I woke up to the sight of light melting through my sliding glass door of my cruise cabin into my dark room. “I need to take pictures,” I thought. I did. Beautiful! I drank my cup of coffee. I scrolled my Facebook news stream. I noticed other Dreamer friends were posting their thoughts and experiences. I had stayed in my beautiful room yesterday from the moment I’d arrived until now. I had been tired, taken a hot bubble bath, rested.
In my news stream there was a post from a young Texas musician guy I met through my Cowboy friend, Andy. Andy had originally inspired me to create my public Austin, Texas television series (which turned into short-stories I’m still writing ten years later). I call it “Texas Tales from a Lone Star.” (I had stayed in my beautiful room yesterday from the moment I arrived… get it? LONE star.) I’m a 6th generation independent Texan who traces her ancestors back to stories by my great great grandmother’s correspondence with one of Stephen F. Austin’s original 300 Texas settlers. She wrote a book of just their letters. Women weren’t allowed to publish books back then. So she wrote her letters in response to his letters and they published her book under his name. It’s in my bedroom closet, right now, at home.
My young Texan musician friend had sung such offensive-to-me songs at Andy’s gatherings that I had quit taking my little granddaughter to them. Once, I had confronted the guy, “Would you stop cussing in front of my little granddaughter?!!” He had told me, “No, that he did whatever he wanted and had no intention of changing.”
This morning, he had posted something I saw in my news stream. “How do you start over?” he had asked. “What do you do to change your life? How do you go in a good direction and make it work?” So I answered.
“Pick up a Bible. Open it at random. Close your eyes. Put your finger on the page. Open your eyes. Read. Think how it might apply to your life. Determine to walk as close to goodness as you can. Pray for understanding. Live it. Watch what happens. Write a song about it. Rinse and Repeat daily. One random verse becomes curious desire to read more, think more, live like this more. Notice the small miracles. Notice the changes in your inner thoughts. Help others. Works. Proud of you! You are so talented, and buck the system brave. You’re going to be a force of nature for God. xo”
My late husband, Robin, had done this long ago when I decided I wanted us to buy “Chapelgate,” and move there, leaving Houston, and the world he’d known all his life. He was the leading engineer in computerized oil well drilling. His life had been in Houston and the oil industry for 50 years. Yet, here was the young wife he’d married asking him to move, to buy an old log cabin and an old grist mill a thousand miles away from his work in Houston. He had prayed. “God, do you REALLY want me to leave Houston and move to the middle of nowhere???!!!” He had done just what I advised the young musician Cowboy, picked a Bible verse at random, THREE times. Three times he had opened up his eyes to read, “Pack up all your tools, I’m sending you into exile.” So he did. That was the beginning of all my “The Chapelgate Adventure Series” stories and songs.
It works. I don’t know if the young musician Cowboy guy I know will do the same. But if he does I can look back now and see that this IS how you change your life and follow God. I wish him the best! If he does then the songs that will start pouring out of his pen and heart will buck the system. They will change the world. xo
Copyright 2024 Angel Isaacs All Rights Reserved
Written March 17, 2024 at 8:24 am
