Everyday Blessing

God bless you and keep you,

Always in Light.

God guard you and guide you,

Whatever your fight.

God with you and love you,

In depth or in height.

God for you,

 Restore you,

By day and by night.

Everyday Adventure

It’s a beautiful sunny morning and I’m pondering the notion that every day can end up being a bit of an adventure.  It all depends upon the way I choose to look at the things that happen in the day.

On Saturday morning I woke up in the mood to bake oatmeal cookies. This was rather unusual as I have not baked cookies in 3 or 4 months. I was working that afternoon (at the caverns) so I went ahead and made the cookies then took some to work to share, as well as a few just for me. While at work that day I was in charge of cleaning the “museum”, which is the building directly over the entrance to the cavern where the tours end. A woman came up, obviously in some distress, and asked if I had any food. She explained that her blood sugar had dropped and she was not feeling well at all. We don’t carry snacks in the gift shop, but I did have the cookies I had just baked, so I gave her one. She soon was feeling better, and was quite grateful. When I told her the story of how I woke up with the unusual urge to bake cookies, we both realized that Someone was aware of her need. It pleased me that I had listened to the “urge to bake” and thus had been able to give the woman what she needed. That’s an adventure!

I wonder what today will bring?

New Year: New Beginnings

Can it be that from our endings, new beginnings you create?

Life from death, and from our rendings, realms of wholeness generate?

Take our fears, then, Lord, and turn them into hopes for life anew:

Fading light and dying season sing their Glorias to you.

Words by Dean W. Nelson, 1988, in Wonder, Love, and Praise

My Prayer

Lord, as this year ends I thank you for all the days and the ways that you touched my life. As the new year begins I look with anticipation to the days ahead, believing that you will continue to bring light and wholeness to all the areas of my life. I look around at the events of this earth and it would be easy to enter this new year in fear for the future, yet I choose instead to enter it in faith, praying that you will bring about the fulfillment of your plans for this planet. I pray that you will bring into reality the things you have spoken to my own heart, and that I will accept the challenges and allow you to form me into the person I really am. Jesus, dear Jesus, you came and you changed everything. It is in you that I hope. It is for you that I sing: Gloria!           Amen

Happy Birthday to Me: The Best is Yet to Be

note: the publish date says Dec. 25, but it’s really the 24th as I write this.

Today is my birthday. Not just any birthday, but the Big 5-0. The birthday I’ve been dreading for years.

Somehow I’d gotten the idea that the age of 50 was the beginning of the end, or something. I certainly wasn’t looking at being 50 as an assest. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in recent weeks though, and I have decided that this attitude is something that needs to fade into the past along with the decade of the 40’s.

I know lots of people that are older than I am. Many of them don’t seem any older to me, but I know that they are. As I’ve thought about people I know that are older than I, I have discovered that they all do cool and amazing things. Some of those things they didn’t even start doing until they were past 50. For instance, there is Dick who is perhaps old enough to be my father. He sings in the church choir even though it’s difficult for him to climb the steps to the choir loft with a foot that gives him trouble all the time. He takes voice lessons and sings in recitals. Then there is my dear friend Kerry who holds two jobs, sings, paints, quilts, and writes books to give to all her neices and nephews and a few others.  Wow!  We go walking together so I know she’s in decent shape too. Linda, who is about 15 years ahead of me in the age range,  hikes in Colorado where she and her husband moved only a year ago. She leads Bible studies and does tons of other stuff too, and this all while dealing with health issues as well.  My aunt Martha has lost a kidney and is diabetic, but manages to care for her handicapped granddaughter many days during the week, volunteers at a hospital, and goes to a health club to keep fit. Jo has survived a divorce, lost lots of weight and is looking super, is still a great teacher after more than 30 years, and is winning another fight with breast cancer. And she has a sense of humor to boot! The list could go on; I’ve discovered that doing interesting and valuable and fun things is not just for those in the realm of the young, or even the middle-aged.

So now I’m beginning to think that perhaps the best years of my life may be yet to come. Compared to when I was say 35, I am more confident, wiser, sassier, and I no longer have children living at home. I also laugh easier and longer, feel freer to be me than I ever have, and care less about what others may think. I am full of potential!

Happy Holidays!……or not….

Thanksgiving dinner was at my house; present being my brother and parents, and our two grown children. Other than the ham being too done and the rolls rising too much I thought things went pretty well. Dad and brother didn’t get in an argument, brother appeared less depressed than is usual on a holiday, hubby was helpful, and I managed not to do anything to inadvertantly upset the kids. Thank you God.

