends! The Country Girl Drive Cattle Drive continues—moving 111 verses from the pages of our Bible to our hearts. We are trying to memorize Matthew 5-7. The current story starts at the post called “Store Up.”

Matthew 6:19 Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not beak in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

That morning, when Nia had chosen the green, cotton dress from her duffel bag, a moth had flown out of the folds and onto the white, cement block wall. She had checked the dress over for holes and asked her mom if it was a good choice. Her mom had smiled and given her a little nod, choosing her own clothes from her own bag. They had had the whole twelve toilet/six shower bathroom to themselves that morning. It was the last Monday in August. All the local schools had started up which meant numbers at the lake would be down now.

The wavy, grainy mirror hadn’t been a huge help with getting her part straight, but once her rust-colored hair was combed, her mom moved a few strands and declared it perfect, saying, “Better hurry. Your dad is about ready to take off. There are granola bars and bottled water in the passenger seat of the van.”

Nia had run from the bathrooms on the hill down to their tent near the lake, the humid morning air hugging her. She threw her bag in the tent, grabbed grub from the van, and beat her dad into the cab of the 1976 Ford by a mere millisecond. She was about to break into a victory chant when she saw Io’s hand on the window beside her. Nia rolled down the window, watching Io’s large, inky blue eyes fill with tears and her freckled cheeks flush with color. Nia leaned out to hug her.

“I’ll be back in a few hours.” She had felt Io nod. “Pray for me, okay?” Io had nodded again.

Now Nia was getting out of the ‘76 at the coop. The sun was baking the white, gravel drive all around the building. She felt like a loaf of bread rising . . . rising . . . and probably being burnt.

That’s all I ever do, Nia thought to herself. One whole summer at the lake and all I did was get more freckles. And burn.

She grabbed her water bottle, slammed the stubborn door shut on the truck, and braced herself for a new place and new people. When her foot stepped on that first cement step up to the office, she remembered a conversation a year earlier at her family’s church back in Missouri. She had been sitting in the foyer, talking to Mrs. Price. Mrs. Price was wearing a pretty white dress with little green, four leaf clovers running in diagonal stripes. The rhinestone buckle on her white hat reflected the bright, August light coming in the glass front doors.

“Men are afraid of women,” Mrs. Price had cautioned.

Nia had laughed.

Nia tucked the memory behind her ear, climbed the steps, took hold of the round, metal knob on the door, and strode in.

Silence, except for the dripping of a coffee maker. A table full of men, staring at her. Two rows of shelves stocked with fifty pound bags of food. Two vending machines along the wall. A metal first aid kit hung on the wall. The smell of dust. Of grain. Of coffee. And maybe fear.

Nia cleared her throat. “What do you call a redhead with an attitude?”

The youngest of the men glanced over at one of the older men and then back to her. “What?”

“Normal.”

The room broke into laughter.

When the young guy stopped laughing, he asked her if there was anything he could help her with.

She smiled. “I’m looking for a job. My dad heard you might need some office help during harvest.”

“Ah! I’ll get you an application,” the young guy said, walking to the next room.

Mia held her ground. “I’ll only work here under one condition,” Nia said, eyeing the men.

“What’s that?”

“I’m the only one who tells the redhead jokes around here.”

All the men nodded.

“Fair enough,” the young guy said, returning with the application. “My name is Blaze.”

“Funny,” Nia said. “That’s my name, too.”

“Really?”

“No. Do you have a pen?”

“Yes.”

She followed Blaze to the next room and sat down at the front window where she wrote her name in the first block on the application: NEPTUNIA.

A new universe of possibilities, Blaze thought to himself, casually glancing away from the application to look out at the big, white silos. “That’s quite the name.”

“Yeah, my dad loves space. Like, outer space. He says it makes him think about how big God is.” She paused at the “Address” box. “I go by Nia.”

“Nice to meet you, Nia.” Blaze said.

“Nice to meet you, too.” She jotted a Wichita address in the box and kept on writing.

