The Titus 2:4 Project

 This poem is very different than most of the others I have written. This one feels very raw to me.  Growing up, I had a great (ha) uncle who was a very sick man and sexually abused many young girls in our family and other neighborhood girls apparently.  When he was finally confronted by the father of one of his victims, he took the coward's way out, or so the story goes. So here's perfect example of me using my pen and paper as therapy. GUILTY A single tear was all I cried When I heard the news today. A guilty man was sentenced And his life was taken away. No judge had ever seen him,  No jury heard his case, No lawyers claimed his innocence Just a mirror and a face… His crime was seldom spoken of Though his victims felt the pain And suffered through life, struggling With torn emotions of family shame. No longer able to live inside The monster he had become He handed down his sentence And then picked up a gun. LR

This was one of the first poems I wrote as an adult. My mother, who had been taking college courses ever since I could remember, was about to graduate college at 50 years old. I didn't know what to get her as a gift, so I wrote her a poem. I hand wrote it on 'pretty paper' and had it framed with her graduation announcement.  More than 30 years later it still hangs in her home. Mother’s Love As I look back with the knowledge Of what “Mother’s Love” really is I see a kind of caring The kind that always gives. I see the understanding That only a mother knows A love that never fails As every day it grows. In her eyes I see compassion She feels my every pain She knows just what I’m going through And what experience I must gain. Always there to lend a hand And help me when I’m down She picks me up, she helps me out She’s turned my life around. When I think about my mother An ageless beauty in my eyes She’s everything her children need So wonderful and wise. It’s not every day her

Thursday morning, after the hurricane, as the sun rose above the trees, we nervously stepped outside to assess the damage. Despite the winds that had howled all night long, our neighborhood was in surprisingly good shape.  As we surveyed our neighbor’s lots (neighbors who had not yet returned for “the season”) we began dragging big, green palm fronds to the street and loading them into the bed of our truck. First this lot. Then that lot. I snapped pictures and messaged friends to let them know if there was any visible damage to their property. T hey would reply with their gratitude and then ask “can you check lot ‘such and such for so and so’…” so we would. More clean up. More pictures. More messages. And our 8ft truck bed filled up fast. Very fast. Over and over. As the day wore on, my mind was filled with thoughts like, WOW! These palm fronds are heavy! I asked my husband how much he thought they weighed on average… he guessed about 25 pounds.  Lifting them over and over gave me a wh

I have spent far too long in my comfortable recliner chair here in Florida, scrolling through videos of the horrific devastation from Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and Tennessee. Reel after reel of heartbreak and loss. Post after post of missing family and friends. Yes, I’m in Florida. Yes, parts of my state were damaged catastrophically by the storm surge from this monstrous storm… but living on the beach comes with a certain amount of risk. You take a gamble with every hurricane season that passes, that eventually your number is up and you will probably be facing damage of some sort…you just pray that it’s not ‘that bad’.   But in the beautiful town of Asheville, NC, where we had the privilege of visiting a few years ago, those folks don’t worry about hurricane damage. They might worry about snow storms, or a strong thunderstorm… but hurricanes? Nah. Not them. What a mess. What a horrible, unspeakable mess. I have been wracked with guilt about the ability to go on with my life a