Growing up in the South was unique. I guess maybe that’s why I never left it. I was born in Memphis, Tn, moved across the line about 5 miles away and have been here all my life. I have never lived anywhere else. Being completely transparent here, it was not always pleasant growing up southern, but all my experiences gave me texture and color in life. Looking back is always fun, and gives perspective as to my choices along the way, and why I am where I am today in my life, relationships, family dynamic and so forth. The South has been a good filter for understanding myself, and the South has been good to me in general. God has used it to make me who I am, and who I want to be.

In my younger years, my parents both worked. I had a black “Mammy” to come in and clean the house, fix food and take care of me. Yes, we called her Mammy, and that is how she introduced herself to us. To this day I collect black Americana mammy dolls because it reminds me of a simpler, sweeter time gone by.

Over the past few years, particularly the last 2 years, I have made some changes in my own life path. I have retired from the estate business and gone into online selling exclusively in a much reduced capacity. I could choose anytime to ramp up and scale the business, but I don’t foresee that happening. I make plenty to pay my bills, tithe, keep a bit for a rainy day, travel, indulge in activities with friends and family, and self-care in ways like getting my nails or hair done by a professional. I am enjoying a much prayed for simplicity that had eluded me for years. Even though logistically I have not moved away from the area, in many ways, personally and professionally, I feel I moved back home.

I enjoyed much of the estate business and truly miss the interaction with new people and return buyers. There were people who attended all my sales, would never miss. I loved catching up with them, they would tell me items they were in the market for like Raggedy Ann dolls or World War 2 memorabilia, or chat about the cool things in the inventory that reminded them of their childhood, and it was uplifting. I know now that the uplifting part was due to these familiar faces and folk sharing similar experiences with me, even though we didn’t grow up together. They were usually from the South as well. Many astoundingly were raised in part by a mammy, as I was. Some of these had gone to college, then forged out into the world of business, transferred from our area and “did life”, only to choose to retire back in the South. The South provided roots for their old age years. They had come back by choice to their simple southern life.

I remember a particularly slow estate weekend a few years ago. It was the second and final day of the sale, weather had been pretty stormy and we didn’t have a great attendance. So there was a lot of down time to sit on the furniture (that hadn’t sold) and chat at length with some of my favorite buyers. Somehow conversation turned to growing up stories. I listened as the chatters got more and more animated in their retelling of events during their childhoods. Distinctly Southern phrases peppered in conversations with these folks during these exchanges, lyrical and quick. We laughed constantly during  vivid descriptions of the pea-shelling that took place on the front porch with “mama-an-em”. That set off in another direction as especially the men tried to one up each other with a Southern phrase. We were all laughing so hard over words and idioms like:

“Papaw’s chair was all cattywampus from his sideways rear-sittin”

“My brother weren’t worth a hill of beans”

“Mama came outta that kitchen and was madder than a wet hen”

“ She pitched one holy hissy fit”

“Neighbor was too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash”

“He didn’t have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of”

“He’s so lazy he won’t hit a lick at a snake”

“His brain rattles around like a BB in a boxcar”

If you are a Yankee or a foreigner, Google is your friend. You can find the definitions there.

One admonition was common to all the buyers, and myself, that day and created the largest laughter and nodding of heads when one little old man uttered it. “Anytime I was gettin’ ready to leave for anywhere, my Mama would yell out ‘ Make sure you put on clean underwear!’” All of us, men and women alike jumped in on that conversation. There was the woman who, on her wedding day, heard that phrase right before walking the aisle, embarrassing the poor girl in front of her bridesmaids and groomsmen. . A grizzled old fella laughed and said he was leaving to serve his country overseas and Mama yelled the phrase to him as he was boarding the boot camp bus, much to his chagrin. His comrades made it their endless joke in the barracks anytime they would go out on a mission. There was the corporate executive who was flying to give his first convention speech, and in a phone call his Mama gave the underwear reminder. I sat and laughed with all the others, but today a few years later I think about that phrase in a bit different light.

I moved to the house I am in now about two years ago. The home I moved from was my resting place for almost 30 years. I never saw myself uprooting and leaving, but I did. When I readied to move, along with my children, there were multiple yard and estate sales we hosted to rid ourselves of things we weren’t needing at the new home, or things we had outgrown. We were scaling down and cleaning up to make a God ordained move.