Hey friends! We’re pushing forward with our CGD cattle drive, moving 111 verses from our Bibles to our hearts. Today’s story looks completely different than the journey we’ve been on, but have no fear—next week things will start looking familiar again.

Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where theives do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

“It’s gonna blow.”

Her voice was monotone, but Blaze’s eyebrows shot up. He wanted to joke with her like old times. Sometimes he would look at the back of her squarish head, the gray curls cropped short like she had always kept it, and pretend that nothing had changed. He wanted to say, “No no no, Aunt Min. We don’t joke like that around here.” But instead, he gently guided her tiny frame away from the screen door where she was looking out at the grain elevator across the road.

Settled into her chair, she grabbed the flashlight on the little table beside her. “I have my flashlight for when it explodes.”

Blaze nodded slowly, holding his tongue, and grabbed his work boots from beside the door. Certian phrases from the one million hours of training videos he had watched at the beginning of the summer came back to him. “Particulate matter in grain elevators is highly explosive.” “Keep equipment maintained to prevent fire hazards and explosions.” And his personal favorite “This job makes first responder work look safe.”

There was a knock at the door as he stood to grab his blue work shirt from the back of the kitchen chair.

“Hello, Blaze,” Mrs. Givens said, letting herself in. Her brownish-grayish straight hair was pulled back into a little pony tail. Something about it made Blaze think about a winter night when his mom was working “Dark and Lovely” into her shoulder-length hair.

“Sister Givens,” he said, nodding. “The hospice nurse called and said she’ll be a little late this morning. Will that work all right for you?”

“I think we’ll get along just fine,” Mrs. Givens said, taking Minnie Mae’s hand. Minnie Mae looked up at her with frightened eyes, but then the flash of recognition came and she smiled.

Blaze looked at both of them for a moment. As he walked out, it occurred to him that maybe he was thinking about his mom more these days as Aunt Min’s health declined. It felt good to walk out into the hot sunshine where all those memories melted away.

As he crossed the road, he tried to calculate in his head how much he would have saved up by the end of the month. He had already been on Realtor.com that morning, watching for new listings in the area. If just the right deal came up, he wanted to get on it as quickly as possible. The blindingly white silos of the elevator may have looked like explosion hazards to Aunt Min that morning, but they had always looked more like rockets to Blaze as he had grown up in the little town of Mt. Hope, Kansas—rockets ready to blast him into a new universe of possiblities.

Abe and Sapphire pulled into the parking lot of the Greyhound station ten minutes later than Eleanor’s scheduled arrival. The air conditioner was low on R-134a. Therefore the actual temperature in the Charger was not terribly cold, but the little grunts and lack of words had made the air in the vehicle downright icy. The frosted tips of Sapphire’s spiky hair fit right in.

When they stepped into the station and removed their sunglasses, they didn’t see her. But when a small person wrapped in an African print scarf and sunglasses approached them, they stretched their faces into fake smiles on the off-chance that this could be their darling neice.

“Abe. Sapphire.” Her words were clipped. She shifted the duffel bag on her shoulder.

“So good to see you, sweetheart!” Sapphire cooed, leaning forward and embracing her.

Abe saw his neice’s brows furrow, but he leaned down and patted her back anyway, hoping the sweet little girl he’d known was still in there somewhere. “Let me take your bag.”

On the ride back to Mt. Hope, icicles formed on Abe’s insides as each and every one of his questions and Sapphire’s were answered by snarky, sparse offerings. What on earth had he agreed to, telling his sister he would take on his neice while she took a job in the middle east for a year?

Lunch at home was even better. Sapphire pulled a pan of her homemade macaroni and cheese from the oven and set it on the kitchen table.

“We’re going to dine in the kitchen?” Eleanor asked flatly.

“Well, yes,” Sapphire replied.

“Mmmm.” Eleanor sighed. “Well, I will eat well and grow strong*.”

Abe pulled out a chair for Eleanor and sat down in his own seat. He spun his Cowboys at into the empty chair and ran a hand over his very white bald head. “Sapphire makes a mean mac ‘n cheese.”

