One of my all-time favorite movies is Out of Africa, starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. Ask my children how tired they got of hearing me say "I had a farm in Africa".
I saw the movie about the time I was deciding it was not the end of the world to be a single mother and that somehow we were going to succeed. If you have met my children, you know that I was most right to believe that.
I recently bought a new lap top. The name of the default screen saver is Footpaths. There are ten shots of paths. There's one in a meadow, one that is beside a large body of water one through a dessert, one through a forest. . . etc.
Each of these scenes share a commonality. No path has an end.
Who knows where that footpath is leading?
Back to Out of Africa, do you remember when Karen went to see Bror at the end of the first part of the movie? Her last words “Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.”
If Karen had known - would she have still made the trip to see her unfaithful husband?
Which brings to mind a question - "If you knew then what you know now would you take a different path?"
When I am asked that question my answer is no - I would have done it all again.
Yet still. . .I like to know where my path is leading.
We all know this about me - I am the queen of planners. I start planning the next event before the ink is dry on the invitations.
And yet I know that I must learn. . .
In one of my daily readings this morning I found these words that seem to magnify what I keep hearing, feeling, experiencing:
", , ,we're not supposed to see too far ahead. We're not supposed to know. Don't forget that the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was from the Tree of Knowledge"(Sarah Ban Breathnach in A Daybook of Comfort and Joy.
I don't know where the path is leading.
I guess that's where FAITH comes in!
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Monday, August 10, 2015
An Angel came . . .
It has happened to me more than once.
I've been struggling with an issue, disappointment, disillusionment or just down right hurt feelings and taken that pain to bed only to be awakened with the realization that someone was talking to me.
Okay - not verbally - just a feeling..
August, 1977 - 38 years ago.
My third child was about to be born. The first two (both little girls) had come into this world very easily. Becca at 9 lbs 2 oz was born about 3 hours after we got to the hospital and it took Renee (10.4 and 22 inches long) an hour longer.
Surely this one would be as easy.
Wrong. After a day of labor, when the doctor realized that baby was just not going to be born otherwise, a Caesarian Section brought Raymond Lee Parker, III into this world. Somehow he had managed to turn enough times to get the cord wrapped around his neck.
As I began to wake up - I learned that I had a little boy and that he had been taken to Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The cord, his head seemed a little large, I am a border line diabetic and he weighed 10.2. To the doctors - reason enough.
I was very ill for a couple of days and couldn't go to see him. It was the strangest experience imaginable. I missed my little girls; I was still in much pain and taking lots of antibiotics. It might be the worst three or four days of my life.
And then the time came. My husband wheeled me through the corridors and into an elevator. We arrived at the unit and the nurses brought my baby to the glass (I still had a fever; I couldn't go in). I felt nothing. When I write that I feel so strange. How can a mother "feel nothing"?
Back in my room I lay awake and prayed. It seemed that my prayers were bouncing off the ceiling. I prayed myself to sleep.
At some point, it was as if an angel came and sat on the edge of my bed. And this is what I heard - maybe not audibly - but what I experienced was "it's okay to love him. If I take him I'll give you strength to bear it".
HUM
The next time I went to see him all I could do was cry. He had a little undershirt on and I thought he looked like a future linebacker.
There would be months of uncertainty. But I kept loving him - and the months became years - and he grew -- and I loved him through baseball rather than football; golf, girls, college. Oh me, let's not go there.
But he did grow up. And his sisters and I think we prepared him well for his life with a lovely wife and two daughters.
At this time in my life, there is some uncertainty once again. I'd kind of like an angel to come and sit on my bed. However, God speaks in many ways - like through other writers. I have been feeling emotionally exhausted and I read a devotional by Jennifer Rothschild with these words:
He is the One who makes it well with your soul even when it is not well with your circumstances.
HUM!
I've been struggling with an issue, disappointment, disillusionment or just down right hurt feelings and taken that pain to bed only to be awakened with the realization that someone was talking to me.
Okay - not verbally - just a feeling..
August, 1977 - 38 years ago.
My third child was about to be born. The first two (both little girls) had come into this world very easily. Becca at 9 lbs 2 oz was born about 3 hours after we got to the hospital and it took Renee (10.4 and 22 inches long) an hour longer.
Surely this one would be as easy.
Wrong. After a day of labor, when the doctor realized that baby was just not going to be born otherwise, a Caesarian Section brought Raymond Lee Parker, III into this world. Somehow he had managed to turn enough times to get the cord wrapped around his neck.
As I began to wake up - I learned that I had a little boy and that he had been taken to Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The cord, his head seemed a little large, I am a border line diabetic and he weighed 10.2. To the doctors - reason enough.
I was very ill for a couple of days and couldn't go to see him. It was the strangest experience imaginable. I missed my little girls; I was still in much pain and taking lots of antibiotics. It might be the worst three or four days of my life.
And then the time came. My husband wheeled me through the corridors and into an elevator. We arrived at the unit and the nurses brought my baby to the glass (I still had a fever; I couldn't go in). I felt nothing. When I write that I feel so strange. How can a mother "feel nothing"?
Back in my room I lay awake and prayed. It seemed that my prayers were bouncing off the ceiling. I prayed myself to sleep.
At some point, it was as if an angel came and sat on the edge of my bed. And this is what I heard - maybe not audibly - but what I experienced was "it's okay to love him. If I take him I'll give you strength to bear it".
HUM
The next time I went to see him all I could do was cry. He had a little undershirt on and I thought he looked like a future linebacker.
There would be months of uncertainty. But I kept loving him - and the months became years - and he grew -- and I loved him through baseball rather than football; golf, girls, college. Oh me, let's not go there.
But he did grow up. And his sisters and I think we prepared him well for his life with a lovely wife and two daughters.
At this time in my life, there is some uncertainty once again. I'd kind of like an angel to come and sit on my bed. However, God speaks in many ways - like through other writers. I have been feeling emotionally exhausted and I read a devotional by Jennifer Rothschild with these words:
He is the One who makes it well with your soul even when it is not well with your circumstances.
HUM!
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