Author: Ramona Levacy Billingslea

I am a 50-something Texan with a feisty cat and a supportive husband of 25+ years. With a Master's degree in English with an emphasis on creative writing, I have taught creative writing at Texas Tech, won awards for my writing and been blessed to be mentored by Horn Professor and poet Dr. Walt McDonald. I earn a living by helping my husband's family run a health food store, but my avocation is writing. I hope you enjoy reading about some of my triumphs and tragedies as I continue to work on figuring out what life is all about and on growing my ability to share my writing. May your own journey be a blessed one.
Posted in Christian Living, Faith

His Rewarding Word

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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Studying the Bible can be the most frustrating and the most rewarding thing you will ever do. Even if you don’t enjoy studying, per se, taking the time to read the word of God on a regular basis will reap benefits. Not only my own experience, but the Bible itself supports this thesis.

Timothy tells us that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). In other words, the Bible comes from God and contains within it every thing we might need to do the good work that God would have us do.

Christ underscored the importance of the Word when He answered the devil’s temptation with the conclusion that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Paul adds hope to the promises of what we can expect to gain from studying the Bible: “for whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).

But, the New Testament is not the only source of proof that the words of God are worth our undivided attention. Joshua promises prosperity and good success if we are careful to do “according to all that is written in it” by “meditat[ing] on it day and night” (Joshua 1:8). The Psalmist proclaims that God’s “word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (119:105), that He is “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (46:1). Isaiah explains that God’s full intention is to have His word used to accomplish His will, using the metaphor of the natural relationship between the seed and the sower: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (55:10-11).

Sometimes, we want to avoid the parts of the Bible that are challenging to us, and lots of times those difficult parts are in the Old Testament (OT). But, as Philip Yancey reminds us, the OT is actually the Bible that Jesus read.

I was vividly reminded of the bonuses available in regular study of the Bible this week as I was making my way through the book of the prophet Jeremiah, who is warning Jerusalem about the coming tide of the Babylonian invasion. In chapter 6, Jeremiah writes, “This is what The Lord says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls….” (16).

Remember how the OT is the Bible Jesus read? Are you struck like I was by the echoes of His words in this verse? Christ tells us the path is narrow to the Kingdom (Matthew 7:13-14), but promises that His burden is light (Matthew 11:30). And one of my favorite treasures from the word is when Christ promises, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27).

So, the same promise that God was making for His people in the time of Jeremiah, He continued to offer to all of us, including Gentiles, through the words and actions of Christ.

I’ve left off the saddest part of the verse from Jeremiah, however, for at the end of verse 16, The Lord concludes, “But you said, ‘We will not walk in it‘” [emphasis added]. The Israelites who had refused to walk in the ways of God were facing destruction of their worldly kingdom. For those who refuse to follow the way of Christ . . . .

What we fill our minds with is what will come out of us. The more we know about the things that matter to us, the less likely we will be persuaded to do something that is actually contrary to what we profess to believe.

When I was in Sunday school as a child, we were told the “story” of the woman who saved up her whole life to afford a cruise. Because she had spent all her money on the cruise ticket, she spent the week of the cruise living off of saltines she had brought along, watching others indulge in the abundant food available as her stomach grumbled. Only at the end of the cruise did someone finally explain to her that her food had been included in the ticket!

Let’s not live a life nibbling saltines when our acceptance of Christ’s salvation has opened up to us an entire banquet of wisdom and love and peace–all just waiting to be discovered in His true, sometimes challenging, but always rewarding Word.

Posted in Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #13

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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What Animals Have To Teach Us

In warm-belly comfort, stretched
in the only puddle of light
on this cloudy afternoon,
our tabby sleeps in oneness
with the air she purrs in and out,
blissfully ignoring the boxes half-packed
and piles of treasures, the junk
we know as us, strewn in random anger
around her.

The first time, she bounced
from box to box, then hid under the bed’s
farthest corner, her patience for the lull
in rising voices outlasting
even the cling of her dinner plate
tossed mid-argument onto the floor.

Our patience, mostly human, spars
with the need deep in our chests
to be the right one, no matter the cost,
be it cozy afternoons in our own light’s puddle,
or the quieting purr of a tabby
curled like a pretzel in our laps.

Tomorrow, we will come back to center,
shake our heads over another weekend
lost to best left unsaid, long for the peace
we see modeled in furry perfection,
as she kneads our bellies and begs
for supper, all she need know
of life to the full sealed and waiting,
the essence of her cat-ness
preserved in a round, metal can.

Ramona Levacy
April 13, 2013

Posted in Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #12

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Like Chicken-Fried Love

The chair, cherry red but chinked
with black layers showing through,
stood in the corner of Grandma’s noisy kitchen,
gathering cobwebs to its spindly legs
and golden flecks of crumbs,
the shortbread of love we grandkids gobbled,
in lopsided circles where it wobbled
as we begged for her jolly grin
or stood upon the well-worn seat to spy
the mystery, the absolute alchemy
that only she had mastered.