“We know ballerinas need a lot of energy,” Sapphire said with a hopfeul smile.

“I am a dancer.” Eleanor sat straight-backed, still wearing the scarf and sunglasses, extending her hands to pray.

Sapphire glanced at Abe. Abe caught the signal. “I’m going to ask you to remove your sunglasses at the table, Eleanor.” He smiled. “Let us see those pretty green–”
But he stopped as the girl removed the glasses and set them beside her plate.

Eleanor’s eyes were brown.

Blaze hopped up the steps to the co-op office two at a time, threw the door open, and walked the carbon copy of the Chitwood’s chemical order to Abe’s office.

Abe’s desk had looked about the same for as long as Blaze could remember. The picture of Sapphire, stuck to the corner of his monitor, had appeared about the time that Blaze started seventh grade and realized he could buy Mountain Dew from the co-op’s vending machine. A framed verse sat beside a stack of manilla envelopes and Abe’s silver coffee tumbler. Blaze wondered if it would be his desk one day. Except I am never drinking coffee, he told himself.

When he returned to the front desk to finish filling out the paperwork for the Phostoxin treatment he would start when Abe returned, he could hear the farmers in the adjoining room talking politics. If I hear one more word about how stupid the democrats are, I’m going to explode, he thought.

He dropped the pen in his hand.

He’d thought it. He’d thought that awful word. Don’t think about it, he told himself. Don’t even think the word ‘explosion.’

He soothed himself with thoughts of ALL the cleaning he had done since he started. All the pulleys and gears and bearings he had checked and greased and replaced. He thought about how the windows in the top of the elevator positively shone.

And then there was that other awful word,“stupid,” spoken in the next room.

Blaze threw down his pen and stalked into the room. He imagined himself looking like Cam Newton, except maybe a foot taller and a little more chiseled, but the farmers, gathered around the table, drinking their coffee, didn’t even look up at him. The angry, articulate speech he expected to give came out, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to call anybody stupid.”

They all looked up then. Blaze thought he had broken through to them, but then he realized they weren’t looking at him, they were looking past him, out the window.

That’s when Blaze turned and saw the fire.

* From the Langston Hughes poem, “I, Too”

The Country Girl Cattle Drive continues—herding 111 verses from the pages of our Bibles to our hearts! I learned something recently that encouraged me. While it is true that children can learn things more rapidly than adults, adults are able to learn many things, like learning a foreign language, faster than children because adults tend to have more DRIVE! So dig deep—find that country girl drive inside you and memorize a fuel tank full of scripture! We’ve got some miles to travel, Lord willing, and we’re going to need it!

Next week marks something new. We will continue our course, looking at Matthew 5-7, but today is the last day we will be with country girl Io. Next week we will be meeting some new characters and a much more complex story will start unfolding.

Matthew 6:16-18 “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face,that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

The next few weeks were magical. More caring for cows with Dad. Lots of work cleaning up the cabin with Mede. And walks with the whole family on Sunday afternoons. On one walk we saw a huge beaver come up for air in the river amid big chunks of ice. His big tail slapped the surface of the water before he dove back down. Another time we saw a bobcat who sat on his haunches and watched us walk by. Mom clutched Ro a little tighter and Dad slipped his hand to the inside of his coat, but the bobcat just watched us for awhile and then turned and walked off in the other direction.

But as magical as it all was, we all knew that Eli would be back soon and it would be time to move. Dad, who hates computers, was on our computer more, writing his resume, and he ate meals with us less. He was always smiling when he knew we were looking, but even his smiles looked like the taut ends of a pitched tent, which wasn’t quite right for Dad. When he came in from morning chores, he would wrap up in a blanket and sit on the couch for a little while, reading his Bible and looking out the window.

Once, I got up when it was still dark out and noticed that the light was on in the kitchen. My door wasn’t fully shut. I watched through the slit to see what was going on. Dad was at the counter, sprinkling a plate with crumbs out of the bread bag. Then he put a drop of syrup on the plate and spread it with a fork.

