Cables breaking on elevators. Boulders tumbling down mountains threatening to crush my children. Masked intruders invading my house. The stuff of my dreams awhile back.

Lori Ventola is a Denver resident who wants to start a mobile after-school program that helps children of the homeless transition into school. I’ve read her blog, and she seems like a really neat lady. She’s also the winner of Donald Miller’s “Living a Better Story” blog contest. I want to congratulate her and acknowledge that no, I didn’t win.

Lori’s story seems to be a perfect match for the contest. Soon after the contest was announced, Don posted a tip saying”…if you want to start a dance school, for instance, it will require a building, some instructors, some interns, a computer system or whatever. The more specific, the better your chances of coming to Portland.” Lori outlined her plans, and she’ll soon be on her way to Portland – and enjoying that coveted vacuumed space. Seriously, I am happy for her and for those that will be helped as she lives out her story. But…

Always one to question what I “did wrong” in situations like this, I’ve wondered if it was foolish for me to have entered the contest knowing that the story I want to live isn’t exactly what was being asked for. Then again, someone once said, “That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!”

Stories like Lori’s are greatly needed (I think that was the point of the whole contest) and should be greatly admired, but I don’t think those of us with more subtle stories should feel like losers. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced I am like that wee squishy packet in the condiment bin. In fact, I might be one of the packets at the very bottom of the bin. Just when the supply starts running low, and I might actually have a chance of being plopped onto someone’s plastic tray, someone in a logoed polo and cap comes and dumps a bunch of fresh packets on me. But that’s OK because I’m still here – taking up space, helping the bin look amply supplied, and being available in case I’m needed. Being available might sound passive and taking up space is often derided, but I think there are better stories being told here than might be obvious.

Consider the concept of zeros as placeholders in numbers: 1,000,000 would only be “1” without them. “Are you serious?” you ask. “Being a zero is the story you want to live?” Well, here’s another story…

Little Amy lives on a big ranch in Wyoming. One day her daddy takes her to a horse show in Casper. It’s her first visit to the big city, and as the sun starts fading on the North Platte River, they pull their crew cab into a fast food chain. Amy’s eyes grow wide because it’s just like the ones she’s seen on satellite TV. Daddy lets her carry her own tray and then lets her get her own ketchup for her kiddie meal. She stands on her tiptoes and stretches her reed-like little arm to the eye-level condiment bin. Concentrating with her tongue between her teeth, she can barely reach into the bottom of it. Her groping fingers find a wee squishy packet. Lord knows how long it’s been since someone reached that low into the bin! She holds it close to her face and tries to read the label; after all, she is six and trying to read everything. She’s not quite sure it says “Ketchup,” but she trusts it is exactly what she thinks it is, so she gently places it beside the colorful box on her tray. After Daddy finds a booth seat and helps her unpack her meal, she takes the wee squishy packet, tears off a corner with her teeth (she watched her daddy do this first) and then she smears a tiny blob on a salty, golden fry. For some time she sits, swinging her legs and bobbing her head, happily eating her chicken and carefully ketchup-topped fries. Finally, she holds the shriveled, smudgy packet up to her daddy’s face. “Here, Daddy,” she says. “I used it all up. Is that OK?”

“That’s what it’s for, Cowgirl. That’s what it’s for.”

Sense and Sensibility is one of my favorite movies; I watched it again last night. In the final scene of Emma Thompson’s screenplay, ribbon-waving children revel among the tombstones in the churchyard where the misses Dashwoods have just been married. For the first time last night I appreciated the irony of this setting. But perhaps it’s just my American sensibilities (pardon the pun) that imagine irony where none was intended. Perhaps, if anything, the scene depicts a confirmation of some of the deepest nuances of life – youth, marriage, eternity. (Perhaps I should watch the commentary with Thompson and director, Ang Lee, and see if they have anything to say about this image.)

