Family

Reflections on blogging

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am constantly amazed at all the creative and inspiring blogs there are out there. They are as varied and diverse as the people who have created them. I have some favorites listed on my blog roll, and they all have favorites listed on theirs as well, it goes on and on. I know there are hundreds out there that I have missed…..I know they are out there! Each one represents a life, and other lives attached to it. This is a community. You could even say it is like church. The church started out as a fellowship of believers, gathering together to worship, pray for each other’s needs, and then going out into the community to serve others….Hey, sounds a bit like blogging to me!
I really love this blogging thing! I can honestly say it has enriched my faith, my life.  I pray for each follower on my blog because I know that they are not there by accident. God sent them! I realize with every face I see there are needs, heartaches, joys and sorrows. I pray that God might use me to give out the same inspiration, comfort and encouragement that they give me along the way!
So much life leaps off the pages of so many, all these thoughts, prayers going back and forth, all this building each other up is very good.  Not only that, it is Biblical……”Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:11
In so doing we are opening doors, inviting others in that may never have had an invitation otherwise. And the circle is growing……”Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” Acts 2:46,47
Each day they continued to meet together at home offices, at desks, steaming cups in hand, birdsong drifting through the windows, at kitchen tables, at Starbucks, Panera………breaking bread and building each other up.

Merry-Go-Rounds and Roads

Looff Carousel 1911, Santa Cruz Boardwalk

Many summer weekends were spent at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk when I was a kid in California. Disneyland had nothing on it as far as I was concerned. It was pure magic. Oh, the memories of that Boardwalk! Corn dogs, called Pronto Pups that seemed a foot high, entering the Fun house through the clown’s mouth, riding the train and anticipating when that roaring dinosaur was going to rise up from the lake, standing at the fudge shop window watching the taffy pulling machine, mesmerized as it pulled and pulled and never broke. And the beach…..

Holding it all together in the middle of that magic, the piece De resistance was the Carousel. All I had to do was hear that organ music and I was over the top. Keep in mind, I camped growing up. We didn’t stay in fancy hotels. We didn’t have the money and also, my folks thought is was important to teach us about nature. I’m so glad they did. So this Merry-Go-Round was for me, the highlight of our visit. I had my favorite horses, always the ones with head reared back, teeth bared. (I must’ve thought those went faster)

I am happy to say that my niece has inherited my love of this Merry Go Round as well. I got to go on it with her one of my trips back home and I felt the same rapturous joy as I did all those years ago. My brother even caught the ring!

What started this whole memory was that my friend and I were talking after church Sunday and I asked her if she got excited about that Merry Go Round as well, since she used to go there as a kid too. I expected her to light up with the same memory I had. “No,” she said, “I never really saw the purpose, you just go round and round and never get anywhere.” Well, yeah, there is that…..Instead, she shared a special memory of her own with me. She said one of the highlights of her childhood was when she and her brother got a quarter a-piece and went to the store and each picked out a matchbox car. Back then they came in a little box. Her job was to build the roads.

They would come home and she would build elaborate structures out of mud, complete with bridges with support beams underneath, freeways, overpasses, and tunnels. Even back then, she had the mind of an engineer. Her parents never even knew it. When she went to high school and tested extremely high in math and engineering, the counselor told her she better think of something else to do with her life, “because girls just don’t do these things.” After that she pretty much lost interest in the whole educational system.

But God doesn’t care about what some counselor says. Years later she ended up doing engineering work anyway at Intel, Corp. And she is still building things. She can visualize anything and build it, she is a project queen and should definitely have her own show on HGTV. She is a bridge builder between people, in every job she has ever had, she has been asked to be a mediator when situations needed smoothing out.

When God creates you to do a certain thing, it glorifies Him when you are doing those things!

