Changing times

Some time ago, October 20, 2020 to be exact, I quoted this verse in a post called “Peace, my friend.” It was written by my pastor and friend, Sarah Kerkes and published in a book called Terra Incognita.

Caretaker of my soul,

Be gentle with me,

For I am tender and tired

Battered with the bruises

Of life and loss and love.

I have recalled this verse many times in the almost two years since my beloved husband passed. I can tell you that my Caretaker has been with me every step of the way just as He promised. I will not leave you nor forsake you; lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the earth. (Hebrews 13:5)

Evidence of this was seen by the caring people of my church's grief group, all in various stages of their own grief journeys. The support I received took my grief from raw and unbearable, to getting through the day, to adjusting to my new role as widow, to acceptance, to feeling hope, and finally, to the peace and happiness I enjoy today. 

More evidence came in the form of a nudge to get outside of myself and do something that matters and benefits others. My pastor assigned me to visit an elderly woman named Elaine in an assisted living facility in our community. At 96, Elaine had a treasure trove of stories and as she recalled them, they brought me inspiration and energy. As Elaine’s health declined, she moved into a shared room at the nearby care facility. Visiting her there, I marveled at her sense of contentment, always smiling so graciously, sharing her joy.

The next time I visited, Elaine had visibly changed. Slumped in her chair covered with a blanket and wearing an oxygen mask, she had obviously grown very weak. She told me she wasn’t eating because she had no appetite. I knew this meant the end was near. We shared Holy Communion and gentle hugs and I left. Elaine passed away last week, shortly after I had visited.

Of the two of us, without a doubt,  I was the more richly blessed. 

I began volunteering at our church office and again, I got much more from this than the office did. I was able to use my organizational and other skills from my past career and I felt a satisfying sense of accomplishment. Though a volunteer, I felt part of the church staff. 

Why do I write about this today? For some reason, the verse written by Sarah Kerkes came to mind this morning. I was reflecting on the changes of the past two years, adjusting to grief, moving my residence, meeting and adding to my life a wonderful man. And I know the Caretaker of my soul was indeed gently and patiently guiding me through these changes. 

So if you’re in a tough spot and finding it difficult to move toward that proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel” — trust that it’s there and keep moving toward it. The caretaker of your soul will help you get there.

 Thank you for reading my ramblings and random thoughts. 

A smart bear

I love these lessons from Bear 🐻 and Rabbit. 🐇 

“It’s time to go,” said Bear.

“But where are we going?” asked Rabbit.

“Forward,” said Bear, 

“We can’t stay here anymore.”

“So much has happened here, though. I don’t know 

that I can move on,” said Rabbit.

“You can stay if you want,” said Bear.

“But life won’t wait with you.”

“It won’t?” asked Rabbit.

“No,” said Bear. Besides, up ahead

there may be something wonderful.”

“You think so?” asked Rabbit.

“I think,” said Bear, if you stay here,

you’ll never know.”

It’s so much easier for me to remain where I am. So much more comfortable and yes, familiar. It might not be perfect but at least I  know what to expect most of the time.

But life doesn’t let you do that for very long. Something beyond your control happens and it forces a change. I resist. I dig my heels in until I finally realize I’m powerless to change the situation. 

Something strange happens once reality and acceptance kicks in.

I begin to see possibilities. I take a small step. Opportunities present themselves, most of them I’d never have imagined. I give in and take another step, bigger this time. 

When my husband died, joy and hope for the future were lost for me. It was hard to see a life ahead. Hard to imagine life could even go on. Like Rabbit, so much sadness and so many memories had me stuck. And I guess I could have stayed there as that was certainly a choice.

Time began to be a bit kinder to me as one day passed into the next and the next and the next. I began to think something wonderful just might, just could, just may happen.

End of story: I was right.

Beginning of story: I was right.

Bear is so smart.

Turning the page

There comes a day when you realize that turning the page is the best feeling in the world because you realize there’s so much more to the book than the page you’ve been stuck on.       — Zayn Malik

🌷 🌷 🌷 

April showers brought May flowers. Trees are now fully leafed, grass is green, everyone is out and about. Tending gardens, planning picnics, graduation events, getting the fishing gear ready. And isn’t June the month of love?