Here in America it’s not a common image to see children (excepting Halloween pranksters) reveling in graveyards. Indeed, unless you’re in Small Town, America graveyards are not common sights at all. This first dawned on me back in June when Jay and I were driving around Ireland. As we came upon Gothic cathedral after Gothic cathedral, village church after village church, I wondered if the Irish ever take for granted all the architecture and symbolism rising through the misty air. Admittedly, I went to Ireland fully expecting to see the churches and high crosses. What I hadn’t really considered is where the crosses would be found – in the cemeteries right next to the churches! I was struck by this visual reminder of the concern for both living and departed souls. At least that’s what this abundance of churches and cemeteries seems to represent. It could only be superficial, but the fact remains that they ARE THERE. To paraphrase Francis Schaeffer, “Churches and graveyards are there, and they are not silent.”

Sometimes I think we American (Christians) pride ourselves in knowing that church buildings are “just” buildings. They are not the True Church, the hearts of the people who worship in them. So we meet in strip malls and schools, and people can drive right past and think about earrings and dodge ball and never consider their souls.

We do the same thing with cemeteries. I’ve lived in Phoenix for four years and have yet to drive past a cemetery – at least to my knowledge. This isn’t the way I was raised. Cemeteries used to be a major part of my life. I didn’t revel in them, but from age 10 to 18, I joined my mother and younger brother on Memorial Day pilgrimages of sorts. We drove from our home in north central Nebraska to a little country cemetery in the panhandle of Texas. We put flowers on my father’s grave and then we spent a few days visiting with my older brother and sister and other relatives. My stepfather and stepsister made a similar pilgrimage, in a different vehicle, to a cemetery in Oklahoma where their first wife/mother was buried. Some years my stepfather and stepsister would leave a few days before us and then we’d meet them in passing – usually someplace in the middle of Kansas. If they recognized us, they’d wave. Kind of like what we do with churches and graveyards.

Note on the photograph: A cemetery near Beech Hill Hotel near Derry, Northern Ireland – and more evidence that our prayers were answered on Grafton Street.

If you’ve never clicked on my song at the right, you can now hear it on a site you might find a little more exciting. My manager (oh, okay – my husband) got an email message today from a company saying that they were featuring the song on one of their links. If you click here on Presto Album you’ll find that they’re featuring it on an album of Las Vegas photos. While Woman Never Sleeps may sound like the perfect theme for Sin City, I find it very ironic. I wrote it about my stay-at-home-mom life, while I was in a garage band with two guys from my church. And please, don’t send me your desperate housewife stories and try to convince me that Woman Never Sleepsis more appropriate than I’d want to admit. I’m certainly not claiming sinlessness, but if something happened in Vegas and I had to stay in Vegas, it would probably be because my minivan broke down.

Members of the mission team paint a building on the Colville Reservation. (Photo courtesy Breanna Cole)

“Who goes to Ireland for nine days and comes back without any pictures?”

That was the question I raised to my husband under a cloudy, silent Dublin sky on June 9, 2010. My blog entry for June 20 recounts this story, the anxious hours we spent on the last day of our 25th wedding anniversary trip to Ireland. In that entry I wrote about how my husband accidentally deleted 600+ photos from our camera, and how we made a somber trek to a camera shop where we hoped and prayed our precious digitized memories would be retrieved. I wrote about how I tried to bring comfort to our fearful hearts: “I consoled Jay (and myself) by telling him that it would make a great story…” I even began to mentally write that story.

So, how does one get the idea to “write a story,” the ending of which she can only hope will bring comfort? By reading Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Even though I’ve been a story lover for most of my life, Don’s perspectives did much to prompt me to think about the stories in our lives, and especially how conflict is vital to these stories. Ironically, I’ve recently been reading another book by another famous author. That book, about the idols in our lives, helped me to pinpoint my biggest idol – Conflict Avoidance. Yes, the woman who is supposedly learning to have a greater appreciation for the importance of conflict, idolizes Peace and Tranquility!

As the Dixie Chicks sang, “There’s your trouble…” Knowing the place that conflict has in my story and truly embracing it so that I live my stories with courage and joy does not come naturally. Perhaps attending the Living a Better Story Seminar (click to find out more) might help me understand how I can delve even deeper, gain even greater insights, and live even better stories.

