60 and Counting

With the help of my wonderful family, I passed a milestone yesterday. I still find it hard to believe I'm now 60 years old. The celebration began on Friday and continued through the weekend so by the time Sunday rolled around I had begun to get used to the idea. I'm not sure why we humans choose to focus on such milestones, but this birthday has been a good time for me to stop and take stock of where I am and where I hope to go in the remaining time that God allows me on this earth.

I spent the weekend seeing vividly before me the many blessings of my life. Sometimes I think God allows us for a brief time to see the world through God's eyes, and this weekend was such a time for me. My sons and their wives and children spent months planning a celebration on my behalf. Their love helped heal the many wounds of this past year of my life.

I enjoyed the party immensely and especially the fact that we were able to be together for a time, a rare occurrence these days. So I watched all of their beautiful faces around the dinner table as my husband gave thanks for my life, and I gave thanks for having each of them in my life. I watched my grand kids play together with their cousins and aunts and uncles. My heart throbbed with the beauty of it all. Whatever happens in my life from now on, I will carry these wonderful memories with me. God is good and this weekend, I remembered to say so and to give thanks.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

You Raise Me Up

This morning's church service took my breath away with the force of the feelings it evoked. Perhaps being tired from a day trip to Houston and back for a conference yesterday left me a bit more open and vulnerable to God's presence. The best part of the service was listening to young Wesleigh singing to us again. He still sounds like an angel, in spite of the trauma of the past year of his life. To see him and to listen to him sing once more meant being witness to a miracle. Last summer, he was in a motorcycle accident that fractured his skull and left him hovering between this world and the next for some time. Even when it became apparent that he would survive, there was no assurance that he would recover any kind of normal life or ever be able to sing again. Many prayed for his recovery for many weeks, and suddenly today, there he stood among us, whole and beautifully singing: "You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains. You raise me up to walk on stormy seas. And I am strong, when I am on your shoulders. You raise me up, to more than I can be." And God's people said, "AMEN!" This is the God I know and love--the God who, not always, but sometimes, returns one of us from death's doorstep to serve God a bit longer in this world. Thanks be to God for the chance to experience this miracle on this day.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Dream World

I read somewhere that if you want to remember your dreams you simply need to remind yourself to do so as you're falling asleep. I don't know for sure if that really works, but I do know that of late I've been remembering more dreams. Mostly it's fun to contemplate the places my mind wanders while my body sleeps. The night before last I dreamed I was in the mountains at a resort where the surrounding scenery looked suspiciously like the opening scene in the movie The Sound of Music. I looked up at the mountains and realized I felt chilled, so I buttoned my sweater up around my neck. As I twirled around soaking up the cold, I commented to a woman sitting at one of the outdoor tables that it was good to feel cold after living in the heat of the Texas summer.

Then I looked up at the glaciers frozen high in the crags of the mountains and realized they were melting just like the snow used to melt in the sun when I was a little girl growing up in Kansas City. Or perhaps the water I saw raining down was tears for all that is melting and changing in a world that seems to be growing ever hotter. We're only at mid-July here in Central Texas, so August, traditionally the hottest month is still to come. It's been over 100 degrees every day for so many days that the promised high-90s for the weekend is called a cold wave. Maybe it's no wonder that I'm seeking out the cold in my sleep!

I pray God's blessing upon our children and their children and their children's children because if the scientists are right about the consequences of global warming, our descendants will need all the help God can provide. And I pray that we will find the courage and the political will to make the changes we must to alleviate our contribution to the growing warmth--before it's too late.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Heartsong

I have been given a new lease on life, and the answer to a prayer I wrote in January at our church's women's conference. For the last many months I've struggled with a racing heart beat that has been at times very irregular. My doctor had increased the one heart medicine I was taking, but the problems continued. So I went to see the heart electrician. He prescribed a second medicine and told me to come back in a month. I saw him again today and told him he had given me my life back. I didn't realize how long I'd been feeling badly until the medicine fixed the problem. Now I'm back to exercising regularly and have something like my old energy and enthusiasm for daily life. I'm so grateful to God and to the doctors as well as to those who invented this magic medicine I'm now taking.