By late afternoon eveyone but one child had left and I could relax. Not only had things gone rather well, but I had managed to get through the day without getting upset myself. Holidays are never easy it seems, and honestly, that makes me angry. Holidays and family time together are supposed to be fun, right? So why is it, I have often wondered, that I would just as soon skip the entire holiday season? It is not fun. It is not happy. Holidays are days to be endured.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-holiday. I love Thanksgiving in principal and I really enjoy this time of year at school, spending more time than is necessary educating my students about the Pilgrims and the reasons they came to the New World in the first place. I’m finding ways to enjoy Christmas within the parameters of the church; the anticipation of Advent, the music, and the beauty of the Christmas Eve service. The rest of Christmas however, the shopping, gifts, music, cards, baking, and etcetera, do nothing but make me feel inadequate and stressed. When it’s over I’m left with a dull ache in my heart that doesn’t begin to dissipate until mid-January.

In an effort to make some sense of the way I feel, I go back to the holidays of my childhood. Holidays were never a huge big deal like in many families. Mom did try to make things special though. Perhaps she tried too hard, because I don’t ever remember her has being anything but very stressed on such occasions. Dad, who worked 3rd shift, was around more during the days on holidays but that was a mixed blessing. He was hard to please, and my mother, and eventually my bother, bore the brunt of his harsh words. We all walked on eggshells. When I picture holidays at home I picture a little girl trying not to cry, or hiding in her room crying in private. It’s taken me most of my adult life to admit it, but while I have a few happy memories overall holidays were not happy times in the home I grew up in.

So the little girl grew up determined that things would be different and better in her own young family. She tried hard, probably too hard because she was always stressed and things never turned out like she hoped. Her husband was a gentle man, but not easy to please, so she kept trying harder. Her children, hopefully, have some good memories of their childhood holidays but have also been left with a deep sense of unrest and grief that holidays in their house were not quite the joyous events for which everyone seemed to hope. The grown up little girl still tries not to cry.

Pilgrim Heroes and Other Thanksgiving Thoughts

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite times of the year at school. I have some really good books about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims that are illustrated with photos taken at Plimoth Plantation. (I really want to go there!!) The interpretive guides at Plimoth do not at all look like the image of a Pilgrim that has been promoted for at least the past 50 years; black hats with buckles, black and white clothing, buckled shoes. I think it’s safe to assume that the historians at Plimoth know what they’re doing, so I try to bust the myth of the Pilgrims manner of dress. I read that some Puritans dressed the way we envision the Pilgrims, but the people at Plimoth did not. Even so, when we made paper pilgrim hats today one of the boys insisted upon drawing a buckle on his hat.

A couple of weeks ago we read about the Mayflower voyage, then colored a drawing of the famous ship pasted to a background of sea and sky of the kids own creation. I remember a girls several years ago who had drawn a stormy sky with lightening and something else I could not identify hovering close to the ship. When asked, the girl explained that the “something else” was an angel and it was there because people were dying. Ah yes, I’m certain you are right dear girl; surely there were angels on the Mayflower! (Click for photos and information on the Mayflower II voyage in 1957.)

Today we can only imagine, and probably not well at that, the tremendous hardship the Pilgrims suffered on their voyage and during that first winter in the New World. Not all those on the Mayflower travelled for religious reasons; there were some who made the voyage for more or less economic reasons. Whatever the reason a folks found themselves on that ship though, I think they must have had a good amount of faith to have survived. By the end of the first winter about half of the men, women, and children who had made the voyage had died of sickness, starvation, and cold. As I tell my students, “try to imagine 100 people in a space not much bigger than our classroom; no electricity, no toilets, and most everyone is sick to their stomachs or throwing up! What would it smell like?” Sorry, but that alone would do me in. I am obviously not of Pilgrim stock.

I admire and have the greatest respect for those brave souls who sailed on the Mayflower. I think of those mothers who brought their children into the dangerous unknown, and of those mothers who left their children behind hoping to send for them later. As we celebrate now in 2007 at our overstuffed tables in our overly comfortable homes, let us remember the heroes of that first Thanksgiving in 1621.

Darkness Lurking

Sunday….my favorite day of the week. Church this morning was chilly as the furnace is not working properly, but it surely warmed my soul to worship with my brothers and sisters in Christ at St. Peter’s.  Sometimes I think I could go to church every day and not tire of it. 

Later I went to the library to drink coffee and read, and it was there that I realized that the darkness was lurking about. I got none of the things I needed to do today done. I huddled in my bed and read and tried not to think.