Hands pudgy and pink, she kneaded
rolls ready to rise, Buddy Holly tunes
wafting in the air around us,
along with scents of cinnamon
and something she called cooking sherry.

At her rounded elbows we learned
the meaning of happy, how butter
richly lingered, cast iron held
flavor to its belly, meringue peaked
like mountains making us forget
all but our wide-eyed awe.

No microwave or take-out, plated
even on the finest china,
replaces the clock slowly ticking
as we savored our chair moments,
watching the loops of Grandma’s apron
sway in rhythm, tucked safely
in the kitchen warmed by her gas stove,
cocooned in country chemistry.

Ramona Levacy
April 12, 2013

Posted in Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #11

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

The Librarian

Miss Alice wore cardigans trimmed in lace,
and plain, brown skirts that draped
her manly shoes, her bunned hair
a perfect circle at the base
of a long, thin neck. Her head swiveled
like a ball on a stick, her horn-rimmed eyes
piercing every cranny of the dusty shelves,
the world she ruled in whispers.

We children plagued her rainy days
and any time the frozen wind blew.
The young men, their chins covered
with fuzzy bristles, made Miss Alice’s ears,
turnips on each side of her round head,
blotch red, their speaking glances
at the girls in bright dresses the prelude
to the secret contact in dark corners
that made the older woman’s eyes bulge
the few times Miss Alice left her desk
to pounce on them.

That desk, with its mounds of books,
piles of history and science and truths
sweated out like blood,
rose around Miss Alice like a fort,
like the walls around her heart,
her hidden organ, tucked inside the drawer
with all her dog-eared romances
and locked away.

Her thin nose and sharp eyes were always there,
as we worked our way through Judy Blume,
grew into Hemingway and books almost banned,
brought our own children to haunt
her disciplined aisles, watching them
gawk at her, eyes wide, silenced
by the swivel of her now grey head.

Her children, bound and musty,
could not keep her warm nights,
tucked in her flannel gown, a hidden treasure
perched on her belly, her only love story
the printed pages blurring just beyond
her thick, round lenses.

Ramona Levacy
April 11, 2013

Posted in Love, Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #10

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

The Marriage Dance

When once we waltzed as one,
nothing went unsaid,
not praises plenty or sorrows,
the painful bursts of that
we should not utter, even what
we would take back,
all absolved, binding us
like the musical patterns we wove
in our living room carpet nights.

Now, the country between us
pitches and yaws like the cool breeze,
our constant companion, no middle ground,
only these miles of weeds and stickers,
our aloneness a wall we will not tackle.

This waltz by myself is not easy,
casting me in shadow, slicing the happy
of others to my heart’s core,
beating rapid rhythms around me,
as I lumber like one dancing in the dark.

Was it days blended into days,
sugared coffee and oatmeal and the sound
of the sprinkler splatting the back door,
that brought us to this black, soundless chasm?
Or was it forgetting to keep the music at our center
the One and Only keeper of the light?

Ramona Levacy
April 10, 2013

Posted in Christian Living, Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #9

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

To Know Him

Silence is a cool breeze tickling
skin warm from the sunlight,
grass blades licking earlobes lush
in paintbrush and dandelion,
a stream bubbling clear
just beyond reach,
the blue sky high above
and white along the edges.

Thoughts scurry, as fears breathe out
with the fall of the chest,
and oxygen warms the belly. Arms
flung sideways, the legs sink
into the clean, crisp earth,
letting go, holding nothing,
open to everything,
even the gentle whisp of a butterfly’s wing.

Knowing God means quiet places,
finding brooks in our mind’s crannies,
away from unholy treasures,
tucked in the deepest dark
where we are most surely and yet never
alone.

Ramona Levacy
April 9, 2013

Posted in Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #8

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

A Two-Step Dream

He loved her when once she danced,
skittering loops and lines
across a grit-smoothed floor,
her long, blond hair glinting white
against the strobes of lighted halls,
her skirts, always red, twirling ’round
her well-formed calves in rhythms
his heart tapped beats to.

Her heart, solid and cold, except when music
filled her senses, matched his footsteps
only when the band played, her breath
a hot promise on his ear lobes, as close
as ever she came to love.

In the circle of a dance floor,
they twirled and tangoed,
bobbing and weaving the maze
of nothing or all, forever dangling
between them like the twinkle
of gems that seal promises
so many never keep.

Now, tapping heels to any song
wafting past his easy chair, he thinks
of her lips, the plump, red orbs
just touching his cheek stubble,
the two-step all he’d ever know
of a full, gentle world.