I wasn’t very sure I would feel like I was home in the new place, although I would learn how to manage. I had loved my other home, it fit me. I had gardened there, raised my daughter there, knew every crack and crevice in the driveway, all the sheetrock bumps. I ran several businesses in multiple rooms, I had spent two marriages, and two divorces there. In the beginning of this new venture, I felt like I was a fish out of water (another phrase). But so many things fell into place on the selling of my old home, the finding of the new one, we closed on it quickly, I had a full price offer overnight on mine…it was all just too much to be my plan. I knew God was in it, although I felt a bit uncontrolled and afraid of the change. I didn’t want to make a mistake by moving, or not moving. But God has really shown Himself to me in this place.

The years leading up to the move were my years of ridding myself of things I didn’t need to carry with me anymore along the life path God already had in action for me, although hidden as yet. I had pared down my gardening, not intentionally, but due to no time to invest since I was working 14 to 16 hour days, 7 days a week. I sold things because finances were tight many times as a single woman, and some things just didn’t serve me anymore as much as the light bill getting paid. I took jewelry to the gold and silver buyer and paid the mortgage a few times. The upkeep of the home fell to the wayside as I was barely able to keep up with it physically myself anymore and it became too costly to hire anyone for anything but the most urgent repairs. My beautiful home was just becoming a house.

God was preparing to answer a prayer I had had for many years. I was praying for my life to simplify and become peaceful, and He was taking away things I no longer needed, and replacing them with a move back “home”. God quietly and gently was allowing some unusual feelings to start to filter in at the same pace He was moving me forward to a new life. I knew I was not where I belonged anymore, but couldn’t figure out how to go back home. God had to jumpstart my move by creating godly discontent in my own life with the way things were. Yes, godly discontent is a real thing.

Where I live now, and they way I live is easy. I get up when I want, I go to bed when I want. I never set a clock unless I have an early appointment, which is ultra rare. I have a mother-in-law’s wing which is small but cozy and my grandchildren have dubbed it “GiGi’s Bungalow”. It is usually tidied within an hour. The gardening I do is in pots, not stretches of ground I need to tend, and it is simple and beautiful, comforting actually.  I can rise up on a beautiful Southern morning, drink coffee and watch the birds outside my window, then walk 10 feet to the garage and start my work day. My family is in the main house but close, so visiting, babysitting and helping each other is simplified since we all live together now, but we each have our own degree of privacy. I knew all my neighbors at the old house, many had lived there the entire time I lived there, and yes, I miss them. But here, with no neighbors to speak of, I am more content than ever.

It is…well…simple. And I can only imagine how stagnant my life might have been if I had turned down God’s gift  of a change.

It took my willingness to get rid of my vast amounts of old stuff, including my beloved house, and simplify my current life before God instructed me to embark on the move I had been praying for over the years, and just didn’t know what I was really asking for. I thought I was in the home I was going to die in. But I was wrong, and I suddenly knew what I had to do. I stopped filtering God’s leading through family, friends or otherwise. It became all about God and me. He told me what to do, He gave me the clean underwear speech, I got ready and when the time came, I moved physically, emotionally and spiritually with ease. God had for years admonished me to “put on clean underwear” and cut down the chaos and clutter of my life, because He knew I was about to go somewhere else. God uses our comfort levels with a situation, such as where we live or the job we do, or the relationships we allow into our life, in a multitude of ways to teach us about ourselves. But I have learned that it doesn’t have to feel bad to you personally for it to be good for you. Sometimes God gives you the feel good thing, just as His awesome gift to you and you alone because you asked, and He graciously said ok.

I think the lesson to learn here is this: God is always moving. He is never stagnant, He is never unhearing or unfeeling. He says He will give you the desires of your heart in many cases, if not most, when you have prayed with a cleanness of heart and mind and followed His road markers. He places His good desires there in your heart and mind, then He makes the way to give those to you, even in unconventional means. And that’s where another good ole Southern phrase comes in handy. There are times He tells you to put on your (clean) big girl panties, and do as He says, even if it is scary and unclear what may be on the other side of that phrase.  I try to make sure I am always holding everything and everyone in life with light fingers, and wearing clean underwear because I never know when God will say “It’s time, now git to movin’ already, time’s a-wastin’. “

Recently I have been reading through the book of Jeremiah. It is not always the most “feel good” book of the Bible. In fact, there are a lot of passages that speak to very dark places, hidden things, repeated issues of the men of old. One of the passages I read this week talks about idolatry and I started thinking more deeply about those idols in my own life that have kept me in the dark in my Christian walk.

We can all think of eleventy million things as believers that separated us from the love of God  before we began our walk with Him. Even in a believing walk we backslide, sidestep and shuffle around the commands of God to fit our own agendas. All of us have lied, cheated in some way, stolen, done embarrassing things that were sinful. The hardest thing to wrap my mind around is when I repeat those behaviors even though I lived through them the first time, God forgave, I was cleansed, I thought I had learned to be an overcomer, only to fall right back into the same sad pattern of sinful choices and unforgettable regrets in my life that would continue to haunt me long after God forgave and forgot them on my behalf.

