The FLOLife | Cookie Cawthon | product of a tenacious grace

September

Celebrate Her

My Grandma Springs was sassy. And funny. And mischievous. And the godliest person I have ever known to walk around in flesh and bones. She met Him later in life and spent all of her remaining days trying to make up for lost time – and, boy, did she ever! I teased her that she might live to be 900 years old because she was allowing God to accomplish so much through her. I wish she had…

It’s a little crazy to think that she was about 37 when I was born (both she and my mom were young brides). That’s only two years older than I am now.
She would take Hershey’s cocoa (powder in a can), mix it with sugar and water, boil it just right, and make the best chocolate syrup I have ever tasted. I wonder how many chocolate-saturated slices of bread I have eaten over the course of three and a half decades. A few loaves at least…
She also baked the best sweet potato pies; she would bake 15 or 16 at a time. They would be covered in brown sugar, so they would kinda be black on top – yummy. Makes my heart hungry…
She called me the morning of the Ocean Isle Beach house fire last October where seven college students died so we could pray together for the families and the survivors.
She was an ordained minister in her church.
She smiled and laughed a lot, but she would not smile in pictures.
She was married to my Papa for 55 years.
She came to spend the weekend with me in my apartment in Anderson well over a decade ago. So thankful for those memories…
She loved the mountains. And staying in her camper in the mountains. And the lake. And staying in her camper at the lake.
She was phenomenal at sending cards on birthdays. And we have a big family. She and Papa had six children, ten grandchildren, and about a dozen great-grandchildren (love to you, Beck! Thanks for reading).
She was just love. She wasn’t self righteous or abrasive in her faith. The love of a Savior just shone through her care, her concern, her deeds, her prayers, her smile, her humor, her meals, her words.

She passed away Saturday morning. Rather unexpectedly. I miss her.

But there’s this paradox between celebration and sadness at the death of one of His. We celebrate for her and we celebrate all that her life was and the scores she touched, but we are sad for ourselves.

Her send-off was perfect. There are few things in life that I would call perfect, but the celebration of her was perfect! As strange as it sounds, it was a great weekend of celebrating and mourning her. We stood under the tent at her graveside singing praises to our God (Psalm 116:15– love that verse!) as a gentle breeze blew across us. Perfect! It was a weekend of worshiping Him for His goodness and His grace and His mercy.

I do have regrets. I regret that I had not seen her since Mother’s Day. I regret that I didn’t call more often or send cards more often. I regret that I allow the tasks of life to eclipse the value of relationships…

And I want to say, in her memory, that He changes lives in a way that is better than anything we can imagine. He did hers. He did mine. At the occasion of death, we focus of Jesus’ ability to change our eternity, but He wants to change our now.

I praise Him. I celebrate her.

August

Shameless

It must be too fabulous to have an endorsement deal. To be so bombalicious that a company is drooling to have your name attached to its product. I am going to pretend that’s me today… only thing is – there’s no check forthcoming and you probably don’t give two hoots about what I endorse. Anyway, I’m shamelessly pluggin’ today…

1) NewSpring Church – Florence: Coming soon to a _____________ near you. Mid-Fall-ish, baby! I bet you saw this one comin’ a mile away. Shameless, I tell you… You can watch a worship experience online at http://www.newspring.cc/.

2) She Magazine… it’s a woman thing! I luv luv luv writing for She. It goes quickly when it comes out, but I most often find it at The Pig at Flo-town Mall, McLeod Health & Fitness Center, or My Favorite Things on Cashua. I am certainly not above dashing out of the car to quickly snag a copy before they’re all gone. If you usually fail to find a copy or if you live elsewhere, you can also mail a $32 check or money order to 609 North Main Street, Marion, SC 29571, for a year’s subscription. She Saturday is going to be a way fun girls’ day at the Civic Center on September 20; grab a passel of girlfriends, a fun lunch together, and then head in for only $5 per person, I think.

3) Piggly Wiggly at the Flo-town Mall: I’m big on The Pig! I just gave their Click n’ Shop a whirl, and it blew me away! I filled my cart at http://www.thepig.net/ at 1:00 in the am and pulled up to the store at 10:00 am. My goods were wheeled to the car by the store manager and loaded for me. All for a $5 fee. I am not pullin’ your leg. Totally stress-free shopping, and I actually spent less moola because I couldn’t mindlessly grab things from the shelves and throw them in the cart as my patience and sanity evaporated with every squeal, whine, push, etc… Plus there were no totally random pickled eggs added to the cart by an unnamed three year-old.

4) Citgo Markette on Pine Needles: This is where I most often support my DP addiction (see this post); I am also slightly recovering from an MP addiction (uh-huh, moon pie!); my Markette has the best DP and MP’s in town! You cannot buy Diet Pepsi at an establishment that serves food. I do not, for any reason, care for my Diet Pepsi to smell like fried chicken. No thank you! My Markette is tried and true – no stinky drinks there.

5) Chocolate Chip Pecan Pie from Town House! Will change your life and your pants size!