“That’s one weird breakfast,” I thought. But then, rather than eating it, my dad set it at his place at the table and put the other plates around at our spots, laying silverware beside each plate. Then he shut off the light and walked over to the couch where he knelt down, clasping his hands on the couch cushion.

I walked as quietly as I could back to my bed and slipped under the covers, pondering my father’s strange actions. But then I remembered a fun lesson my Sunday School teacher back in Missouri taught me and my friends one Sunday.

Amber, Becky, and I came into class as usual, talking and laughing, but we stopped suddenly when we saw that our usual boring, white table was covered with a blue table cloth and nice dishes. Our teacher smiled at us and asked us to leave our shoes by the door.

“We’re going to do a meal old school,” Miss Dory told us. “Like two thousand years old school.”

“Food?” Amber said. “Cool!”

We kicked off our shoes and sat down. Miss Dory explained to us that good hospitality in Jesus’ day required the host to make sure everybody’s feet got washed.

“Pedi!” Becca cried.

“Yep.” Miss Dory laughed. “I kinda thought you guys would think that.”

She pulled out three little totes that we washed our feet in. And then she pulled out a tackle box full of nail polish. While we painted our nails she explained more about ancient hospitality.

“It was also customary for the host to give his guests a kiss when coming in to his home and to pour a little oil on his guests’ head. The nice smell of the oil was kind of like a cologne to help cover up the, uh, “hard-working smell” his guests may be carrying at the end of the day.”

She had a little bottle of olive oil that she let us take a whiff of.

“I’m not going to pour it on your heads today,” Miss Dory said. “In ancient times, if you were to see a person with oil on his head, you would know he just ate.”

“Kinda like having a dab of ketchup in the corner of your mouth?” I had asked.

“Yup,” Miss Dory had responded.

Thinking back to that, I felt like I finally understood that passage where Jesus talked about putting oil on your head when fasting. “Dad’s making it look like he ate,” I whispered to myself. Suddenly the taut corners of Dad’s smile were a happy thing—he was trying his best to look happy even though the hunger of fasting was making him feel grumpy. And the blanket wrapped around him after chores—he was just cold from fasting.

Suddenly my worry for Dad broke like a great branch breaking off and falling into the Snake river. My dad was okay. He was more than okay.

“Jesus, please answer my Dad’s prayers,” I whispered.

And then a deep sleep buried me like a snow drift.

That night I helped Mom with dishes. Steam was rising out of the water, making my mom look like the water fairy I imagine she is, cloaked in magic.

“Io,” she said, scrubbing on a cast iron pan with the metal scrubber, “Do you know the verse that says, All we like sheep have gone astray?”

“I think so.” I set a cup in the cupboard and reached for a plate to dry. Dad was in an overstuffed chair, looking at the mail. Ro giggled, climbing over Mede to get to Cal. It was all so perfect, except that Nia was missing.

“Did I ever tell you about how I came back to Jesus after I wandered away?”

I stopped drying for a moment. “No,” I said. “I didn’t know you ever wandered away.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Mom said. “Sheep don’t mean to, either, a lot of times. They’re just walking along and all of a sudden they look up and realize they’re lost. I was a teenager and I got distracted.”

Her words caught at my heart and made me afraid for Nia. While we were still living in Gladstone, Nia had gone to live with Aunt Karen in Wichita. Aunt Karen had had a water skiing accident at the end of the summer. A broken hip meant bed rest and Aunt Karen had three children. Nia had just graduated from high school and had been praying that God would show her what to do. When Nia heard the sad news about Aunt Karen, Nia said she knew what God wanted her to do.

Mom continued her story. “One morning, I saw a beautiful sunrise before I went to work and I wanted to thank God for it, but I couldn’t figure out how. I felt like I had completely forgotten how to pray. And then I felt guilty for all that time of not talking to God.”

