Sweet Sweet Travis

Travis, aka Juicy, Hicks.  7 years ago he quietly snuck in, snuggled in as close as he could to my heart and decided to stay for a while. At that time, Travis lived across the street from Brock's office. He comes from a torn apart family, his father unknown, his mother a drug addict with mental problems and brothers and sisters in and out of jail.  But something about Travis exudes goodness and love. He has a quiet nature about him that turns playful and jovial when he knows you and trusts you. 

Over the past years we became a safe spot for Travis.  We wanted to be a place he could come if things were too tough at home, or quite frankly, if the only spot at home was a floor to sleep on.  He could stay with us as long as he was making the right decisions, in school and in life. Life is hard for him.  He is surrounded by family and friends that are making wrong choices and if caught in a vulnerable moment, could bring him down as well.  Travis has a soul that wants to do the right things but a heart that connects him to his family. He loves everyone with everything he has and will give you all he has as well.

For a couple years Travis moved down to South Carolina to live with his aunt and finish high school.  He thrived down there, and was the first in his family to graduate!  The day after graduation he packed his things up, came back to Asheville and moved in with us.  WHAT A BLESSING HE IS!!!!!   Everywhere we go the Travis Hicks fan club gets bigger and bigger due to his sweet demeanor and playful ways.  Fletcher, Hugh and Cooper absorb every minute they have with him and when he cannot be with us the house feels empty.  Now don't get me wrong, having a teenager in the house has surely had its trials, and I feel that God paved the way of teenagedom through Travis. We have certainly had to have the "heart to hearts" and even have had a car wrecked by him over the months. But the power of the love I feel for him is simply overwhelming.

This past week he let me know that he was going to move to Atlanta and live with his uncle, who is a healthy and trustworthy man.   It seems that the love he felt for his family here was taken advantage of, and no matter how hard he would work, they would find a way to manipulate him to pay for this and that until his paycheck was down to nothing.  He felt he had to leave town and get away from the negativity and pull of his family in order to make something of himself.

At dinner last night, while the children were pounding him with questions after questions about his move, holding back my tears I told them that I would prefer to talk about something else.  Well, kids being kids, they continued to ask Travis different questions and right there I burst into tears enough to silence the table (trust me, that is quite a feat). Though I am happy he is making a wise choice, my heart is hurting.  My oldest son is leaving the roost.  And I guess God is paving the way for that step as well.  In one week my home will be less one child and my heart will ache more that it does just anticipating the day.  But this family will always have a place for him.

Extraordinary in ordinary things

There was a time in my life, actually the majority of my life, that ordinary was a word that appalled me. Who in their right mind strives for ordinary? It is boring, unappealing and simple.

Yet being someone extraordinary meant I had made something of my life. My definition of extraordinary would differ from many people, but at its core was the same desire. I never strived to win the Noble Peace Prize, or taking an idea like Facebook and running with it... Yet I did strive to stand out. I wanted to be the best dressed. I wanted to be the prettiest. I wanted to be the best athlete. I wanted to be noticed. To be honest, I think that is why I took to drinking at such a young age. The drinking uninhibited me and helped push me to grab the most popular vote. I NEEDED to be special, significant.

Getting married and having children changed my priorities, but not my hunger to be extraordinary. I wanted my children to be the cutest and best dressed. They needed to be the gifted athletes. Not only was my worth tallied by how impressed you were with my house, it was always in need of new additions or decorations. We needed to keep up with the Smith's and know everything about them. My weekends were spent heading out to another big event eerily similar to the last one, leaving my children with the well known babysitter. And the following morning was spent gossiping about the Smiths', judging every outfit that was worn, every word that was said, and ALWAYS the question, "Can you believe so and so did that???"

Was I actually extraordinary? No. Hollow? Absolutely. I was sustaining myself solely on peoples’ impressions and opinions, never grasping how fleeting and unreliable those are.

It was not until a couple of years ago that I began to open my eyes to the emptiness of the life that we were leading. It was very painful to tear the thick skin away from our bodies. There is a scene in C.S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader symbolizes the shedding perfectly. Eunice is a boy who was transformed into a dragon, and had tried over and over to shed his scales in order to be a boy again. But in every attempt, the scales fell to the ground only to quickly grow back. Eventually Eunice turned to Aslan, the lion and King of the land, out of desperation.

