You Can Count on That!

You Can Count on That

August came in and I welcomed her with aching muscles from the previous day loading things that had been in my ninety year old mother’s barn so long they had forgotten how to rust.  


They decided they had no more strength to fight the cockroaches and the fish bait worms.  They made room in their decaying existence for things that lived. They bowed out knowing that they had given a reprieve and a home for life, unappealing as it may have seemed.



The rusted shelving and the rotted doors, buckets of Christmas lights hiding for years with no interest from anyone glared at us. The buckets of long forgotten Christmas lights that had not shined for baby Jesus in decades: one of them had accumulated instead a rather humongous frog that just wanted to live out his days in the bucket croaking and living in stagnant water; it’s skin a red hue which had absorbed the rusty looking water, comfortable with the pungent and offensive smell, but annoyed by our attempts at cleaning out mother’s barn.



The frog stuck its head out of the bucket only to be greeted by a chilling scream from my sister who was working with me to clean the barn.  She saw the head move in the water and jumped quite a few feet while her lungs tried to find one more air hole for the scream.  As she jumped back pointing at the bucket, like any good sister to the rescue I ran toward the exit nearly running head on into the door frame which someone didn’t build nearly wide enough.  My sister was right behind me.

After catching my breath, and not knowing at this point what she had seen in the bucket I ran up to my sister and got square in her face with my eyes stretched as far as they could stretch and shouted,  “What is it”? 



I had recently seen a video of a man and a young boy around twelve rescue a mid-size suckling pig that was screaming at the top of his piggy pig voice because somehow he had stumbled onto a boa constrictor that thought the pigs mid-section needed to be constricted.  He put the squeeze on the pig.  The man and young boy worked and worked with the boa until they finally loosed the determined snake from the squealing pig.



I had visions of that in my mind, and although boa constrictors are not indigenous to south Georgia in the United States, deadly moccasins are, and they like water and safe places to breed.  All the while thinking about the boa, I decided we may have a fight on our hands and it was important to me to know what the opponent was.  How, exactly, I didn’t know.



Much to my relief, my sister said “No, no, no! It’s a frog, a frog!  The biggest frog I have ever seen!”

I was already geared for the fight, keeping in mind how the boa was handled, but now the competitor was a giant frog.



Now it was the giant frog, the cock roaches, and the seemingly hundreds of fish bait squirming, somewhat like the snake scene in an Indiana Jones movie, that was singing to us as we frantically lifted, pulled and loaded mother’s junk for the past fifty years, which she had no idea we were doing, or she would have been out in the barn acting crazier than we were.



We lifted and pulled, squatted and groaned, loaded and chunked shelving, doors, ancient large free standing gas heaters, long rods with a clump of cement as big as a basketball,  unidentified gadgets, and paraphernalia that had long lost its’ purpose.



We loaded two pickup truck loads and traveled one way twelve miles to empty  things that were, and the things that had been into a landfill that was designed to transport it’s products received by its customers into a semi-truck and go to Valdosta, Georgia where it would reverently find burial ground.



I thought of the millions of people that woke up yesterday, the first day of August, how old they felt, how they felt they too were rotting, and knew they were quickly on their way to be transported to the landfill. People who have lost their purpose, mentally feeling used up, useless, forgotten and hoped the semi was not too far away.



Our older population, according to some reports, is the most depressed and hopeless in our society. What a shame!  The mothers and fathers who changed smelly diapers, bathed, dressed, car pooled, took to doctors’ visits, ballgames, parent teacher conferences, church and school from birth to marriage and sometimes after marriage and sometimes began the process over with their grandchildren were now long forgotten and irrelevant to those same children.


My dear mother can be difficult at times, but I will never forget what she has done for me through the years, I will never let her feel worthless or used up. As long as it is in my power to see to her needs, God being my witness, I will do my best to make her remaining years secure in the knowledge that even though she has the Holy Spirit she has a daughter and a family who will never leave her.


Those hopeless items in that barn are gone now.  The hopeless ones out there who feel much like the items we junked,  young or old,  would be wise to go deep inside your spiritual self and grab onto the promises of God and hold Him accountable to His promises.  Take His written word, read one of His promises to Him and bid Him come and fulfill His word.  His word is true and He will always see that His word is honored no matter what He has to do. 



You can count on that!