Our society hasn’t a lot of ways to process the relationships that matter most in our lives, especially if they end badly. We are left to do it in private, and for many that means shoving them down deep into the crevices in our hearts, hoping that they will stay put there. Unfortunately, life continues to unfold over the years, with our children turning into adults who make their own life choices, marry and often have their own children. Much like making an angel food cake (Wow, does that date me!) often when we are folding the new ingredients into the mix, we bring up something from the bottom as we stir.

Even though we may love the ingredients that are going into the cake, the parts we have hidden in our hearts may start to surface. Typically they come as triggers, not welcome additions, and we might find ourselves wondering “where did that come from?” It may be sudden bursts of anger or tears, sometimes overwhelming even a precious family moment. I found that the birth of my first grandchild had as many tearful, unexpected feelings accompanying that first year as it did joyful ones, in part because I had never grieved the unhappy parts of her father’s first year, times that included an affair and separation/divorce from us. The new additions accompanying my grandchild were welcome feelings, but the ones they replaced were difficult to hide. I found I would wake up in tears when I stayed overnight, partly because of the love I had witnessed as they held and put that tiny baby to bed. The love, safety and nurturing of two parents that I was observing was gut wrenching, on a level that I had never allowed myself to feel when I was in the midst of it. What we had missed out on all came flooding back, partly so my tears could wash away the old sadness and loss so it could be replaced with the wonderful, solid and healthy feelings that were now available to me.

Many of the additions to my heart have had oddly similar reactions. While all of them were objectively positive, they always caused me to look back at the deep hurts that had preceded them. In many ways, the more I tried to avoid doing that, sometimes with the help of anti depressant medication, the more I only postponed the inevitable.

I often think in the old days, when people wore black arm bands for a season after losing a loved one, it made it a bit easier for them to continue to process a deep loss. It signaled to others that at least there had been a recent loss, and it surrounded them with some space, grace and kindness. Often we will now go right back to work, back to life exactly where we left off, slapping a happy face emoji on the grief or anger we can’t even feel, let alone calculate how ignoring it will affect us later in life. No one else knows unless perhaps they follow us on Facebook and we don’t make any allowance for it. We may even have a celebration of life for the lost one, even for those who took their own lives, as if we can put a nice lid on our feelings as well as those of their siblings and all those affected by their death by only remembering and celebrating the ‘good’ memories. We may bring food and sympathy to a widow, but we expect a newly divorced woman or man to quickly pick up the pieces and soldier on into a new chapter in their lives with as little negative baggage as possible. Not really possible, except where someone is very good at burying the evidence in the crevices of their hearts. But look out down the road for IED’s! Maybe we should reconsider those armbands?

I was home chicken soup-ing my hanging-on cold and I decided to check out an online will creation site. Within moments I was updating lots of information, as the last one I did included an ‘unborn child’ of ‘unknown name’ who is turning 42 next week!
I have to say, that was a time for me to thank and acknowledge God for preserving me to the age I would no longer need to figure out who would raise my sons if I was gone. Until year 18 of the youngest was all I asked for, but I have already enjoyed their college years, marriages, children, homes and successful businesses they have built, so truly above and beyond my simple early requests!!
This is one very grateful Mom/grand mom here!
Beyond that, and the naming of an executor for what remains of the small (but certainly extravagant for me) provision that my Mom left when she passed five years ago, I have gratefully continued to work part time, even to my eighties. With that and the help of a small social security check I have been able to meet all my current expenses and I am hoping I will leave, mostly untouched, what she left me to further pass on to my children and grandchildren. I am praying God uses me up and takes me home quickly, so that I do not drain what is left after my usefulness date. Perhaps it will be enough for something that catches hold of their heart but is a stretch for current family finances…..like a musical instrument or art classes or help for a deposit on a home or condo. I would like it to be a way they may always remember how much I believed in them, loved them and admired the unique gifts God has given them to use.
Other than that, all the categories listed reminded me I literally have “no earthly goods” at this point in my life. Though I have owned six or seven in my lifetime, I no longer own a home. My paid off car will take me to the end of my own driving, but will not be worth handing on. I have no jewelry, and frankly I have never been great at anything but misplacing anything of value; and by the time I might have bought some for myself, my hands were much too arthritic to want to call attention to them!
So it was quite simple to complete my will, now that the main thing that previously caused me distress…. ‘will you raise my son if I die before he is on his own, and will you let him see his brother who will be with his father and step mother? And will you love him just as he is and encourage him to grow into the man God meant him to be?’…was no longer an issue. Unfortunately I believe that most difficult question for parents, to whom will they entrust the raising of their children should they die, can be the reason most parents never make a will; often the answer will bring up family with children of their own who may be already overloaded, or childless family or friends requiring our complete trust (in God) that they will instantly become good parents, or they may even be your own aged parents who may not be physically able to in the future. You come away from the whole experience realizing, faults aside, that you are indeed the very best parent for your children, having known and loved them unconditionally since birth and that no one else can possibly replace you, so you leave the moment determined to take much better care of yourself going forward so that you last! You also realize they are your single most precious ‘belongings’ and the only true legacy you will leave, even if they are only entrusted to your care for a very brief time.

