faith unfaded

I wish I could be as carefree and wild..

But I got cat class and I got cat style..

I was having dinner at Pedro’s one night a few months ago when a live band was playing. When they broke into “Stray Cat Strut”, I put my fork down and sang every word.

Man, I loved that song.

That memory popped up in my internal feed today as I drove through my childhood neighborhood. I’d gone to visit my friend Merline and, as I left her house, I revisited decades-old memories: Mr. Thiels’ garden, Amy Cataldie’s short life, Ms. Collins’ mean cat and- just two doors down from my old home- Christine Lachney’s old garage.

I’ll never forget the day I went to a garage sale at the Lachney’s house and saw a stack of 45’s. (You might call that a phonographic memory.) I spent my entire allowance on those records, as if listening to a teenager’s music would make me cool by osmosis.

After all, I was a gangly pre-teen with four eyes and a mouth full of metal. I needed all the help I could get!

Along with songs like “Ebony and Ivory” and “Rock the Casbah” was my new fave, “Stray Cat Strut.” It was a cool song about a cool cat played on a cool turntable as I practiced being cool.

It was totally lost on me that if Christine was selling these records, they were probably not cool anymore.

But I didn’t have an older sister so she was my neighborhood de facto big sis. Anything she put on a folding table, I gobbled up!

Memories are funny things. We all have our share of good and bad ones. We don’t have to stick our head in the sand and pretend that bad ones never happened. We just put the ointment of Jesus’ blood over the wound and allow wisdom to rise over hurt.

That allows us to separate the good ones for a little reflective joy. It’s quite like separating eggs. It can be difficult sometimes to separate the white from the yolk of the same egg. But with practice and perseverance it can be done.

Both the whites and yolks are used in cooking just as they are in our lives. They serve different purposes but can both be used for good.

As for being cool? I’m pretty sure that anyone driving down Twin Bridges Road around 1 PM today would use a completely different adjective. But what can I say?

Watching the freshmen perform at NSU’s New Faces 2024 showcase last night inspired me to put on a killer car karaoke performance with my best feline moves!

When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other. Ecclesiastes 7:14