It's funny how I never spent a lot of time worrying about my heart until it started misfiring. It simply sang along to its regular beat, and I never paid any attention. Too often I'm guilty of taking the most important things in my life for granted, until something happens and I notice their absence. So I'm trying to be more thoughtful of my husband, and more grateful to God for all of my many blessings, too numerous to count. One of those is a heart that's been beating since my birth almost 60 years ago now. I'm glad it's no longer stumbling, and I hope it will continue to beat for a few more years so that I can find ways to continue to serve God.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

I've become a lovey

Each of our younger grandchildren have their own unique comfort items. For our second grandson, they are tops his mother has worn so they carry her scent. I wish I'd thought of that when our sons were babies! For the two youngest grandsons they are burp cloths. For our granddaughter, it's a soft blanket with a satin edge.

We had a wonderful family celebration this past weekend when our two youngest grandchildren were baptized. Most of our family was able to come for the party, which included an Italian feast our daughter-in-law put together. It was an amazing, exhausting day. After lunch, as we sat talking, our granddaughter sat quietly in my lap. She's beginning to outgrow nap time, but she was still tired. For a long time, she has gone to sleep with her thumb in her mouth and one of her soft blankets with the satin edges snuggled close. As she dozes off she rubs the edge of the blanket with her thumb.

I realized that as she sat on my lap, she had her thumb in her mouth and was rubbing my hand with her thumb, the same way she rubs her blanket at bed time. I was at first surprised, and then overwhelmed that I had become her comfort item. I was honored that she felt that same sense of comfort with me. I've become a lovey! I can think of few things I'd rather be at this stage in my life than a lovey for one of my beautiful grandchildren.

I've been working on yet another sermon, struggling with the text in Mark that depicts Jesus being rejected by the people of his home town. The title of my sermon is "Looking for God in All the Wrong Places." I think we do that, hoping for a God who will come and punish our enemies and make us safe so that we never have to suffer. But that's not the kind of God we have. Instead we have a God who came to earth as a Jewish carpenter and who remains as close as our own heartbeat. I thought of my granddaughter as I was working on the sermon today and realized that God is a lot like her lovey, ready to be snuggled close to us whenever we reach out and to provide comfort in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Riding the Roller Coaster

I have had a strange few days with ups and downs akin to riding a roller coaster. Tuesday I went to my appointment with the cardiology specialist who calls himself a "heart electrician." After looking through my records and talking with me, he prescribed a new heart medicine. I always take a deep breath and say a prayer before starting any new medication because I have unfortunately inherited my mother's tendency to react to many medicines. After two doses, I was ecstatic at how much better I felt. I hadn't realized how much the heart irregularities had slowed me down.

Then, yesterday morning, I had a serious allergy attack. I immediately thought of the new medicine as nothing else had changed in my life in the past few days. This attack was bad enough that I dug out my EpiPen and re-read the instructions. Fortunately I've never had to use it, but I was grateful to have it available. I called and talked with the nurse, who consulted the heart electrician and called me back. The doctor thought it unlikely that the reaction was related to the new medicine, especially since I'd already taken several doses.

So I said a prayer at supper and gingerly took another dose. My husband's prayer at supper was for me not to die. I sat up reading for some time last night with the EpiPen close by, and then I said another prayer and went to bed. My husband asked me this morning if I'd said my "Now I Lay Me's" last night, and I told him I had indeed. Sometimes the simplest prayers say it best: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." So far today, I'm breathing okay. I'm so thankful to God for another day of life and for feeling so good again!

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

We are family

Yesterday we had a Pentecost celebration at church, including a birthday cake for this annual celebration of the birthday of the church. The children ran around the church at the beginning of the service in red, orange and yellow tunics waving wands with ribbons of the same colors attached. They were the tongues of flame that appeared in the midst of our worship. Two neighborhood young people who have been attending our church since their older brother was drawn by the basketball goal were baptized yesterday. Their home life is more challenging than that of most of the kids in our congregation, and as evidence of that their mother did not show up for the baptism. Seeing this, a young woman with kids the same age, who has worked with these two young ones in VBS and Sunday school, stepped up beside them, as did her husband. Tears welled as I witnessed this visible confirmation of the vows the congregation took at this baptism, to be family to these young people and watch over them. So now they are our kids too, baptized with water and the fire of the Holy Spirit, into the family of faith. I hope we will be able to bless them as much as they have already blessed us by their presence.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue