Let Me Tell You One Thing

 November 16 2020 A small little wren has occupied my front porch ledge, no nest, just the ledge, and comes there to sleep nightly.  He has been doing this for many years, possibly five or more, and does nothing else there except sleep.   He gets in a certain corner, tucks his head in his wing and he is down for the night.  I often turn on the porch light to check and make sure he is there.  He almost always is there.  There are some nights he does not come to my porch to sleep, and I wonder where he is.  He is beginning to feel like one of the family.  In fact, when I have family in the evening, they check to see if  the wren is there.  It brings a comforting feeling to me when he does. I assume that this wren has made this place his home base, his go to so to speak.  What an example he is to me in light of the fact that I think about home and home base and where if feels like home.  I can name you a few things that make home feel like home.   It feels like home when the things I have

 During 2020 from the beginning of January until now ( November 14, 2020) things have been in an upside down place for me.  After three years of adjusting and managing the death of my lifelong mate I had ( since I was 13) I had finally come to terms that this is what my life would be without him.  His death took my breath for about three years.  I was someplace breathing air, but it did not feel like life.  I had worked very hard to grieve healthily and feel I did and I am.  It will always be a continual process for us to expand our brain into believing that anything can be normal again after the loss of someone you love and have loved since a young teenager.   I could make humorous remarks about my husband's exit, he always wanted to leave events early and had little patience with lingering after an acceptable time at an event.  I was a lingerer and often wanted to socialize or talk with someone particularly.  We eventually sometimes chose to drive different vehicles to events, bu

 My last blog was called "A Dread Ahead".  Well it came on October 6, 2020.  My mother left this planet to take up a new residence in the presence of our Lord.  The pain of her absence and the finality of her death sucks the breath out me, decompressing my lungs..  My breathing space gets very small. This woman gave birth to me, she was in my life from the first instant of conception.  Now, she cannot be seen, she cannot be touched.  There is no way I can hug her again or look into her eyes and tell her I love her. Even as I  think about that, my lungs begin to ache. She was so much a part of who I am I find myself floundering to find how to stable myself.  She first comforted my brow as an infant.  She gave me milk from her breasts, bathed me, and kissed me.  She picked out pretty baby clothes for me.  She sat with me on the front porch to get fresh air and sunshine in the little squatty saw mill house we lived in when I was born.  She never for one minute ever made me think

August 4 2020 These days I am walking around with a sick feeling in my gut.  I have lost to death some very significant people in my life. There was my dad when I was six years old. At twelve years old I lost my grandpa who had stood by me thick and thin through all kinds of trauma as a child. Besides my great grandfather, various aunts and uncles through the years whom I loved dearly, ( I only have one living uncle now on both sides of my family),  besides my other grandfather, my husbands grandfather, whom I loved, and both my grandmothers in the eighties, I have no one living in my family now that is from the generation above me except one uncle and my mother. My cousins now have begun to die.  I have lost two first cousins recently and one of their wives.   Over three years ago I lost my husband.  Death has become real to me. Tomorrow is burial of one of the few  best few friends I have ever had.  We went back to the 70's.  My mother is 91 and when I think of her leaving is whe

7/21/2020 Today is July 21, 2020.   I was up at 6 am, cleaned my face and moisturized, made my bed, and   listened to a sermon by Clyde Johns entitled, “The Mysterious Kingdom of God” posted on May 14, 2014 on therain.podbean.com. Around 8 am the city utility department came to mark the natural gas line in my yard because I was expecting a septic tank cleaner company to come to pump my septic that had backed up my entire system the day before.   It never dawned on me that septic tanks actually fill up after so many years.   Mine had not been pumped since it was installed in 1989.   Needless to say, it was solid waste.   After many questions to the owner, he   tells me about a new system called Aerobic Tank System that puts oxygen in the tank which actually eats the waste and keeps the septic clean.   While I am talking with the septic guy about how he got started in the poop business the air conditioner installers come to begin moving the duct work to get in a new 16 seer air co

Psalm 88 11/1/2019 A song, a psalm of the son of Korah. Verse 1 O Lord, God of my salvation, I have cried out day and night before you.                  Psalm 27:9 Do not hide your face from me; do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my help; do not leave me nor forsake me, O God of my salvation.                  The writer in the 2 7 th Psalm has clearly been helped by calling on our Father.   This 88 th psalm begins with a reminder to the God of our salvation that he has cried to Him day and night.                   How can we ever expect God to answer prayer if we are so sporadic with our prayers?   A consistency would seem a rather important thing to God.   Seeking Him not only in times of trouble and crisis, but also seeking Him because we just want to be with Him, desiring His presence, giving thanksgiving, loving Him.                   One of the things about people that stand out to me is their faithfulness; faithfulness in every aspect o

Reflecting on a picture of my grandmother I realized someday I will be a picture on the wall; Great -great grandfathers and great-great grandmothers Whom I really never knew at all. Their blood still flows through my veins Their prayers for me still simmer before Yahweh; Just a picture on the wall I will be someday An unknown, strange, disconnected highway. The best I can do at this point in time Is to send my prayers and have no regrets; Just a picture on the wall I will be someday   My father leans and sees what my prayer pot begets. Prayers spent in pain and tears will never dry They live and breathe and stand Just a picture on the wall I will be someday Looking over the pots’ rim to see how grand. How many prayers went to earth answered How many prayed and still simmer; Just a picture on the wall I will be someday   Look into my prayer pot and catch a glimmer.

You Can Count on That August came in and I welcomed her with aching muscles from the previous day loading things that had been in my ninety year old mother’s barn so long they had forgotten how to rust.   They decided they had no more strength to fight the cockroaches and the fish bait worms.   They made room in their decaying existence for things that lived. They bowed out knowing that they had given a reprieve and a home for life, unappealing as it may have seemed. The rusted shelving and the rotted doors, buckets of Christmas lights hiding for years with no interest from anyone glared at us. The buckets of long forgotten Christmas lights that had not shined for baby Jesus in decades: one of them had accumulated instead a rather humongous frog that just wanted to live out his days in the bucket croaking and living in stagnant water; it’s skin a red hue which had absorbed the rusty looking water, comfortable with the pungent and offensive smell, but annoyed by o