Going to Ireland was a story that was a complete surprise. But there are other more purposeful stories I want to live. There’s the story about how my husband and I open a restaurant that not only serves the best BBQ this side of Kansas City, but also gives jobs to young people who are excited about working for a place that pays them well enough so that they can donate their tips to a fund for the local food bank.

With the right investors, equipment and staff that story could happen. However, there’s another story that’s dearer to my heart. It’s complicated, it’s ancient, and it’s seldom deemed worthy of particular notice. I’ve been writing it for the past 23 years, will write it every day of my life and even from my grave. It’s a story about a woman who, like many others, raises kids who love God, love His Church and love others so that they don’t just look out for their own personal interests but also the interests of others. The kids do things like paint houses for Native Americans on reservations; they distribute food to homeless people; they crochet stacks of hats for newborns who were considered “unwanted pregnancies;” they help with Christmas meals for distressed inner-city families. The woman struggles to calculate the cost of raising such kids, these kids who will be sensitive to the plight of others. So far the price has included being uprooted and moved across the country more than once, sharing in their parents’ various losses and difficulties, and even suffering the consequences of driving drunk and endangering others’ lives. The plans for these stories are rarely clear-cut.

“Clear-cut” was what my objective was when I started writing this blog. I wanted to tell my readers about this seminar and try to win the contest so I could go to the seminar myself. I wanted to go and be inspired by more of the same ideas that helped me deal with the prospect of losing 600 photos on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. In “the end,” however, this endeavor has reminded me that the stories I want most to live have very little to do with me and a lot to do with others. They are the type of stories that create pictures that never need the aid of a camera shop.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=12011394&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Living a Better Story Seminar from All Things Converge Podcast on Vimeo.

“Chocolate baby Gouda cheese. Chocolate baby Gouda cheese. Chocolate baby Gouda cheese.” That’s what was running through my mind when I woke up this morning. I realize that making such a confession might very well land me in the nuthouse, but if you’re a regular reader of womanneversleeps, then you probably know I need my noggin examined. You may even wake with such thoughts and wonder if anyone else out there does. See, I’m here for you.

This chocolate/cheese mantra wasn’t inspired by my dreaming, either, because in my dream I was in a room with various kinds of lighting arranged all over a spackled ceiling. The light bulbs had all been unscrewed, and I was standing on a chair trying to fix the one with the candelabra bulb hanging over the piano. And yet when the sunlight came pouring through my window, “chocolate baby Gouda cheese” is what I was thinking.

The real problem with these mental litanies is the lack of punctuation. Was it an exclamation? “Chocolate, baby! Gouda cheese!” Or was it a checklist? “Chocolate, baby, Gouda cheese.” Let’s hope it wasn’t “Chocolate baby, Gouda cheese.”

They say your body craves the nutrients it needs. My body always needs chocolate. And come to think of it, it’s been a long time since I had any Baby Gouda. A vital nutritional deficiency does sound like a pretty logical explanation. No?

I hope it’s a chocolate-covered nuthouse, at least.

We watched the movie Crazy Heart the other night. It was like taking a cow path off yet another of the many dirt roads that meander back into my childhood. Jeff Bridges’ obvious Kris Kristofferson-like persona plopped me smack dab into the backseat of an early 70’s brown Ford LTD. I’m sure it’s not every child that has memories of going on dates where she is the one in the back seat and her mother is the one with the boyfriend in the front seat. Such times found me sandwiched between my little brother and my older future stepsister. I stared at the back of my mother’s head. In my opinion it was way too close to my future stepfather’s. Green light from the dashboard gleamed around their cozy profile. It was a very innocent situation that grows tawdry and scandalous in the mind of a protective nine-year old. And it was all accompanied by the eight-track of Hank Williams’ Greatest Hits.

My stepsister, already obsessed with the music, image and blue eyes of Kris Kristofferson, mocked the Hank Williams’ music that cycled through the speakers. In hindsight I’m a little amused at her uncharacteristic ignorance of Kris’s musical influences. After all, Kris did pen a certain lyric which was a not-too-subtle suggestion about what you could do to his backside if you didn’t like Hank.