Ramona Levacy
April 8, 2013

Posted in Christian Living, Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month #7

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

The Supplicant

They are just hands, cracked
as any work-worn skin might be,
the creases running in lines
telling stories of every lost dream
and hard-won victory.

Just looking, we see past the embedded dirt,
the scars stark white against tanned skin
so thick, even softness is just a memory.
These hands know pain, hold hurt
like a solid something, ease misery
with the lightest touch.

Only hands that have raised the crops
for the table or sewn the quilts
warming family beds feel the cold
on winter mornings as something
more than nature’s biting chill.

Clasped in yearning, these hands
have come as close to God
as any believer, stretched in faith
toward that something that binds us
each to the other, the surety of things hoped for,
the evidence of that not seen.

Ramona Levacy
April 7, 2013

Posted in Christian Living, Writers, Writing

It All Begins With A Story

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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Writers live and die by the story. We see a story in the heated exchange between a mother and father over the cooling remains of a half-eaten dinner at a crowded restaurant, in the brief glimpse of a bicycle laying upside down against a rickety fence, in the weathered face of a one-legged man holding a cardboard sign on a street corner.

Are we writers first, born with the love of story? Or do the stories that we encountered growing up make us into writers?

No matter which chicken or egg answer you choose, stories are a blessing no writer can ignore.

My story blessings are deeply rooted in the histories of sacrifice, hard work, and all-out toughness that surround my family’s background. Like many of us, I don’t have to look past two generations to find people who survived off the land, perfected the art of getting by with just enough, and who never questioned the value of hard work and the happiness achieved via the simple philosophy of loving God first and then one’s fellow man.

There are people outside of my family circle, however, whose stories also touched my creative spirit. One of them died before I was born. A friend of my dad’s, he was sacrificed like so many of that generation on the battlefields of Vietnam. As the story goes, he was safely inside the trench when he ventured out to retrieve a fellow soldier. Unfortunately, he died in the attempt. The closest he ever came to having children, I suppose, is the middle name I bear in honor of his memory.

Another one of my dad’s friends survived his tour of duty only to be scarred by it for the rest of his life, or at least, so it seemed. A “frogman,” that friend had the scary job of following behind the enemy divers and dismantling the bombs they had set in the ocean. It was almost fifteen years after the war before he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, but even before that, he had chosen a different path.

A sort of “old hippie,” he travelled the country playing music, never laying down roots, and yet still having that bon vivant quality that drew others to him. At his funeral recently, Dad was impressed by the stories this buddy’s more recent friends had to tell about the kindnesses extended and lives touched by someone who truly sacrificed all for his country, leaving behind in the end nothing to really call his own.

No matter how diligently we try to express or emulate the stories we experience on paper, beyond personal experience there are no stories as powerful as those woven for us in the pages of the Bible. Open this good book anywhere, and you will encounter love stories, great battles, and conversations with God.

How incredible is the story of Saul called Paul, a Pharisee known for his zealous pursuit of the infidel Christians, a Roman citizen who met God on the road to Damascus and gave up all the acclaim he had earned among his peers to preach the truth of Christ to the Gentiles? Or what about David, who had a heart like God’s, yet still continued to struggle with the same sins that we all must face each day? Because David repented of those sins, he continued to find moments of wonder with the One and Only.

But my favorite stories of the Bible are found in the Psalms, where anonymous, every day people, just like you and I, pour out their praise and fear and even anger with God as they combat the challenges that are inherent to being human. What a glorious God we have, that He will love us through our happiness and our pain! If you ever doubt it, you will find a fellow traveller in the Psalms for whichever place with God you are at. And if you are far from God, I am convinced that the every day people of the Psalms can bring you back again.

From Psalm 91: “Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’”

From Psalm 33: “We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.”

From Psalm 12: “Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race. Everyone lies to their neighbor; they flatter with their lips but harbor deception in their hearts.”

Solomon tells us, “There is nothing new under the sun,” but there are beauty and wonder, tears and pain.

And it all begins with a story.

Posted in Uncategorized

National Poetry Writing Month #6

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

So, what is truth?

In this age, where all we know
changes–Pluto is no planet,
and even snowflakes have doubles–
what makes truth wavers,
turning grey what once seemed
as solid as the rich soil
where all cornerstones were founded.

Born to a world that is new every morning,
we humans lack patience, search for sameness
in the dark corners of each day
where the silence of what is to come
makes our skin crawl.

This chaos makes us humble,
keeps our chests from exploding
from our height on the food chain.
On our knees, in the safest moments
of our reality, we will know truth,

remembering the words of the One,
the Master Designer, He whose comfort
knows no limits, who lights all dark places,
in whose arms Truth finds home.

Ramona Levacy
April 6, 2013