Wrinkled wisdom... If we pay attention and learn as we live, we can gain in wisdom. Freddie Lou Haworth has been one of my wrinkled wise women. She was the wife of Swan Haworth, a prominent Baptist pastor, and one of the most complete persons I have known.
As a young pastor’s wife, mother to small children, I needed her funny self revealing wisdom. She was as comfortable as an old slipper and as honest as a well lit mirror. When you visited her, she did not put on the Ritz or try to be anyone other than herself. Time spent with Freddy Lou was a treasure, a gift of grand proportions given freely from her loving heart. I learned how to cuss creatively from Freddy Lou, how to sit and be present to the person with you, how to take care of myself without guilt for having needs that seemed frivolous in comparison to all the world’s ills, how to laugh from the bottom up until laughter bubbled over the top of your soul. Two of the lessons I learned from her continue to influence my life daily.
The first lesson is the art of caring for myself, valuing myself as a one of a kind creation without guilt. Freddy Lou used to take one day a month off to go up on the mountain. Sometimes she literally traveled to a mountain but most often she used that image for a day off. After Swan and the children would leave in the morning, Freddy Lou took her time. She might crawl back in bed with her movie magazines (remember those?), her nail polish, turn the radio on and loll away the day. Shortly before the children were due home, she would dress and get their snacks ready, refreshed and ready for the workaday world again. Some days she might dress and walk downtown to window shop, eat lunch out alone, wander as the Spirit led. She had everyone trained so they knew not to be offended if they saw her downtown and she didn’t speak. They knew she was up on the mountain and not to be disturbed. She laughed as she told me about her mountain days and her laughter was the permission I needed to set time apart for myself to just rest, relax, be non-productive, renew my soul with some truly free time.
The second lesson from Freddy Lou was her gentle unflinching straightforward honesty about her life. She could speak of herself, her family, her life’s learning curve, mistakes and successes with equal clarity and forgiveness. She knew the power of acceptance of all that comes as we live, the good, the difficult, the painful, the joyful, and saw them as a piece of a whole. The good and the bad were the same for her, a part of being human, living in an imperfect world. Her ability to include others in all of her life, not just the pretty parts, taught me not to be afraid of the shadows in my own journey but to share them, accept them. Without Freddy Lou as my teacher, I could not write as I do about my own life and spiritual pilgrimage. It is indeed, all good.
And always there was laughter, giggles, sideways grins, smiles and belly laughs. You were ushered into the land of laughter when you spent time with Freddy Lou... laughter that healed, lifted you up, gave you tears of joy to replace tears of sorrow, and laughter that set you free to move out boldly into the life that was waiting for you. It was her spiritual gift. When I imagine God laughing, I hear Freddy Lou’s laughter in my heart and I think they must sound very much alike.
Freddy Lou knew the power of the ragged edges of life... the power to heal yourself and others as you shared your worn and frayed places... the power to move beyond struggle and pain to new life, to resurrection, by simply being all of who you are and then gracing life with laughter. I don’t know for sure but I suspect Jesus must have laughed out loud, a long soul satisfying belly laugh when he woke up from death, alive again, ready to see and be seen. I am pretty sure God laughed out loud during Creation. How else could we have animals like aardvarks and giraffes and pot bellied pigs and human beings unless God was laughing as we were coming into being? Freddy Lou understood life’s punch line and laughed along with God.
I want to let my ragged edges hang out and not be afraid for you to see them. I want to giggle and guffaw and grin. I want to listen for the echoes of a Joyful Creator in all the laughter around me. I want to be more like Freddy Lou (even though she told me to grow up and be more like myself). I want resurrection ragged edges caught up in peals of laughter at the wonder of it all. Please, Lord?
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