Well, somewhere in there I found it. Love, that is. 

I was introduced to a wonderful man who very quickly and unexpectedly found his way into my heart. It was very easy to fall in love with David; his kind nature and sense of humor are irresistible. We’ve discovered we have the most important things in common: our faith first and foremost, along with our love of our wonderful children and their families. We have gotten and appreciate their blessing, so we’re ready to sail on, to enjoy life together for as many years as we’re given.

David has visited my home and surrounding towns, meeting some of my family and walking through my neighborhood and then a short hike (mosquitoes!) in Allemansratt Park in Lindstrom. A Sunday church service and a Monday night community dinner completed his introductory visit.

In turn, I was introduced to his town of Staples, Minnesota where we walked around Legacy Gardens and Dower Lake, enjoying the beautiful weather. He showed me the devastating effects of a tornado that went through Old Wadena, downing a countless number of trees and leaving bare land where they once stood. 

Back at David’s home we enjoyed a cozy crackling campfire, watching the still, glassy lake and the deer passing through the edge of the yard. His country setting is so relaxing and wonderfully peaceful.

On Sunday we attended services at his church. We visited a very good friend of his family in the afternoon. An evening visit from two of his granddaughters and their friend was a delightful bonus end to a wonderful weekend. 

Having both experienced the loss of our deeply loved spouses five months apart, the raw edges of grief have at last softened for us and we are ready to turn the page to discover what’s ahead. We see the sun shining again and there are new, sometimes silly, smiles on our faces.

 

Love is not reserved for the young. Love knows no age and when the heart is ready, love appears. 

Thank you, God. 

Thank you for reading my musings.

Empty or full

You know the saying about one’s outlook on life: Do you see the glass half empty or is the glass half full? This supposedly determines whether you’re a pessimist (half empty) or an optimist (half full). 

I find it a good way to check myself once in awhile when I’m feeling negative. Counting my blessings is another way to lift myself from the doldrums, but envisioning a glass partially filled with some kind of liquid and asking myself what I see there is pretty effective for me.

Here’s another one. What do you see here?

A field of wild dandelions, you say? Weeds? Useless? An eyesore? Yes, perhaps.

But maybe you see another sign of spring; a beautiful yellow and green palette. Signs of growth and fertile ground. Another way of looking at the same picture. 

Remember your delight in doing this? From the same field comes wonder and pleasure as children (well, maybe me too) blow the dandelion seeds from the plant. So maybe all is not as it seems and a patch of dandelions can be both an eyesore and a field of yellow beauty. And how can they be useless when they provide children with such pleasurable moments?

So, like the glass, it’s a matter of perception. Empty or full? It is, I think, often a matter of choice. And it’s all yours. Nobody else will see the glass, or the dandelion field, the same way.

The half-full, half-empty glass also provides an opportunity for problem solving and managing life, writes Claes Jonasson. There is more than one way to solve a problem or face a dilemma. My interpretation may not be accurate or useful and it may not have to be this way or that way. (https://claesjonasson.medium.com)

See what I mean?

As always, thanks for visiting and listening to my ramblings. 

Remembering

My Aunt Lois Ruth passed away last week.

What makes this more noteworthy than other losses I’ve experienced lately is that she was my last remaining aunt and the last member of my father’s family, once consisting of seven siblings born to my grandparents.

The other noteworthy thing is that I admired—no, make that idolized her as I was growing up. She was only twelve years older than me so by the time I was a tweenager, she became the most glamorous and exciting person I’d ever known. Don’t you think so too?

She wore open toed heels and white sandals and soft sweaters and sundresses. She had a bedroom dresser full of perfumes and dusting powders. She had a boyfriend and was studying to be a dental hygienist. Ahh…sigh. I wanted to grow up to be like her. No, I wanted to be her. Well, at ten years old, anyway.

My sister Christine and I would “powder” her back. This became something of a ritual with my aunt lying on the top of her bed as Christine and I concocted a pasty mixture of Pond’s dusting powder with Evening in Paris perfume. This we would apply to her back, rubbing it all in and then dusting it further with the powder puff. 

I’m sure the room stunk to high heaven. But my aunt was clearly basking in the luxury of it. This, to my sister and I, was more than an activity, something to simply occupy us for a while. It was something close to a spiritual bonding experience.