It is for many reasons a good idea to review/make a will, as it not only causes you to face where you are at present but also to recount your many extravagant blessings over a lifetime; it is truly a blessing remembering what matters most in the rest of your one precious life, committing any current requests to God with thanksgiving, for He has already shown you how faithful He has been and how very dearly He loves you.

I just finished reading Man’s Search For Meaning by a man who survived several concentration camps during the Holocaust. It is worth a reread at least every decade because it puts perspective into whatever seems to be threatening our sanity in the day to day. As I am in the end of my seventh decade on earth, I found much of his logotherapeutic approach very comforting. Especially his words about the elderly. Many of my contemporaries, even those who are in excellent mental and physical health, are feeling as though they are being put out to pasture by their children. It is more a dismissive approach to anything they might have to contribute, whether it is by word or deed.
I loved the way Victor Frankl referred to the older people in his manuscript. The youth of today who have not witnessed firsthand a war involving their country, their friends or their family members are missing the context of so many of their elderly relatives. The price that has been paid for the freedom they now enjoy to criticize everything and everyone has been hard earned and hard-won. The respect that our generation grew up with for the generations who paid that price is totally missing from the headlines and from the words and hearts of most people who convey our daily news. This wears heavily on the hearts of older people who are still trying to stay involved and relevant in their families lives, but who are constantly aware their perspective is viewed as incorrect by a much more ‘politically correct’ generation who no longer revere the history older generations actually have lived through. There is often a smug dismissal, rather than the respectful honor most of us over seventy experienced growing up, for the stories and memories of our grandparents. I am always saddened to hear from friends that they feel so invisible to their families.

Thoughts just rattle around randomly in our own minds; perhaps we share them with a friend but mostly they are just kept to ourselves. A prayer, however, has an end receiver. Those of us who believe in God are constantly communicating with Him, and even as we have a thought it becomes a missal, quickly projected into the heavens. At the speed of light it hits its target, the God of the universe, true Creator and in charge of all things on earth. That good wish we have for someone becomes a powerful intervention on their behalf, instead of just rumblings in our head.
I think of it like a situation where you know your younger brother has been playing with matches. You have a choice as to whether to let your parents know about this new and exciting interest he has found. If you don’t tell them, but just keep it as a thought in your head, perhaps nothing bad happens but there is also a good chance that he may cause harm to himself or others in the near future, if he does not understand how dangerous fires can be. If you tell your parents, they will have an opportunity to intervene and make the consequences of playing with a potentially destructive object much more clear to him, as he may disregard your admonitions as envy on your part. By trusting your parents’ intervention, you may prevent future casualties.
The first instance reminds me of a thought, versus the second, which seems more like a prayer. When we ask God to protect, love, intervene or take charge of a situation, we are relying on Him to take care of the person in the situation and bring the best outcome possible for all involved. Since we are limited in our own knowledge of the situation, we cannot know the best way to do that, but the relationship we have with God has taught us to trust that He has full knowledge and wants the best for all of us. That is why I always turn a thought immediately into a prayer and do not hesitate to always reference it as exactly that. It seems when someone says “thoughts and prayers” they are really admitting they do not know the difference or, if they do, they do not want to completely trust the outcome to God’s providence and are trying to cover all bases, thereby really covering none at all.

We are told that we are the hands and feet of Jesus. That we are also all a part of one body of Christ. These are familiar sayings in most of the denominations that I have been part of in my church journey over so many moves and forty plus years. I have always had questions that placed literal biblical interpretations directly up against figurative ones in scenarios like this.

I particularly remember one small charismatic church I joined in my first move after I gave my life to Jesus. It was different than any church I had ever been in and they often had lively services on summer evenings on the grass behind the old barn that housed the church in upstate New York, and young women would dance happily during the worship music. It was fun to see such an open expression of joy and hand raising in praise as we worshiped the Lord together. There were a number of changes in my life during that time period, which actually deepened my faith and my personal relationship with God rather than weakened it, but when I was led to leave the church and move my family to Florida, I was met with suspicion. No one left the church easily, it seemed, and there was a lot of submission to the elders’ judgement in terms of personal decision making. I never left my autonomy behind, knowing full well God had been with me when I came there as a single mom and He would be with me when I left as a single mom, so I wasn’t a bit worried that they didn’t agree with my decision.