“Then the Lion said… ‘You will have to let me undress you’
I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I have ever felt. The only thing that made be able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off…It hurts like a billy, but it is such fun to see it coming away,
… Well he pulled the beastly stuff right off-just as I thought I had done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt. And there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker and more knobbly- looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth skin and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been.”

For both me and Brock, it was a long and painful process to “peel our skin back”. We still struggle daily to live in the Way, but it becomes more woven in with study and in the honesty of friends. Our esteem now comes from our relationship with the Lord not in things of this world.

When Jesus was born, he was delivered in a manger. Not the nicest suite in the hospital, but in a trough surrounded by animals and unpleasant smells. There was no room in the Inn for these unknowns. He was the son of a carpenter and a laborer himself. And when he travelled to spread The Word, he was ORDINARY. He was not attractive to the eyes, he was not dressed well and certainly he wore no crown on his head.

Isaiah 53:2-5


He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

In C.S. Lewis's book, The Screwtape Letters, the devil is training his nephew on how to lure people into his grasp. When the nephew expresses concern that his client converting to Christianity, the Devil smirks and lets him know that new Christians are the most vulnerable! They will go to church, look down the pews and realize how ordinary everyone is. They will then think ,"I did not sign up for ordinary!" And it is then that the devil should roll up his sleeves and begin his work.

A couple years have passed. I now find my joys and fulfillment in what has been in front of me for a long time. I find it in Brock, my husband and my best friend. In my Home, where the three boys, Brock and I share the core of our life; laughter, love and intimacy. No longer is it a place of pride. At the ball fields where I go to relax and find peace in the boys energy and solace in friends. No tackle or homerun can improve on their greatness in my heart. The ball fields are also where my friends are. Simple, ordinary friends, who love me and love my children. Don't get me wrong, all of these "simple" friends do extraordinary things- but the core is utter simplicity, without priorities out of whack. And lastly, Church is now a daily event scattered around town and in homes, but more importantly in my heart. On Wednesdays we share fellowshipwith an eclectic group of homeless and businessmen at Haywood Street Congregation. Formally, this would have been a place that we attended to check off the list of “doing good for the community”. But now, we can’t miss it. It is where we are all simply brothers and sisters in Christ with one shared desire... To soak up The Word.

I have 5 t-shirts at home that read “Live Simply”. In AA one of the main motto’s to staying sober is Keep It Simple. If you get too complicated you get lost. I have been lost for a long time. I am happy to be on track. Life is in the simple things, I long to thrive in the ordinary.

The Day after Christmas

It was the day after Christmas and all through the house,
the kids are all crazy and need to get out.
The stockings are empty and candy is eaten,
On Xbox they echo, "who's next to be beaten?"
The snow has been falling for 2 solid days,
10 inches we have and more on the way.
A snowman was built with the name Peppermint,
but the dogs jumped on him and off his head went.
Brock and Fletch are packing getting ready to fish,
To the Bahamas they go for a 12th birthday wish.
Inside of the house is an obstacle course,
stepping over stripped clothes, the toys and much more.
It sounds chaotic and wild, and it most certainly is,
But there is nothing on Earth I would trade for this.
And as things quiet down towards the end of the night,
We gather together and snuggle up tight.
We are grateful for each other, but more, Jesus's birth,
And want to Wish you a Merry Christmas and Peace on Earth

The Great Thanksgiving Feast

6 pies- 1 apple, 2 chocolate silk, 2 pumpkin, one pecan
1 very large Turkey Brined then roasted
4 casserole dishes full of cornbread stuffing and Pepperidge Farm dressing
Mashed Potatoes
salad
cranberry sauce
Squash casserole
Parkerhouse rolls
____________________

2 days to prepare
30 seconds to bless
20 minutes to devour
2 hours to clean=

The rest of the afternoon to sit in an absolute coma, as content and grateful as a girl can be.  I am surrounded by the ones I love, minus a few (Love you bro!) getting our fill of football and Christmas movies. Did I mention  how content I feel?.  Truly, this is a joy that resinates down in your soul and and sticks around.  There are too many blessings to count.  Happy Thanksgiving!

To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. ~Clara Ortega

It is what they call an Indian Summer... The Fall Equinox was just a couple of days ago yet fall weather has yet to be seen. Temperatures are going to rise to 97 degrees this afternoon. Boys are in school and the weekends are consumed with football- every bit of it. High School, College, Pro, and most importantly, pee wee. But during this amazing season a part of my heart is missing. My wound and memories are too fresh.