6) Brach’s Bridge Mix sold in a brown bag on the candy aisle at most grocery and drug stores (thanx, Tammi!). I personally do not like any other brand. My chocolate lovin’ friends, you need some of this…

7) Cheeseburger with onions and chili and a side o’ onion rings from Jumpin’ J’s!

WARNING: As it turns out, my endorsements may cause serious weight gain and clog your arteries! Which leads me to my final endorsement…

8) First Place is a phenomenal Christ-centered wellness/accountability program. I shed twenty-five pounds about a year and a half ago, and I believe in it! It is a program that you can do forever – teaches healthy eating but doesn’t deprive you of things you enjoy – like CARBS! It just limits and teaches moderation. The program emphasizes our focus on Christ and our need to honor Him with how we treat our bodies. It’s fantastic – even if you don’t need to lose weight. It’s all about balance within a singular focus. Check out the website (http://www.firstplace.org/) or email me (secawthon@yahoo.com) if you have questions I may be able to answer. I’m looking for a church in the area currently hosting a First Place session; can anybody hook me up?

If you were super fab enough to land an endorsement deal, what would it be for?

August

She’s Safe!

For those of you who may not have gotten the August issue of SHE, here is my submission for She’s Got Game…

In the fuzzy recollections of my first memories, I can watch this disjointed video of my tee-ball experiences as a four or five year-old. I can see myself standing before the tee, swinging futilely. The ball was unresponsive; it did not move. I think I was sort of baffled by that. That just would not do, said my coaches. In my blurred remembrances, there are no other faces besides my own, no names – just grainy pictures of activity. A coach pulled me to the side for some supplemental batting practice – with a balled-up brown grocery bag on the tee. In my mind, that looks utterly preposterous and certainly seems humiliating, but it was quite ingenuous. The paper bag was a larger, lighter target that assisted in the development of my hand-eye coordination, which was so crucial to my promising tee ball career, mind you. I think I soon graduated to a real ball on the tee and finished out the season without much fanfare; that’s what I assume anyway – I have no memories of games, of fielding the ball, of celebrating, etc… I’m just left with the picture of my little self, holding a way heavy bat, swinging for the stars at a Piggly Wiggly grocery bag. Those were the days…

I must have done okay though because when I signed up to play Dixie softball a few years later, I had strong batting posture, pretty accurate hand/eye coordination, and a fielding stance that communicated readiness at second base. My softball memories replay in living color and surround sound – vivid and cherished. There are few things I love more than a full softball uniform: cap, team tee, pristine white pants, white knee socks with those colored stirrups that go over your socks to match your cap and tee (I don’t think anybody wears those any more, which is really a shame because they were my favorite part), and the finishing touch – serious dirt-digging cleats. I found my place as an eight, nine, ten, eleven year-old; I played ball and I was pretty good at it too.

I loved that Woody, my stepdad, was my coach, and we would practice at home. Whenever either of us bought a new glove, he would condition it: lube it up with who-knows-what, put a softball inside, and fasten a belt tightly around it to allow it to loosen and form around the ball for a few days. I had the inside scoop; the coach was my dad, and I tried my best to utilize his expertise. I wanted to practice as soon as he drove into the yard from the farm. I hit; I threw; I fielded; I caught fly balls. I watched for how the ball might bounce so I could field it appropriately. I practiced fielding and throwing very quickly to sharpen my skills for double plays. I was a focused little thing who loved playing ball. Woody even taught me how to practice alone. He bought me a practice net for throwing and batting, and he shared a catching technique that probably drove my mother batty. I would throw the ball on to the roof of our house and catch it as it rolled off, over and over again. I’m sure my throws made no small racket in the house, but I never remember my mom scolding me for the noise.

As a player, I was confident and perhaps even borderline overbearing. I loved to steal and slide (even when it wasn’t necessary). As a batter, I savored drawing attention to myself by throwing up my hand to the umpire and backing out of the box to collect myself and take a few swings. It’s comical to remember. I was always quick to bellow out a chant from the dug-out or chirp encouragement to my teammates in the field or yawp distraction to an opposing batter. As annoying as I may have been to watch, I was a player with heart. I made the All-Stars team every year I played, but the last.

Something happened that changed my play. Actually two things happened. I became afraid of the ball, and I became afraid of failing. And the thing is, I don’t know where those fears originated. I have no recall of taking a hard hit from the ball nor do I remember running into a performance slump. But I was mentally crippled as a player. There are only two factors I can guess at in analyzing my decline: the speed at which the ball traveled increased as our age and strength did and my confidence and self image decreased with adolescence. During my last season, I actually adopted a batting stance with a deeper squat to shrink my strike zone so that a pitcher would be more likely to walk me than strike me out. It worked but my batting stats were hurt because I had fewer hits than other players, and I was only chosen as an alternate for All-Stars that year.

It was also time to try out for the high school softball team, and I was paralyzed by fear. Many of the girls I had played with all of my childhood tried out and made the team; I can feel that ache of longing to give it a try even now, but I would not. I played it safe by not playing at all, and that is truly one of the biggest regrets of my life. I’ve made a lot of poor choices since those days, but I find that I truly do regret the things I did not do more than the stupid things I did.