She handed me the cast iron pan. It dripped onto the floor mat while I set down the drying cloth and grabbed a napkin. I set it on the stove to dry it. “What did you do?”

“I was one my way to work when it happened. When I was clocking in, a really nice co-worker asked me what was wrong. It seemed like a strange thing to talk about, but I just told her that I couldn’t remember how to pray. She said, ‘Do you know the Lord’s prayer?’ And that was exactly what I needed to hear. So simple. When work was over, I drove to a park, closed my eyes, and said the the Lord’s prayer. It set me on the path back to Him.”

Mom and I finished dishes without saying anymore. In my heart, I prayed that Nia wasn’t getting distracted. Wichita was big enough to distract anyone.

Mom sat down in Dad’s lap and asked him if we could say the Lord’s prayer before we all went to bed.

“Great idea,” he said, setting the mail on the floor.

And so, with dishes done and Ro climbing across all of us, we said the Lord’s prayer together.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses and we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

(If you are new, you may want to start at the Salt and Light post and work your way this direction.)

Matthew 6:1-4

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

After lunch Cal was still asleep and Mede and I knew we had a job to do. After Mom and Ro laid down for their afternoon nap, Mede and I slipped out quietly. No need to do this in front of Mom and be seen. We were looking for a different reward–not getting in big trouble, namely. As we walked the long road toward the bull’s pasture, we passed the old bunkhouse.

“I’ve been thinking, Mede. I was listening to Eli and Dad talk when we first got here. Eli had this thought that maybe he could fix up that cabin one day. He thought maybe if there was some guy trying to get his life straightened out, he could live there and help Eli.”

“Yeah, I think I remember hearing that, too.” Mede stooped down and picked up some snow to pack in his gloved hands as we walked. “He also said we could have any treasure out of it we wanted.”

It was true. Mede, Cal, and I had peeked in there briefly one day for that purpose, but it totally creeped us out. Rat droppings. Darkness. Cobwebs. An old couch housing who-knew-what.

Mede hit a fence post with the snow ball. “You wanna walk along the river?”

“Yeah.”

The Snake River winds along Eli’s land, creating the boundary between what is his and what is Evan’s. Today it looked like it had since we had arrived—like a long, still road of ice. It made me think of how Mom would tell us that in the last days, the hearts of many would grow cold. “Don’t let your heart grow cold, Io,” she would say. “Keep a warm, loving current flowing through you.”

At the barn, I grabbed a little hay in one hand and a tin can of grain in the other while Mede grabbed a board and a shovel. We walked to opposite ends of the bull pen. The bull eyed us suspiciously, but I shook the can of grain like I had seen Dad do and the bull trotted over to me with the same eagerness and innocence of Ro trotting after a cup of Fruit Loops. I walked around to the far side of his pen and dropped the hay onto a little area of white snow. As I sprinkled the grain on the hay, I saw Mede on the other side of the pen, working Cal’s second boot loose with the shovel as he stood on the board. In a flash, he was out of the pen, the board was pulled back, and I let out a breath that became a visible cloud before me.

While we cleaned Cal’s boots and the board at the barn, we concocted a plan.

“Do you reckon we could listen to that Mile’s Davis CD from Uncle Cyrus while we work on that cabin?” Mede used a little chunk of 2×4 to scrape the mud from the board.

“I don’t know,” I said, dipping Cal’s boot in a bucket of water. “Is that like sounding trumpets when you give to the poor?”

“If we’re not in the synagogue or on the street to be honored by men, I don’t think we’d be rewarding ourselves.”

I nodded, the water soaking through my gloves, stinging my fingers. Pretty soon, my hands were going to be so cold, the right one really wouldn’t know what the left one was doing. The thought made me laugh.

“What?” Mede asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I think you’re right. I think that even if we listen to Miles Davis, our giving will still be in secet.”

“And our Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward us,” Mede said.

Best secret ever, I thought, removing my gloves and smiling at Cal’s now-very-clean boots. Uncertain treasure. Certain reward.