Vacation Days 3 through 5

I'm up at 4:19 this morning, with my mind chocked full of thoughts ready to put down on paper.  It's as if these days were given as a gift to finally let go and instead of focusing on tasks, quotas, and other's expectations, I am enjoying the present I have before me.  Who knew what joy can be found in simply what you already have?

I am baking a blackberry pie right now, before the kitchen heats up with summer sun.  I had about 20 cups of blackberries this year, from my 3 bushes.  This is finally the year the bushes have produced, and I have been so excited to pick berries daily.  I have invited Jasmine to come with me and to my surprise I found out she knows how to pick them too!  She even knows the ripe ones to pick as she brushes against the bush and gently bites a berry off.  Now I know how those occasional berries end up on the cement walk beside the bush, it's been Jasmine all along!

I have been reminiscing of summers in the past.  I dug out some old love letters that my parents had kept from their college years.  They had reread their letters to each other over the years, I think it was something they had even done when they were near their anniversary of 60 plus years.  The envelopes were sent with 3 cent stamps and the time was the Fall of 1935.  I realized as I began reading them that their mail was to them as our email is to each other.  They wrote about usual every day things, Dad about his studies at the Bible Institute, Mother about life at home in Mt Clemons with her brothers and family. I discovered where Mom had developed her pleasure of looking at the moon, as she would describe "the most beautiful moons she and her Mother had seen that very  night." 

Often they wrote to each other more than once weekly.  Mother obviously had more to write as  she would send 6 pagers to Dad, but Dad was not brief entirely in what he wrote back.  And they recounted how patiently they waited and looked forward to mail each day, and how disappointed they were if a letter hadn't arrived when it should have. I smiled as I read about their love for each other, "couldn't wait to be together again," and Dad often drew out love pictogram's for his girl. My interest grew as I read some "family prehistory" I had not known before, as Dad announced the birth of my cousin in December 1935, and how glad he was that Mom would be able to "come to his folks for Christmas and be the baby's new Aunt-to-be."   I especially liked reading a letter my Uncle Bob, (or Bobby as Mom called her little brother,) wrote to my Dad. It all was so fresh and innocent, it seemed life untainted.  Isn't that true for all of us when we begin?

For a moment I felt I was in a time capsule.  Here I was reading history of my parents before I ever arrived on the scene or was even a thought. Although their love seemed typical of young people, more of infatuation or romantic ideals, I realized how that love had endured and grown throughout a lifetime of devotion to one another.  That couple would face childlessness for about 10 years, they would lose a father and a mother to cancer, they would move across the country several times, and face financial challenges with Dad "going back to school." There would be endless basketball and track events Dad would attend for his sons, there would be the years of praying for a prodigal daughter, physical challenges of irregular heartbeats for Dad, loss of hearing and the pain of osteoporotic compression  fractures for my Mom.  Finally, there would be a loss of mate and life back to being solo. Certainly, that would have seemed to extinguish any flicker of love they shared in 1935.  They had no idea of what time would give them. I had to wonder if any of us truly knew the future, wouldn't we despair?

I have appreciated my church family more these past few weeks. In each service, Pastor Jimmie has had us pray with each other, for a few moments in groups of 3 to 4 individuals.  At first, I felt anxious and not really sure if I wanted to "put myself out there."  But I have to admit, I have found myself, looking forward to the time each Sunday, often praying with different people and actually feel a bit more connected with other believers.  As we sang about God's faithfulness always being there for us, I realized that is the hope for a future unknown.  God is faithful to be there through it all.  He's not just an imaginary friend or force, He's a personal reality.  In His goodness, He gives us the gift of time with each other, with family and friends, and with Him.  Life will hold uncertainty, history will confirm that, but God's grace will sustain us through it all. . .