I did dare to question the elders however, as to the whole ‘family of God’ thing or more explicitly, the Body of Christ expression, because I wondered if there happened to be only one nose, say, and that nose smelled fire and tried to tell everyone else; but the others didn’t see fire, feel fire, or smell fire and so they just told the nose there was no fire. When I tried to tell them some things I felt God had prompted me to share with them, their response was basically “God didn’t say that to us.” So I went on my way, taking my faith and my children with me. I always felt if we each as a Christian had a piece of a puzzle of a body, and I happened to have the nose but I didn’t put my puzzle piece on the table with the other pieces, it wouldn’t reveal a complete face or a finished body. How do we know which piece anyone has been given until they share it, and yet a refusal to share one’s piece makes the whole face or body incomplete, doesn’t it?

Years later, although that church didn’t burn to the ground, it basically folded for many of the reasons I had tried to share earlier with those in authority. I felt badly that they had not been more open to a conversation with the whole church body they shepherded about things that really mattered, to them and to God. They were certainly not expecting someone relatively new to their church, and that person also a woman, to bring something to their minds they hadn’t considered could possibly be a word from God. The Bible is full of examples of God speaking through many, even an animal (Numbers 22:28 anyone?), who did not fit the criteria of the day that those in high religious authority required in order to ‘hear’ God. I have always loved all those stories, especially where God totally surprises everyone!

I saved this as a draft over fourteen years ago. I had someone ask me this question the other day. I have been back on the East Coast since 2018. It is now 2025. I share the rest of this original draft mostly as a reminder to myself that unless we change something, some things don’t change. I still do not have the discipline of a writer, but perhaps I am realizing my heart leans that way and I am enjoying it more, now that there seems to be so much less sand in the hourglass.

from notes, 2013:

The past year and a half since my move from East coast to West have been full of new adventures with God. I see Him everywhere in my life and the things I see are often like parables and seem to matter to people when I share them, particularly those who know Him well.

Yet I go from one day to the next, many of them with time to sit down with a computer or a pen but I have not done that. I did do it when I was struggling to make sense of my life, to see the next step ahead of me, wondering how to provide for myself, or at least I did when I thought I was struggling….and therein lies the difference. I am not struggling now, even though I continue to seek His guidance every day, many times a day, for the same reasons I did before. The difference now is that I am confident He has the answer for me and that He will present it at the appointed time: His time, not necessarily mine. And I know that it is good, in fact, perfect that way.

I must begin to write these things down, because they are becoming too many for me to hold in my head and recount to those who seem to want to know. When  I am questioned by someone about the meaning of something in daily life, these stories all spill out of me. I am often asked why I don’t write them down and I have no answer. I do not want to get to see my Maker and have no answer. I must look at my time differently and expect more of myself. I believe that He may be expecting more of me, and I don’t want to let Him down. The people He has put in my path are daily miracles, full of wisdom and insight and the power of His love and our prayers in this life. It is a rich and wonderful story that needs to be told, even by someone who thinks she is but a grain of sand. It is not for me to ask why, but just to do my part. This is my portion.

Four words that my son said were my most used exclamations on our five day trek across the country twelve years ago. We were in a small sedan complete with me, my then 28 yr old son and my trusty rescued dog, Gypsy. Oh, and every bit of clothing and memorabilia I could fit in the trunk along with a sewing machine, just in case I needed curtains or something to make my new home quickly homier.

It seemed that my response to anything unexpected was one or a combination of these expressions. I feel as though they accompanied a certain period of my life; one full of the unknown, of changes, both in scenery and in relationships. It was a time of experimentation with the boundaries of the self I had pretty much ignored during the raising of my two boys. There is only so much time available, and mine was already spoken for between their needs and those of making a living. This was not my retirement exactly, but as close to it as I might ever get. It meant still working, but only enough to cover my rent, as social security and Medicare had kicked in, taking with them the huge burden of so many years with no personal health care off of my shoulders. I was able to attend to the repair of my body and doing some needed maintenance that had often been postponed. I started a decades long update on my teeth, as I found my smile was my most treasured attribute and a loss I did not want to accept if there was a choice. And now there was.

I am often reminded how very fortunate I have been to navigate this life time with always enough opportunities to take care of my basic life needs, and I am ever conscious of those who do not have access to them. I am distressed by the constant promotion of dependence on government, rather than the human family and community surrounding them, to comfort and provide incentives to address those needs. God never intended an absentee and faceless, often heartless, entity to do what other humans could do so much more efficiently and kindly, with an accompanying love and appreciation for the soul, not just the body, of the individual… not just the case number.

