Lessons Learned in Abilene

In 1995 God called my husband to establish a physical therapy school at Hardin Simmons University. God’s sense of humor brought two runaway Baptists to a Baptist University in a very Baptist town. My three favorite things are water, trees and hills. Outside of Abilene where we moved we had no water, no trees and no hills! I arrived there with a fresh cancer diagnosis and surgery and knew no one. I left behind my house, my children, my aging dog, my job, my car, my friends and my whole identity. I emerged 4 years later as a homeless widow.

Here is a brief list of lessons I learned in Abilene, a place I never imagined living:

1) My life is “standing on the scaffolding” always waiting for the elusive “final, settled” house to be built. I now know it is heaven that I am imagining.
2) I met an “Angel in the Alley” who ministered to my yard and my pool…and my soul after Bill died.
3) Life is “not about you”.
4) You always worry about the wrong things.
5) I had a great experience getting to know the family of God.
6) “Lord, why didn’t you just email the plan? Why did I have to go through all of this?
7) My life has been a smorgasbord of preparation…why so many interruptions between servings?
8) Best advice: “Just do the next thing.”
9) All my needs were met…….but in His time.
10) It was all beyond my imagination.
11) I love the blessing of fur……….I want to be a Noah in Heaven.
12) “Lord, You want me to do WHAT!”
13) I told you Lord I was willing to die but you wanted me to live and follow your mission.
14) What if I had told you “no!”? I certainly would have missed the blessing.
15) Knowing that things will fall into place after you surrender bears no correlation to a hurry towards surrender.
16) I experienced “addition by subtraction”.
17) I began to understand “lost and found” and that the “found” sometimes transcends the “lost” in ways you would never guess.
18) Stuff does not matter.

Imprisoned

Today I was imprisoned in the world of my small self,
a shrunken world confined to trivia,Thoughts of other people held in terms of ME;
only disappointment in everything I see.

Today I missed God’s glory
ablaze on sunlit trees
lost instead in self absorption
blind to all that’s free.
I dwelt within the small world forbidding love, refusing light,
Clutching pride, defending ME.

My world of self soon withers, growing cold in oblique night.
It cannot grow, exist without God’s sunshine bright.
God is Love; God is Light.

May I know the big world of God’s love and liberty
no more to dwell within the confines of my prison.
I cannot imprison God in that small world of just me.

“The Lord sets free the prisoners”. Psalm 146:7

a poem written by Sharon Danielson Gould in 1964 while in college.

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?"

-Henry David Thoreau

Brief

To update the curve on the journey………….feeling good but choices to fight the almost 15 year cancer companion have ended in the chemo world without guaranteeing lung collapse and 3 times are enough for that.

I am placing an order for God’s rod and staff and bright lights for the shadow trip. I invite you to walk it with me, my friends. We are already walking it as earth people. Join hands. I am walking with you on your journey. God is walking with us all and He holds the map.

Mother

Photo of me, David and Susan in 1978

My Mother's Day Memories



… May 1958, a Minnesota church basement “mother-daughter tea” adorned in hat, gloves and a home-made Chanel suit reciting a mother- honoring poem. God is good.

…May 1973, smelling the sweet innocence of my red-headed first-born and of his daddy’s honorary red roses. God is good.

…May 1978, caressing in awe my beautiful “rosebud” infant daughter, believing that life could never be better than loving my children God is good.

…May 2000, grieving a mother lost at 88 two months earlier and my life-long husband of 57 ten months prior, I felt understandably fragile. Driving to church in my husband’s car I experienced an epiphany that I would thank God for it and begin calling it “my” car. Some peace began to grow in my heart as I recall crossing the bridge on First Avenue where the surrender occurred.

On the way home, growing more comfortable in my break-through, my car was hit by a drunk driver where we were the only 2 cars on the quiet road in front of the university. I sat pitifully on the curb with police and tow truck tearfully reviewing my bruises and never saw the car again.

After 2 days in the ugliest purple rental car ever made, I received courage to go to the Toyota dealer and ask them if they intended to repair the Avalon as good as new and they assured me they would. With a sudden burst of courage I told them that was good because they could keep it and give me the Rav 4 demo on their lot in exchange. I have driven this car for 9 years now and it has met my economy and lifestyle needs more perfectly than the older inherited Avalon ever would. A lesson of surrender where I was given exactly what I would need hours after the epiphany. God is good.

Oh, a footnote……later that evening when my son called to ask me how my Mother’s Day had gone I replied “SMASHING, SIMPLY SMASHING”!


...May 2004, an ICU life/death crisis while I was on a ventilator with chemotherapy side effects (which also occurred in 2007 and 2009) while my children and their new church prayed for my recovery. Again. God is good.


…May 2009, God has granted me the love of 4 grandchildren and I discovered that life could actually be even better than I could have imagined in 1978 . Love can peak, but then the real epitome is the overflow of that love. I love my children and their mates even more as they parent. Who could have known this joy?
God is good.

Anatomy

The grandbaby’s greatest accomplishment to date is getting his foot into his mouth.

His grandma’s greatest hope to date is the ability to get hers out!