Why do we revisit our past sins over and over? We say it is so we will not forget how we hurt the Lord and denied His power in our lives. We want to keep the lessons so we don’t repeat them. But is that all there is to it?

In reading Jeremiah this week, I had a kind of eye-opening. Our old sin was washed clean, done, over, never to be brought up to us again. Jesus said we were freed of it, we were not to be shamed any longer, HE was crucified and took the guilt away…but in our minds and hearts there are just some memories of stupid things and horrid choices that have become idols in our own lives. We keep crucifying ourselves over the past sins, rather than living a crucified life in Christ now. We make our old sins into new idols.  

What is an idol? It is something God says cannot be placed between us and Him. This means anything. It means money, people, a job. But more than that it means old baggage, old sins, dirty shame- driven behaviors. Satan brings those things to mind in tiny ways daily. We smell a fragrance that reminds us of a certain person, and we revisit the sin of the flesh moments we may have shared. Satan whispers a song lyric and we remember it playing in the location a sinful event came to fruition and changed the whole course of our life. We run into a past partner in sin randomly in a mall or at a party and the  feelings of embarrassment and guilt rise up and overwhelm us. But why? Because we have let those people, places and events become hidden idols in our lives. We worship them by focusing our mind on them. We sacrifice to them by filtering our future relationships, friendships and choices  through the lens of the poor engagements we experienced with others in the years that have gone by. Rather than becoming fully forgiven and forward-marching believers, we have chosen to carry a scarecrow.

Jeremiah 10:5, New Century Version, talks about this odd figure, the scarecrow, standing alone in a field surrounded by luscious fruit.

“Their idols are like scarecrows in melon fields;
    they cannot talk.
Since they cannot walk,
    they must be carried.
Do not be afraid of those idols,
    because they can’t hurt you,
    and they can’t help you either.”

And when I read that passage, I saw myself carrying that hay stuffed idol around, scattering broken bits everywhere I walked. He would have stood in that field and eventually succumbed to the elements of time and weather, but no.  I chose to yank him up and tote him around. He couldn’t talk, but as I carried him, he would shout “see here, look what I did, who I was, how I have lived my disgraceful life.”  That straw headed fool became a macabre badge of courage that I would pull out to explain away my harsh moments of personality, my shortcomings, my sins in the here and now. Jesus died and offered His fruit to me, He placed me in the middle of a field of a potential feast, but I conditioned myself to focus on the scarecrows of my life. By continuing to embrace the stain of the past sins rather than the forgiveness, I was finding my fulfillment, satisfaction, security, and significance in idols each time I spent my mind and heart on those dead pieces of my past.

We know, as believers, Jesus died for all our sin…not just the convenient ones, not just the “not too bad ones” in the eyes of the world. He died for all of them. We are grateful, we are awed, we are humbled and honored to be God’s children. Then, just like Rachel stole Laban’s household idols and hid them by sitting on them in her saddlebags when she was on her way to begin a new life, we tend to take just a few things from the old life with us, even though God said leave them behind. We carry them, like the scarecrow from place to place, never really able to deal with them or rid ourselves of them because they should not have come with us at all. We jam them right down in the field of fruit, and they get the focus of our attention. And the scarecrow has a name…it is Angst.

I think we take our own idols with us because we are afraid. We are afraid we are not forgiven for all. We are afraid that we dishonor God by forgetting our past. We are afraid that if we don’t “fix” our past life, we will never be able to enjoy a new life.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

In the last two or three years I have learned when Satan brings to mind past transgressions, I play a mind and heart game with myself. I look at it as him enticing me to worship old idols of past sins instead of worshipping my Savior. Those things no longer deserve my attention, I cannot speak on their behalf any longer giving reasons and excuses for past behaviors. It is an unnecessary and fruitless use of my time and Christian walk. I am not to help the idols walk to another place and time in my life either. They were put to death long ago. The scarecrows have no life, they cannot walk, they cannot talk, they cannot hurt, they cannot help. unless we do it for them.  They just simply cannot do anything without our willing involvement.

Gone is gone, dead is dead, done is done. It’s time to leave those scarecrows out in the field of the past, pick some of the abundant fruit God offers, bring it  into our new life, and go in joy to the next place He chooses to love us and use us. Scarecrows have no brain, and we cannot sit in the company of the brainless.  The walk is easier without the weight.  But just for good measure, it probably wouldn’t hurt to strike a match and flick it over our shoulder as we make our getaway, just in case.