I’ve dealt with depression for as long as I can remember and I believe the darkness would have destroyed my life entirely were it not for God’s grace and mercy. True depression is a place of darkness so dark that no light can penetrate the black shroud around you.  It can’t be chased away by an act of will, or doing the “right” things, or even, perhaps more often than not, by prayer alone.  It still hurts to think about what I was like during the worst times, and it’s been close to 15 years since then.  When I sense a dark fog on the perimiters of my consciousness, it takes all the faith I’ve got to convince myself that I will not visit that hellish place again.

So why, I ask the Only One Who Knows, is the darkness lurking? It could be the upcoming holidays, for various reasons. It could be hormones. It could be that for some reason right now I need to remember the Darkness so that I can appreciate the Light. I don’t have an answer to my question as yet. I don’t want to think about it, but it’s probably important that I do. I must be on the offensive when dealing with Darkness; if I wait to defend myself it will be too late. So I will think and pray, and pray and think, and ponder just what is going on and what I am to do about it, and hope it’s nothing more than a cloud passing in front of the sun.

Acceptance

I’m really bummed. This morning is the first church service with our new rector, and I’m here at home with laryngitis. So much for singing in the choir for the next few weeks too. Once I get over this I usually can’t sing for 3 weeks. I’m drinking tea and taking vitamins and gargling, and praying, that I will have enough voice by tomorrow to go to work.

I was SO hoping that this wouldn’t happen this fall. It’s happened every fall for 10 years now. I believed this year would be different because I’m healthier and my immune system is stronger than it has been in some years. I am grateful though. I’ve only had a mild cold and I’m not getting bronchitis. Yes, I am grateful!

So there’s nothing to do but accept the situation and make the best of it. Fighting it will only add to my stress and thus prolong the ailment. I’ll do another load of laundry to hang on my line. I’ll sleep some more. I’ll drink tea and sit in the sun and spend time with God in my own way. I’ll pray for my church and our new rector and for my own healing and have faith.

Clothesline Comfort

I did a load of laundry today and instead of throwing it in the dryer I hung it out on a clothesline in my backyard. It felt really good to do that.

When we lived in the country I had a large clothesline. It was actually shaped like a square with a double line strung on all four sides. This was my own innovative idea to save space in the yard and steps for me. I preferred to use the clothesline rather than the dryer. It was a small way to save money, dryers are power guzzlers, and I always thought the clothes smelled better. I enjoyed hanging out the wet clothes and shaking out the stiffness as I took them dry from the line. Hanging out the clothes provided quiet spaces in the day when I could listen to the birds sing, pray, or just enjoy the sunshine. I have many happy clothesline memories, some involving young children playing at my feet as I worked. When the kids got older and I went to work full time outside the home I hung out the clothes less, but I always said that if I ever got too busy to do it at all then I was too busy.

We’ve lived in town now for over two years. I’ve been asking hubby to put up a line for me all that time. What made him finally do it was the towels. No matter how I washed them, the towels just never smelled good. Hubby complained about it more than once and one day finally heard my answer to the dilemma. “If I had a clothesline I could hang them out in the sun,” I explained. “The sunlight kills the lingering bacteria that makes towels smell funny. It’s the only thing I know of that will work for sure.” So now I have a nice retractable line that handles one average size load of wash quite well, and the towels smell good again.  I’ll be using my line until it’s could enough to freeze wet clothes. I figure if I hang out even one load a week, the energy saved will be worth the effort.

Hanging the laundry out to dry, feeling the warm sunshine, hearing the birds sing, watching the squirrel run along the top of the fence. Simple pleasures really are the best.

Yesterday hubby and I celebrated our anniversary.  We travelled to the southern part of the state to spend the day at a Renaissance Faire and had a wonderful time. Friday evening as we were on the road to the hotel where we were to spend the night, we began searching our minds for good memories. BK (before kids) we took several nice vacations and these times were some of the first things we came up with. I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Atlantic Ocean! While there are many good memories over the years we’ve spent together, there are many more that are bittersweet at best. I find that I don’t really enjoy looking at the old photos because for every good memory that is stirred, there seems to be something lurking closely about that I’d rather forget. All this remembering has made me aware, once again, that I need to make peace with some things, but that’s another discussion.

It turned out that the weekend theme at the Renaissance Faire was “romance.” Perfect! The set of the little town includes a church, where a mass renewal of vows was held. So we “got married again” by a priest who was probably just an actor in a little church that reminded me of a fancy picnic shelter with a nice altar at the front, and we have a certificate to prove it. It was a serious affair though, unlike anything else we witnessed that day. The brief service was adapted from an Anglican prayer book from the early 1800’s, and the whole thing was, I thought, quite meaningful. So now, I mentioned to hubby, we have started over and we can do things right this time around! With 28 years of previous experience, and the grace of God, we ought to be able to enjoy a wonderful marriage!