It was two years ago when I received the phone call. The car was entirely full of boys 9 and under. By God's Grace a girlfriend was with me. We were headed to a high school football game. But I had to quickly run into the house to grab something when I heard the phone ring. "Cathy, we found David in his hotel room. I am so terribly sorry"... I screamed. I fell to my knees. Please, I begged, do not let this be happening to me. It is too much. I cannot handle it. I REALLY cannot handle it.

But somehow I did handle it, but not without the aching on a regular basis. Brock held me up for as long as he could, but eventually I had to hold myself up. It was hard. While David was my oldest brother, all of my brothers became something different to me when Mom and Dad passed away. They were more cherished than ever. There is something about sharing childhood memories , some that are tough to grasp and some that have us rolling in laughter. Those memories, along with the tragic death of both parents bring siblings together. And although he was across the world in Hong Kong, I knew that I held part of his heart here with me.

So as the years have gone by, and the pain has slightly diminished, the reminder of that night is always fresh during the Indian Summers. Dealing with death is a funny thing. You can walk along and think you are doing just fine, and then the oddest thing can knock you back down on your knees with a memory. For me, it was the smell of the fresh cut grass that took me right back to his days in Pop Warner football. The air was sucked out of me just as it was that night I heard of his death. But I recover quickly, and smile at the memory

Seeing clearly

Hugh got glasses on his very first day of Kindergarten. For those of you who don't know Hugh, let me give you a quick description:  Fearless and clumsy.  Those characteristics combined with glasses calls for many trips to the eye doctor for repairs.  We have 3 pair of glasses for him, his main frames and two back ups.  There have been many occasions that all three were broken at the same time, sometimes even on the same day.  Alex, our go-to guy at Asheville Eye Associates, has threatened to duct tape his entire body to save us some money- exclaiming "I think it is the only way to keep him from being so hard on them!"

So as you can imagine it was a very big day for us( probably more for me than him!) on Monday when we had an appointment to put him in contacts. As we sat down, the very first question the consultant asked me was " Is Hugh clean and responsible?".  With a very long pause and silently asking forgiveness for my fib, I replied  "Yes he is."  We proceeded to learn how to apply the contacts and after an hour or so, Hugh walked out without glasses on.  WoooHooo!

At dinner every night we go through everyone's Highs and Lows of the day. On Monday I knew Hugh's  high would be getting his contacts and his low would be the difficulty getting them in his eyes.  But I was surely mistaken. As we rounded the table and got to him he said  with such pride..."My high...hmmmm... Oh! Dad, you won't believe it!  Mom called me responsible!!!"

Daddy's Little Girl, Part 2.

As I ended the previous entry, the rug had been slipped out from under me, again. Life, as I had known it and gotten used to for the past 5 years, had dramatically changed. Below is a recap of the accident through the eyes of Phil Blount, a victim of the crash.  My dad's name is Mac.

"We were travelling south approaching a small town called Dong Hou, when a tremendous gravel truck came out of a side street directly in our path. Mac and I both saw the truck coming and yelled "Look out!" Tony swerved, but there was no room for escape. We plowed head-on into the gravel truck with a tremendous impact.

"After the collision, there was a dead silence in the car. Within seconds, swarms of Chinese circled the car, chanting a pointing inside. I began screaming out the window, asking for help and assistance. No one could understand me or offered me help. I was able to get out of my side of the car and went to the front passenger door where Mac was sitting, unconscious. Just as I was opening the passenger door to get Mac, a van passed by and I waved them down to stop, hoping they would understand and take us to a hospital. The driver stopped and got out and opened the sliding door on the side of the van. It made me feel he understood our need.

"Then I went back and began pulling Mac out of the car and loading him into the van. I went back and got John out of his seat in the back of the car. After getting John over to the van, the driver helped me load him in. I went back to get Tony, the driver, but could not pull him out. The car was crushed on his body. He was dead. There was nothing that I could do.

(Before leaving the hospital scene, Phil, still bleeding from his nose, mouth, eyes and ears, pulled the groups luggage from the wrecked car and loaded it into the van. How he was able to pull these men and the luggage out is a miracle. His arm was broken as well) "All three were brought into an entrance area in the so-called hospital and laid down onto cots. I use the term "hospital" loosely. It was what I would have expected hundreds of years ago here in the U.S.A."

"After seeing the primitive facilities and equipment that was there in the hospital, my fear began to grow even more. Then I saw them cut Mac's throat. I can't describe the fear that gave me. I wanted to make sure that I made contact with our friends at Treasure House Company to come and get us from this situation- NOW!!!!!"