I have always felt a compulsion to write, and I know that comes from God. That is how He created me. Sometimes I have no idea if anything I write makes sense but I still do it because I feel it’s one of the things God made me to do. Sometimes I feel my prayers go round in circles because I still see so many things in me that need changing. But as I look back at all these quiet times of prayer, I see a closeness I have with the Lord now that I didn’t have before. It is a beautiful sculpture that I can only see glimpses of, but when I close my eyes it comes into focus. I see and hear the music, the colors, the joy….and God behind it all. Sometimes life does seem like one big circle, but we can say, victoriously, this is a circle that has purpose. It has no end, and it only gets better!

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:12,13

Prayer for the Orphans

Painting by Thomas Kennington

Lord, I pray for your dear ones waiting for loving arms to surround them and for the fear and hopelessness that comes when no one arrives….Every child deserves to know that they have a place in someone’s heart, that they are worthy of love, that they don’t have to go through a hard life alone. I pray that we, your church would swallow up every last orphan, Lord until there are none left to wonder if they are loved, if they are worthy.

I pray for the courageous ones who have already stepped up, been obedient to Your word, sometimes at their own personal sacrifice. They are storing up treasure in Heaven as they care for Your own little treasures here on earth. I know Lord, that there are many different kinds of orphans and I pray for these too. These orphans of divorce, who sometimes wonder where they belong or who they belong too as they are passed back and forth from home to home to home, and I pray for the guilt that comes for all involved, and for Your healing touch for everyone in this kind of heartache today.

I pray also for those orphans who have two parents, but absent ones, indifferent ones, ones who know nothing about their own children as they run around doing everything else, but spending time with them, nurturing them, caring for them, knowing what they like to do, what little joys they hold dear.

I am humbled and so grateful Lord that I had parents who loved me and a home, a place. Everyone needs and deserves this, Lord. And remind me that to whom much is given, much is required….

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27

Go here, here and here to see some wonderful people who are making a difference.


Celebrating my praise and thanksgiving today with hopes that others can know, #442 the feelings of belonging that come with a father’s loving touch, #443 a mother’s arm around the shoulders, #444 a brother’s gentle teasing and the love that is behind it, #445 a home to run to in the rain, #446 a mother’s call for dinner, #447 knowledge that you have people behind you when life gets tough, #448 a knowledge of a Father in heaven who loves them, #449 knowing even when you are far away, that place remains in your heart, #450 knowing someone cares about what matters to you.

holy experience

Heaven at the water park

Weber Point Park, Stockton, California

My brother took my little niece to a park last weekend where they had an interactive water feature. My Mom and Dad went along too, although my Mom was not going to go at first. Sitting at a park is not really her idea of fun at 81 years of age, with two knee replacements behind her. She says they never have enough benches. But she ended up going anyway and had a great time.

Lauryn is slightly Autistic, so they weren’t really sure how she would handle it, since there were so many kids of all different ages. Usually, if Lauryn sees water anywhere there is no way to keep her out of it, but there was this multitude of kids factor, so they decided to just wait and let her watch for awhile.

For a time, she crept around the outskirts. She watched all the activity and battling within herself, she started to circle closer and closer. Slowly the lure of the water overcame her trepidation of all the other kids and she plunged in. Oh what joy! She played for two hours nonstop. My Mom, always with her Spiritual eyes and ears open, sensed that she was witnessing something that held an important lesson for all of us.

Here they were, all different kids, all different races, all different ages, and all of them so caught up in the joy, the glee of playing, that the thought never occurred to them not to get along. Kids have no clue, no awareness of their differences until we make them aware of it. That is, they see the differences, but it doesn’t really matter to them.

At one point, Lauryn and another kid, a bigger kid, were running to the same rock to sit down on when the water stopped. My Mom wasn’t sure what would happen, but the kid happily gave up the rock for Lauryn. Yes, a bit of Heaven right there.

It was, she said, “a bit like Heaven will be.” That was Jesus prayer when He said, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” Are we there yet? Is it possible? Absolutely it is. We see it happen everyday, in worship centers, at sports events, at movies, restaurants. Different people getting along. We see it in catastrophes too, (think 9/11).

So I think our next team builder at work should be at a water park, and everybody has to go in and get wet!

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” Revelation 7:9,10

Let the Fire Fall!

Photo provided by Google
Ann Peterson Bedard wrote at 2006-07-03
Yosemite Fire Falls & Elmer History:

First in 1996 I brought my grandkids to visit Yosemite. Standing at the ampitheatre in Camp Curry,looking up to the top of Glacier Point. The towerinig 3000 foot of the granite wall forces heads to leaned all the way backwards. My grandkids asked:
“What’s that white strip? Was that a waterfall a long time ago or something?”

“No that was where the Firefall was”

“Firefall? What is a Firefall?”

“Well, it’s kinda hard to explain. It certainly was not a natural phenomenon.
It actually dates back to 1874 when a James McCauley built a Hotel up there.
Business was pretty sparce. He got this brillant idea of shooting off fireworks to get people’s attention, something to make them look up.

It worked. Then he began to make fires and push them over the cliff. Campers 3000 feet below were awe-struck at the display: “Do it again” the people clamered, “do it again”. Hence it grew into a tradition.

It stopped after he died but was brought back by Mr Curry in 1894.

“How did they do it?”

Well,every morning a Ranger would gather a pick-up truck load of redwood bark, pine cones, dead firewood. They they would back the truck to about 12 feet from the edge.
I was up there once when they did that and I am here to tell you that was the scarriest thing to watch. My stomach turned for fear they would back right off the cliff. But of course they never did.

Then they would shovel it off the truck making a mound about four feet tall and say 12ft. wide. They would light the fire at about 4pm allowing the entire huge pile of bark to burn down to glowing cinders. Then at 9pm every night some brave guy with a long wide steel rake would slowly begin to push these glowing ambers over the edge.
Okay, that’s the why and how of it.

But the magic it produced for those enchanting 15-20 minutes every night almost defies words. If I were to put it into a word, I would I have say it was the:

SILENCE

Because it was an unwritten law that everything and everyone in the valley STOPPED at 9pm. Mainly so you could hear the guy up from Glacier Point.

You see, there was one guy posted at the top of Glacier Point with a mega phone and one guy posted 3000 ft below at Camp Curry with a mega phone.

Tradition:
The guy below would yell up:
HELL-LO GLACIER POINT
The guy up top would slowly yell down:
HELL-LO CAMP CURR-Y
The guy in Camp Curry returns the call:
LET THE FIRE-ER FALL
Then the muffled voiced from Glacier Point could actually be heard if it were real quiet:
THE FIRE-ER IS-SSS FALLING

And every night the entire valley of campers was awe struck as these magificnet fire specks gracfully glided down the granite wall. Plunging down like a 1000 foot ribbon of fire specks. Then slowly they would disappear, falling on to the narrow ledge 1000feet below, burn out and fade away until the next night.

Doing that every night for years and years etched the surface of the granite to leave that 1000 ft white strip.

Sweet reminder of a time passed.

“Okay, so what does Elmer have to do with the Fire Falls?”

Well that story was old as the hills when I was a kid in the 50’s.
As I heard it:

It was maybe sometime in the 30’S or early 40’S that a kid named Elmer would drift off with his friends or something to their own place to watch the Firefall and every night after the Firefall his mother could have to call him back to camp:

EL-MER- EL-MER- EL-MER

And that my dears is the history of the Firefall and Elmer as I know it.”

As told to her Grandkids by Ann Peterson Bedard

I found this story on a Yosemite website and I can personally verify that this is exactly how it happened. I had the joy of experiencing this bit of magic myself growing up. I can still remember laying on a huge tree stump waiting with baited breath for the fire to fall….I also remember going out in the meadow at nightfall and hollering “ELLLMERRR.” And waiting for the answering call which was always returned. I recently found that the tradition is live and well in Yosemite to this day, see FB page here.