So, I played a little intramural softball in college and a little church softball after I married, and I still found those fears sitting on either side of me in the dug-out years later. I allowed them to rob me of my heart and my courage as a player. I wish that had been the only time fear cost me. But the truth is, I am friendly with fear, and I have allowed myself to be the victim of its thievery on numerous occasions. In the end, I gave up a game I loved to protect my fragile ego and to cater to my groundless fears. Now I desperately wish I had dared to fail like every good ballplayer knows you should; I wish I had gone down swingin’…

August

Now for the Rest of the Story – Part II

Continued…

So that spark of hope came in a conversation in a friend’s living room on November 20, 2006 (if my memory serves me correctly). It was the first real live conversation about being part of a new church in Florence; Chris and I did not initiate that conversation, but I was coming out of my skin with excitement by its conclusion (Chris, on the other hand, was a little (okay, a lot) more reticent). We began to pray about whether this could be what God had for us. It became clear pretty quickly that it was.

And let me be very quick to say that it wasn’t because we couldn’t find a church we “liked”; we hadn’t even visited all the churches we had planned to visit. It had everything to do with finding where God’s peace rested for us, and it was in this endeavor that we found it. And it was often a torturous process. Here we were, two lay couples believing we were suppose to be part of a church start. How dumb does that sound? People thought we were idiots. If you knew about it, you thought we were idiots. That’s not fun. No pastor in sight. There were certainly times I begged, in tears, to be released from the task, but it was never an option. I prayed for that option, but (thankfully) it was never granted. Trying to bale would have been like waking in the midst of surgery and saying, “I’m done” and bolting.

We never had any idea what this thing might look like in reality, so we did all we knew to do. We met together to pray, to study Scripture, to dream, to pray, to worship together, etc… We read books, listened to podcasts, read blogs, took road trips. All the while, God was doing more in each of us individually than we were ever accomplishing together. That time was a period of refining our faith – believing Him when what He was saying seemed illogical and impossible (anybody relating out there?).

So, once again God does what He says He will do. In March of this year (two days before we were to attend a church conference at NewSpring in Anderson) we learned that NewSpring is launching a Florence campus later this year. We had taken road trips to NS; we read Perry’s blog and listened to his podcasts, and we could have never, ever in a gazillion decades imagined this ending. Ephesians 3:20 in full effect, baby!

And so it was that I found myself on a charter bus two Sundays ago, Upstate bound…

August

Now for the Rest of the Story – Part I

After reading this, this, and this, a friend commented that I wasn’t finished. She had been anticipating Part IV. I’m really not trying to make my life into this dramatic mini-series, but I realized that she was right. We were having this conversation on a charter bus headed toward the NewSpring Anderson campus, and my narrative did fail to relay how it was that I found myself occupying that seat.

My tale kinda concluded with me discovering my passion in the midst of a nurturing and supportive church family. Well, September 10, 2006, rolled around – Black Sunday as I call it. As churches sometimes do, our church exploded and our church family was destroyed. Our church family had become as vital to our lives as our biological families – perhaps even to a fault (finding security and purpose in the church and not truly in Him). To some of you this may sound melodramatic, but it was devastating. There were many, many people there who had loved on our girls literally from the days they were born. They had rocked them and changed them and fed them and sang to them and taught them Bible stories, and we had shared hundreds of meals and shed gallons of tears together through the years. Approximately two hundred people displaced in a day. An entire staff of families without jobs. A mass of brokenhearted people wandering. Some are still wandering. Some are still hurting. Some are still angry. Some still carry their tears very close to the surface, and they spill over easily. And this is two years later…

I remember getting into bed after church that afternoon and sobbing over the loss of relationships. No matter what happened or how this thing worked out, it would never be the same. And I was right; it never will be. A very real time of mourning began. Foolishly we attended another church the following Sunday, and I wept through the entire service – not quietly. The kind of crying where you can barely breathe and you kinda shake like you’re having a seizure. Chris sat there stewing and steaming; he was so angry I thought he was going to deck the offering guy. I can honestly say the churches in this area are phenomenal; they rushed to wrap their arms around us, but that was the last thing we wanted. We didn’t want to be loved by their church; we just wanted our own church back.

And to this day, it is an absolute treat to run into someone from that time. To those of you who are reading, you must know that I love you as much today as I ever did and I miss you!!!

So we began the daunting prospect of visiting churches. We learned that Florence is blessed with some fantastic churches who are pastored by awesome men of God and comprised of godly men and women. We prayed each Sunday, with each new church, that we would find a home. We were desperate for something to feel right; we were desperate to feel like God was showing us something – desperate for a spark of hope. Nothing! Nothing Sunday after Sunday… Why was He being silent? Why couldn’t He just give us something to grab on to?

He was up to something new, and He just needed us to simmer in our desperation for Him for a while…

To be continued (where I’ll really wrap it up this time)…