You know the first rule of flyin is? Well I s'pose you do since you already know what I'm bout to say.

I do, but I like to hear you say it.

Love, for all the mad in the verse, you take a boat in the air that you don't love she'll shake you up just as sure as turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down; tell you she's hurtin 'fore she kicks; makes her a home.

Storms getting worse.

We'll pass through it soon enough.

While I'd like to believe some crazy film taught me this lesson, I know who did. Though it does make a great ending to a good movie. I have been trying to watch the whole movie and have been unsuccessful until today. Got through it, start to finish. I remember the lesson and who taught it to me. It was my Dad.

When I was little, a man gave me the most beautiful lamp. He gave one to my brother too although it was a boy version and mine was a girl version. I don't know that they are worth anything, but they were worth a lot to him. My lamp was Strawberry Shortcake. I remember growing up with Strawberry Shortcake stories and dolls and it seemed like at one point she joined the Saturday morning cartoon line up. I don't know if the stations still do that, but I knew my morning was over when the Soul Train came on and it was time to get dressed and into yard clean up clothes. I can still smell the doll. She smelled like what I would imagine a plastic strawberry would smell like. I know that if you put her in front of me blindfolded, I could tell you who she was. I also had a Strawberry Shortcake bathing suit that I wore forever. It had a criss-cross back and was very confusing to step into for a two year old...or how ever old I was.

It never occurred to me that my parents wouldn't have given me the lamp. It made since to me that since almost every thing I owned they gave me, why not the lamp? Some how in conversation the story of the lamp came up. I think Mom was driving us in the blue marquis on to violin. She told me the story: Mr. Walker had a daughter. She was extremely upset about something so much so that she was determined to run away. My Dad was the youth/music minister of Mr. Walker's church so in the middle of the night, my Dad went to help when called. He some how convinced that youth that things were not as bad as they seemed and that it would all be okay in the morning. Everything is always better in the morning.

I don't know if it is the job of a minister to go into a home with a confused, scared young woman and convince her that life is worth living, worth loving and worth staying for, but that is what my Dad did. She woke the next morning and yes, everything was better in the morning. She learned that when we trust, have faith and believe that we are loved that things pass. It is just a storm and we will pass through soon enough. Her father was eternally grateful to my father for saving his daughter's life. And I got a really cool lamp.

I have always remembered that story. I think sometimes it is the reason that I didn't kill myself when I was drinking. I have a memory of coming too over my bible searching desperately for the answer in tears and without a notion in the world that in order to find God I would have to be sober first. What I did know was two things: God was in that damn compilation of books and that I would have to look for him in the morning because it was too dark and would all be okay in the morning. So I would lay my drunken head down, pass out, come to, go to sleep, and sure enough it passed. That horrid sensation, that emotional crush, that unbelivable, incomprehensible demoralization was gone. Today, I don't ever have that. The storm has passed and when I go to bed or wake up, it is always okay.