"In approximately two and a half hours , I heard the sweet voice of Patrick. He had arranged for John and me to be transferred to Hong Kong. Mac was not allowed to move because if his unstable condition. Patrick had arranged for a van and a car to take us to the border."

"The Chinese vehicles couldn't cross the border, and it was quite an ordeal to get us transferred to the ambulance that had come up from the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong. Finally, after paying a substantial amount of money for each of us to leave China, we were allowed to cross the border to the waiting ambulance. We were carried to the Prince of Wales emergency room, where we began our long journey back to rehabilitation."

Because of Dad's condition they were not able to move him out of the Chinese hospital until his condition stabilized. It was another two days and serious negotiations(and more money) to get dad across the border and into the ambulance. His condition was amazingly stable after the trip considering what he had been through. Chinese doctors had removed a section of his skull to relieve the pressure on his brain, which has swelled up, and also performed a primitive tracheotomy to help his breathing.

It was another two weeks and more miracles that started dad and the gang's trip back home. Dad could not be flown because of atmospheric pressure changes during the flight, and a hospital ship was even considered. We received a phone call from a dear friend, Dr. Jerry Petty, neurologist. He said that he would be honored to go to Hong Kong and get everyone back to the United States. He works with NASCAR drivers who have been injured, and through this contacts were given to him to call MedJet International. Through MedJet we were able to get the ball rolling on getting Dad home. Without them it would have been many months before we could think about it.

It was a 21 hour, 23 minute flight. On Thursday, April 30th at 2 am the plane landed. I had been in Charlotte staying at Dad's house during this time managing the phones, visitors, and everyday things. David, Richard and Bonnie had flown to Hong Kong and were coming home with them. Everyone had prepared me - he did not look good. But just to have him home, in Charlotte was exhilarating . There had been no movement from Dad, with the exception of a thumb before they landed. They gave me 5 minutes in ICU to see him. I climbed in his bed, kissed him on the lips and said "Hey Daddy Doo." His lips curled up and formed a smile. He heard me! I laid down and cried on his shoulder for the next couple of minutes before they shooed me out.

Dad spent one year at Carolina's Medical Center with around the clock help. I, along with Bonnie and Richard, was visiting him everyday. His condition seemed to be improving. At times he could respond to questions by blinking his eyes, once for yes, twice for no. He could squeeze our hands. It felt as if he was having surgeries on a monthly basis. It was an emotionally draining time in my life.

The second year Bonnie had him moved to the house with 24 hour nursing, in hopes that the loving atmosphere and different scenery would stimulate him a bit. Having been a nurse, Bonnie understood the undertaking she was involved in, but we could see the strain it was taking on her. Life had become about providing the best possible care for him, and she isolated herself in that house tending to him. Meanwhile, I had changed jobs to something a bit less stressful and moved out close to the house. This way I could be there on a regular basis. It was great to have at the house that we grew up in, in a more comfortable atmosphere. Regretfully, there did not seem to be much improvement. He was taken to the hospital regularly due to seizures. And it seemed the more seizures he had, the further he digressed. It was right before Christmas that he was admitted for the last time with a horrible seizure. This time we knew that he was dying .We were able to get him home for the last time and called the family members home. On January 19th, in the wee hours of the night, dad died with all of his children around him. As with Mom, I knew he was in a better place. He was trapped inside a body that could not move, talk and or understand completely what was going on. No one wants to live that way.

When Cooper was 3 I heard him playing in his room talking to someone. Curious, I asked him who he was talking to. "His name is Mac, mommy. He came to play with me." Feeling as if I had just been kicked in the gut - and certain I had never told him dads name, I smiled and told him to have fun. Over the next couple of weeks he continued to play with Mac and would tell me characteristics that described dad- Like his favorite sport is golf- He has dark hair and blue eyes- He LOVES to wrestle around and play with little boys... When it had been a while since I had heard Cooper mention Mac's name I asked where he had been. Cooper replied, "It was so sad Mom. He died. He got hit by a truck, and had to go away." Wow, Dad's spirit has been here, surrounding me.

And though I felt that my life had stood still for a couple of years, living in a world of more chaos and sadness and wanting nothing more than daddy to wake up, smile and say "Hey Cathy Lou", my life was about to start looking up. It was April Fools Day that year when I found my light out of the darkness, Brock Eugene Himan. God certainly did have impeccable timing.