In the movie, it was another song from my childhood soundtrack (Waylon Jennings’ Are You Sure Hank Done It That Way) that hailed Hank’s reign and influence.

The outlaw music of Jeff and Kris, Hank and Waylon was still lingering in my mind a few nights later when I was at the kitchen table playing a raucous game of Chicken Foot with my kids. Typical for such extended games, distractions were bubbling and brewing as the game wound down. Three kids were texting friends; one was telling a story about finding an improperly disposed of dirty diaper at his place of employment. They were all singing – different songs, none the soundtrack looping through my subconscious thoughts. Noodles and cookies were eaten and analyzed. To my children’s horror, I confessed my aversion to plain M & M’s.

I was able to fight off any frustrations with these distractions by focusing on my duties as scorekeeper – and official “doodler.” At the end of the game, when I had won and the youngest losers had been sentenced to putting the dominoes back in the box, I continued my doodling. I felt my daughter breathing down my back and jiggling with giggles. “Before you made some changes, Mom, I thought that looked like Jesus.”

The same thought had crossed my mind; however, with the revisions, I decided the picture looked more like a self-portrait. Still, I pictured Jesus, whom Kris had called a Capricorn with a “funky bunch of friends.” There was a funky bunch of Jesus’ friends horsing around my kitchen that night. Strange how Kris’s lyrics still had an uncanny way of coloring my life.

It doesn’t appear that I will be a grandmother anytime soon (or a mother-in-law for that matter) but half of my children are daughters, so that means that the topic of future grandchildren does come up from time to time. While the other half of my children mysteriously vaporize when my next matriarchal stage is discussed, my daughters happily share with me their visions of this joyous time. When the topic came up yesterday the girls debated what future grandbabies would call me. My youngest proposed Momofmymom. This moniker has really grown on me. It rolls off the tongue in a lilting, clickety-clack kind of way that perhaps represents our musical heritage. Or maybe too many readings of The Little Engine That Could. Still, part of me is envious of my Greek friends whose children call their grandmothers Yiayia. Now that’s a cool name for a grandmother. At times in my life coolness has been a priority.

Unfortunately, my sister and I were not on the same timetable when it came to cool grandmother names for our mother. Being the oldest, it was her privilege to determine what the grandchildren in our family would call our mother. Though I love my sister dearly, her choice was not what would have been mine. I’ve never told her this (until now), but she couldn’t have picked a worse time in my life to decide to call our mother “Granny.”

I am 13 years younger than my sister. I was ten when I first became an aunt. That was fun; I loved babies even then. However, having lost our father a couple of years before, I was also adjusting to a new life with a new stepfather in a new small town where all my friends’ mothers seemed barely older than my own sister. It was almost cool to be an aunt, but having a mother who was a grandmother was questionable. I swear I would have died from embarrassment had any of my friends heard that my mother also went by “Granny.” This was, in fact, the only reason I was thankful my precious little niece lived 480 miles away. At least I didn’t have to risk being seen in public with her and her “Granny.”

At the time, I only knew of two Grannies: the tottering, bun-headed one from the Sylvester and Tweety cartoon and the dear little old lady who had been my sister’s own babysitter. I get now that my sister was honoring the memory of this woman by calling our mom Granny, but my memories of Granny Bessie extended only to remembering that she had a really nifty broom closet and that she was old enough to be dead! My mother (whom I had also recently begun calling “Mom” instead of “Mama” due to peer pressure) in no way represented a Granny. Never mind that she always looked younger than her years, she had no bun, puttered but never tottered, had no broom closet, and most importantly – was still alive!

I guess in the end, the only thing that really matters is that all my mother’s grandchildren love their Granny. I hope it will be the same for me. According to my daughters, I will be hearing a lot of whatever name is decided for me. They all want large families, but I have to say that I question their motives since one proclaimed “if only to prove that not all large families have snotty-nosed kids.” Guess this means I don’t need to fear being called Granny Hankie.