A bit of a departure from the usual subject matter, but thought I would share it with you as a wonderful memory from my childhood. May you sense God’s presence and peace today wherever you go….

The Gift of Memory


Remembering, we settle into the rocker on the front porch, the front porch of our minds, and gaze out at the view. Sorting through, we pull up the pleasant memories and settle in for awhile. The view is great, and it’s good to remember. Memory is one of God’s best gifts. Practicing selective memory we can even edit out the ones that weren’t so great and go on to the ones that were. Or if there weren’t any, we can even manufacture our own version of the past.

My friend and her brother had an interesting conversation with their Mom once. Their memory was decidedly much different than hers was. You see she worked all the time, wasn’t home, they signed their own report cards and what they heard most of the time growing up amidst the chaos was, “Get out of the house, I need to sleep!” She was saying that she made them cookies growing up. They both looked at each other incredulously, for she had never made a cookie in all their childhood. She didn’t like desserts, so they didn’t get them either. But they do remember making macaroni and cheese together in the middle of the night, that’s one memory they hold onto.

Ask yourself what your child will remember of their childhood. What sights, sounds, smells, images will take them back, and will it be good? Will they remember laughter, or stony silence? Animated dinner conversation or the crackling air of irritation, impatience, anger. Will they remember trips taken as a family with pleasure or will they associate those trips with a sense of anxiety?

The wonderful thing about all memories good, bad or indifferent, is that they can draw us closer if we let them. Even the bad times have a wonderful way of bonding us together when we have traveled down the road a bit. We just have to let them do their work.

God has a memory book called the Bible. It is His Book of Remembrance. If we keep it close we will always remember who He is and who we are. It is His way of saying, “This is what happened, and it is a part of you too, it is your heritage, filled with stories of My people and yours. Read it, live it, and it will become part of you. Most importantly, it will carry you into eternity with Me.”

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Deuteronomy 11:18

Not only that, the Bible is a living book, just like we are all living memories of what has come before and what will come after….

Keeping memories alive today with the counting……#401 opening tent flap disheveled to first heavenly cup of coffee, #402 a juice bar at the end of a hike, #403 rain on tent roof, #404 Mom’s hands curling my hair for picture day, #405 brother and I getting in trouble for laughing at Grandma’s table, #406 warm fronts, cold backs around campfire, #407 getting inside inner tube and rolling down Aunt’s hill, #408 something baked from scratch waiting on counter after school, #409 the sound of metal skates on cement, #410, watching Dad sketch and make a beautiful drawing from nothing…..

holy experience

Taking a little trip……

“Friends, they cherish one another’s hopes, they are kind to one another’s dreams.” Henry D. Thoreau

Since I don’t have a picture of myself anywhere on this blog I thought I would post this one. In it is the wonderful lady I talked about yesterday, Pat. (In red) Sorry, couldn’t find one of both of us looking into the camera! My best friend and I are heading to California today bright and early to surprise my folks with a visit to celebrate my Birthday. I am sure I will see Pat too because as soon as she hears I am in town she will want to come see me and give me one of her lingering hugs. When she hugs you, she is never the first to let go!

It’s always good to touch bases with family and friends, and sometimes you just have to do something spontaneous! I am not really a spontaneous person, I like things planned and scheduled. That is where I am comfortable. But this will be great fun and I can’t wait to see the shock and surprise on their faces when we walk up the driveway.

Aren’t we a jolly bunch? Best friend Elaine on left, another dear friend Diane, and myself at my Mom’s 80th! I picked this one because even though my eyes are closed, this photo makes me smile. We all had a great time that day…..

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” James 1:17

Singing to the Lord

It’s good to sing for the Lord, and for anyone else who will listen too! I sang all the way to work today because it was raining. Rain in Arizona is worth singing about! Music was a big part of my childhood. No family gathering was complete without some form of group singing. My Mom always sang in choirs, with bands, wherever she could sing, she sang. So many times growing up I would walk up to the driveway and hear her beautiful voice through the window.

