{"id":535,"date":"2011-06-19T22:40:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T02:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/sunday-june-19-2011\/"},"modified":"2011-06-19T22:40:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T02:40:00","slug":"sunday-june-19-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/sunday-june-19-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday June 19, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/p>\n

tonight<\/span>

i sat on your front porch with the peeling blue paint.<\/span>

i walked through your new old house, able to appreciate beautiful moldings and fine antique furniture and the incredible amount of work you’ve accomplished already.  the house that was just waiting for your love although it makes us sad that you had to leave the other one.<\/span>

i felt so happy to see you were up and around.  we were worried when you didn’t return our call and we can’t just pop in anymore now that you’ve moved.  we miss you.<\/span>

so we sat there <\/span>

sipping your coffee<\/span>

mesmerized by the stories of your life<\/span>

a life riddled with rejection, anger, guns, falls, being cheated, fear, illness, being ripped off over and over again by the people who should have loved you most, accidents with chain saws and things far more dangerous<\/span>

a life that has experienced levels of pain so deep they make my worst experiences look like cat scratches<\/span>

i see the glint in your eyes <\/span>

the tension in your muscles<\/span>

i hear the intensity in your voice as you retell the stories and i sense that you are only touching the tip of the iceberg because you are protecting our boys … and maybe us.<\/span>

i watch you alternate back and forth between the inhaler to open your airways and the nicotine that closes them as it numbs the pain<\/span>

i see the fighter in you<\/span>

the fighter who longs for something better <\/span>

for love<\/span>

for a fair chance<\/span>

we drive off as night falls<\/span>

watching for more trains<\/span>

talking to the boys<\/span>

the headlights illuminate the tall purple salvia and pink vincas as we drive up to our house<\/span>

i crawl out of the car<\/span>

suddenly startled by the contrast that is my life<\/span>

i stand still<\/span>

reveling in the stillness of the country <\/span>

a freshly mown lawn<\/span>

a thousand fireflies dancing in the woods<\/span>

the feeling of safety<\/span>

the happiness that is our family.<\/span>

he grew up rich<\/span>

i grew up eating macaroni and cheese<\/span>

why is he there<\/span>

and i am here?<\/span>

tonight i feel small.<\/span>

and once again,<\/span>

i will go to bed praying for our neighbor who isn’t really our neighbor anymore<\/span>

that someday he will see Jesus as more than the man up above<\/span>

that he will know what it means to be loved<\/span>

but i will pray that for me, too<\/span>

because he makes me see the too much me in me.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

tonighti sat on your front porch with the peeling blue paint.i walked through your new old house, able to appreciate beautiful moldings and fine antique furniture and the incredible amount… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39ynQ-8D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}