Fast forward a few years to my aunt’s wedding. Her groom, my Uncle Glenn, was  of course the most handsome man I had ever seen. The wedding was dreamy. Fitting for my Aunt Lois Ruth. And more idolizing on my part.

The newlyweds moved to Colorado so I didn’t see much of them after that, only if our trips to visit my grandparents coincided with their travels. And then they became parents to Kent and Kelley. Coupled with my growing older and my life moving me forward in all the expected different ways, powdering my aunt’s back became a fond childhood memory.

But my aunt’s greatest legacy and gift to me was her consistent love for family, living her Christian faith, being a role model, and, yes, always remaining gracious and glamorous.

Isn’t she still so beautiful on her 90th birthday? A life well lived, a life well loved, always remaining someone to look up to and emulate.

Rest in peace, my dear Aunt Lois Ruth Page.

And, as always, thank you for reading my random thoughts.💭 

Hello April

 

Oh, April. We are so glad to see you.

Spring is the most exciting time of the year, I think. It’s so full of promise as life starts again, renewed and ready for the warmth of the sun. The crocus opens its petals, tulips begin to pop up from the soil, ready to shake the dust off from winter as if to announce they’ve had their sleep and hello! dear April.

Yesterday I moved my deck furniture and rugs out to take their place in their familiar spots and now, in my mind’s eye, I can see the flowers I’ll arrange in their pots putting color back into my outdoor view. 

But we still need to be patient, don’t we? Not get over anxious over what’s not quite ready for us. Garden soil still needs the sun’s warmth and here in Minnesota, with very little snow over the winter months, much more moisture. (I had to envy Arizona’s Easter Sunday all-day rain which would be so wonderful here.)

Yesterday as I was waiting in line for a car wash, I looked over at a bank of very dirty old snow from the last bit we got here. The top of the bank looked black and crusty, not attractive at all. Then I thought of the children in my neighborhood where we also have a similar bank of old snow. They had pushed and packed that old snow together to create a mountain with a plastic lawn chair perched on top. They took turns climbing up to sit in the chair and you could hear their delight as they played “king of the mountain.”

So, see…you can look at a dirty pile of old snow and simply see a pile of old snow. Or see that pile as a perfect afternoon of fun and entertainment for children who imagine it to be a mountain.

Today I will use my imagination to think of those flowers blooming on my deck, my tomato plant ripening, my herbs ready for seasoning. 

And I decide that Spring is worth the wait.

Thank you for visiting and allowing me to share my random thoughts with you. 

Good Friday

Today is a solemn day as we remember Jesus’ suffering at the hands of soldiers and a large crowd of Roman citizens who blindly joined in the fray perhaps not even having true convictions of their own. Simply because they were followers. Simply because since they heard accusations hurled at Jesus, they figured they must be true. Simply because they were angry.

We know there is a joyous ending to be celebrated in three days, but thinking about those roaring crowds watching the vicious treatment of a fellow citizen without fully understanding the so-called charges nor imagining the cruel outcome got me to thinking about anger. 

There are parallels to the Good Friday account throughout history; many others, martyrs, who were unjustly denied any kind of trial, innocents who suffered because of the orders of a leader who at the root of it all, was angry, a crowd who blindly followed. And we know the accounts throughout ages of imprisoned and tortured victims of war, the power of angry leaders who put them there with seemingly no conscience whatsoever and not a single ounce of regard for humanity. An entire race could simply be annihilated in Germany. Another race could be bought and sold into slavery, treated as inferior beings.

In what we think of as our civilized world, has much changed? Would the people in Ukraine, Gaza, Syria say it has? We still have the crowds who blindly follow a leader, an angry leader. Look at the images we see today, study the faces. Here and in countries abroad, you will see anger. And the consequences are always in the end the same.

Perhaps we’re slow to learn, slow to understand, lessons from the past. Is our society really all that different from Jesus’ day, the Good Friday of long ago? Do we have any power or ability to change it? My personal belief is a resounding YES. We can be in that crowd that insists on justice, peace, equality, kindness, generosity, compassion. That will always speak louder than anger.

Thank you for visiting and thinking I have something worthwhile to say.