And so I try to remember what those four words meant as I used them during that time. Perhaps I was only talking to the ‘inside’ me, the one giving herself permission to fail, to stumble, to pause or to grab on to a lifeline as needed, as her rocky life journey evolved. I rarely, if ever, use them anymore, but they were certainly wonderful handrails when I needed them.

I cannot believe that my last post was in April of 2014. That is three and a half years ago! What happened to me?
I think I went into a lethargic funk and was basically comfortable. Just meandering through my life, doing my daily tasks, noticing amazing little things, but not spending any time to record my thoughts about them. Not that anyone is neccesarily reading this, but because my son once wrote in an Anne Lamott book he gave me for my birthday that her books were the closest thing he had found to the book I had yet to write. That book was Traveling Mercies, and his note on the front page was a supreme complement to me. Just the other day I was reminded by a friend from high school of Anne Lamott, and I pulled out Help. Thanks. Wow. and read it cover to cover while my internet was being invaded by spyware; so grateful for the total break in my knee jerk evening routine and a momentary return to things that actually matter!
And what do all writers have in common? They write. Daily. Whether they feel like it or not.
I keep saying how I lack discipline. Why do I keep saying that? I walk the dog morning, noon and night, whether I feel like it or not. I eat every day, usually three times a day. I show up for work every day I am scheduled, on time and dressed for the job. I may not take my vitamins on a daily or even weekly basis. But that isn’t everything. I remember to pray many times a day, and surely that counts for something. Or at least it is something to build on, especially if I start praying for the discipline to write every day. Perhaps having no TV for a day is a great start. At least it is a place I can reboot this blog and clear the cache of my brain and see what thoughts and ideas come into the newly cleared spaces.

I have struggled, over my lifetime, to find an answer to the recurring question of why I seemed so different; more emotional than others, more inclined to seek the truth, more concerned with people’s feelings than their bank accounts (or my own).
I have met so many people who seemed to find the right partner, the right job, to enjoy the pleasures of life so much more easily than I did.
For some odd reason, I often found my inner comfort zone to be right  where others saw discomfort. I was secure where they would feel lost. I was at ease where they were acutely distressed.
I am beginning to understand that while I appeared to have every basic body part and brain function in tact, I have apparently always been handicapped. In the same way that a blind person has extra perception when it comes to hearing than many of his sighted friends, I always seemed to pick up on heart waves that no one else noticed, or if they did, they could not describe them as easily as I seemed to be able to.
I know now that all those times that I had such a different experience than what appeared to be the normal response of those around me was precisely because I was indeed handicapped, with a sensitivity to the spirit God put in me at birth, made only more profound after I asked Jesus into my life at age 37.
As so many people with severe handicaps will testify, I appreciate things in life that others just don’t even seem to notice. I am aware of the kindness of people and the workings of God in ways that others can’t begin to comprehend, especially when they consider experiencing my circumstances. And in the end, those handicapped individuals almost always say they wouldn’t change a thing about their lives, because their experience of it has been so rich and so filled with awe and wonder. I have to say that from my vantage point, I would totally agree.

I have to laugh at myself sometimes, a lot of times if the truth be known, and one of those times is when I approach a traffic symbol where the words to follow have been written on the pavement before it, telling me exactly what to do.
This morning while I walked Gypsy back from the beach, I walked over one and as usual, read it top to bottom, instead of the way they intended it to be read, bottom to top, the order in which you would roll over it in your car.

 
This one said Wrong Way with an arrow going toward the wrong way. I laughed because I couldn’t help but read it my usual way…..Way Wrong! I got thinking about how I used to be so much more easily led astray by not heeding the signs God intentionally left for me to see. I guess I am a bit obtuse or just easily adaptive toward pleasing others, so I naturally got off the path more frequently than I do these days. I would take jobs that were not in my gifted areas and then be in pain about them. I would get into relationships that were not good for my personality type or my heart and then be in pain about how to get out of them (without hurting the other person of course!)

 
Nowadays, I spend much more time praying for God’s purpose and jobs that He leads me to. I pray for relationships where he wants me to be involved, and they are always a benefit of some sort to both me and the other person in our growth as a Christian. Or He wants me to bless someone and it always feels like a service to Him, not something I would necessarily choose in my flesh.

 
So, when I looked at this signage on the road before me, I laughed because now I often am able to say at least to myself, “Way Wrong”, in terms of the direction I might choose on my own vs something I know to be the Lord’s leading. Staying anchored in His word also helps me to discern the difference more easily. Perhaps as I get older, I just don’t want to go the wrong way any more, as it takes so long to get back on His track sometimes. So I will keep looking for the ways He confirms my path, trying not to get ahead of Him but appreciating it even if he has to shout Way Wrong! before I detour out of His lane.