God loves our singing, no matter how it sounds, it is a sound of beauty to Him. I hope I get to sound like Sarah Brightman in heaven. I think when God hears our voice it somehow transforms into an ethereal sound once it breaks the barriers of the celestial wall.

Once I heard the most beautiful sound walking down the street in Carmel, California. Both my friend and I looked at each other and we knew we had to find the source of that beautiful voice. Our steps us up the steps to a large hall, and right up to a closed bathroom door where an opera singer was practicing. We never forgot that sound!

The Psalms tell us over and over to Sing to the Lord! “Praise the LORD with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings.
3 Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise.” Psalms 33:2

Even God sings……can you imagine that sound?

“The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17

Animals sing too…..Once a wolf begins howling, other pack members often show a strong tendency to approach that animal and join in. Lois Crisler has said, “Like a community sing, a howl is a happy occasion. Wolves love to howl. When it is started, they instantly seek contact with one another, troop together, fur to fur. Some wolves will run from any distance, panting and bright-eyed, to join in, uttering, as they near, fervent little wows, jaws wide, hardly able to wait to sing.”littlewows, jaws wide, hardly able to wait to sing.” Lisa Matthews / Wolf Song of Alaska Volunteer

Kids love it when we sing too, even though they look at us like we are crazy!

Aging well


Douglas MacArthur evaluated his life on his 75th birthday, saying: “Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. In the central place of every heart, there is a recording chamber; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, and courage, so long are you young. When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old.

I have found that young people really do like to be around the elderly, provided they are fun, positive and most importantly have not forgotten how to laugh. Let’s face it, aging can be humorous!

I think a healthy culture values its elderly population. After all, God greatly values the elderly. He gave them their biggest jobs after they had reached the age where many Americans are living in retirement villages playing golf and bingo!

My folks have done a great job of aging well, I only hope I can do it half as successfully as they have. Here are some of the reasons I believe they have continued to stay young at 81 and 82!

Staying in the Word
Staying positive
Laughing at themselves and the world around them
An extremely active lifestyle
Loving God and each other
Reaching out to others
Giving generously
Staying current with world events
Taking care of their health

I pray for those elderly today who are not well. For those who are alone, and who feel left behind and left out. Who feel they have nothing to contribute. May they find a friend and comfort in You God, and help me to be a friend to the elderly in my own life. Amen

Isaiah 46:4 “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

Meeting God in a garden


“Kiss of the sun for pardon. Song of the birds for mirth. You’re closer to God’s heart in a garden than any place else on earth.” — Dorothy Frances Gurney

It is good to be able to find a quiet corner of the yard in the mornings. I used to do this when I had a garden and I miss it. I would go and the outdoor stray cat would follow me, her white patches turning blissfully brown as she gleefully rolled in the freshly tilled earth. She was happy to share her territory with me.

Sometimes I felt I could actually hear the plants grow, reaching for the sun. If I got very close, at eye level with the plants I was aware of a whole new universe. I would see the dew drops, and the small bugs crawling in their world, unaware of me and the bigger world surrounding them.

God placed us here lovingly and called it good long ago….

I keenly felt a closeness with my Grandparents there, I have heard all their stories, them trying to scratch out a living from the hard North Dakota soil. How they came home one day to a flash flood, my Grandma desperately gathering chicks up in her apron and bringing them in to try and save them. Tunnels from the house to the barn in the bitter cold of winter so that my Grandpa and Aunt could milk the cows….And saying goodbye to all their animals, each one named, when they left for a better life in California.

They left behind a little grave holding their child Annie, fatally shot by a foster child at aged two. The boy ran away and they never found him. I can’t imagine their sorrow. They made it out West, not without difficulty. They started over, pressed on and made a very good life. And their gardens always flourished

They have been reunited with their Annie for many years now, but I remember by being here with them in my quiet moments, I honor their memory and press on…..

“Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.” Genesis 2:8