Patience

I looked up patience in the dictionary.  It said the ability to wait and endure without complaint.  If I have ever had that ability I must have lost it some where in these 78 years.  My main drain is stopped up and I can't seem to get a plumber interested in cleaning it for me and it keeps running over in my base-ment.  I have not waited and endured without complaint. There's no laudermat in Dongola or Anna.   Also I have not been able to get any TV channels except
the local ones.  Dish Network did not handle the problem to my liking so I canceled.  Now do I need patience? 

Witnesses

Our sermon this morning was on the verse about the cloud of witnesses.  Pastor Paul said

this is the saved people who have died.  My mother always said they can’t see what goes

on here because they wouldn’t be happy if they could see what their loved ones are doing

here.  So was she wrong?  Is my mom and dad disappointed in me?  Is Bill still shaking

his head at some of things I do as he did many times here?  Well I don’t know if mom &

dad and Bill can see the days I don’t read my bible, nights I don’t go to church but  I do

know that God sees it and He’s the one who really counts.  Maybe God’s trying to tell me

“you’re not doing a good job with your life and it’s time you got it straightened out.

The Price Of A Candy Bar

I was checking our today at the grocery store and noticed the price of a candy bar was

95 cents.  When I was growing up in the 1930s and 40s and even somewhat later, the

price of a candy bar was 5 cents.  Not that I ever had 5 cents to buy one but today I would not pay 95 cents for one.  Just thinking of a 5 cent candy bar took me back to another time.  Maybe that time was not as great as it seems in my memory but I wouldn’t want

to trade growing up at that time for any other time in history.

The Golden Years

I wonder who coined that name.  Are your last years supposed to be bright and shining,

like gold?  Most of the older people I know are sad and lonely.  They’ve lost their mate.

When you lose your mate, you also lose your circle of friends.  Oh they’re still there and I’m sure they still care about you but you no longer have anything in common.  Your friends were couples as you were a couple and no longer are.

There are many things that affect your life in the later years.  Sometimes you lose your health or sometimes your mate loses their health and this affects not only them but you.

So things other than death may be the reason your life has changed.  Dementia is a large problem today in your later years.  So even if you’re still healthy physically your

mind may  no  longer be healthy.

Does God want you to spend your last years sad and lonely?  I don’t think so.  So is there an answer?  I don’t have it but I’m sure it’s there, somewhere in God’s word.

Saturday Morning Thunder Storm

My rain scarf was in the car and it was going to be raining by the time I left for work.  I started to go outside and before I opened the door I saw a small brown bird sitting on the

bottom step.  He seemed to be listening to the thunder and I wondered what he was thinking.  He just kept sitting there and I didn’t open the door.  I didn’t want to disturb him.  After a while he flew away and I think he thought it’s time I found a shelter from

the storm that’s on it’s way.  Sometimes I think that’s what I should do.  Just fly away

from the storm that’s coming and someday that’s what I’m gonna do.

The House I Grew Up In

I remember, I remember the house where I was born-

This is the beginning of a poem I read in grade school.

I do remember the house where I was born.  It was a

house my Dad and Uncle Dick had build and it was a

house where Bill and I lived when we were first married

But it’s not the house of my childhood years.  Dad and

Mother bought that place when I was a baby and I lived

there until I married at seventeen and that house holds

all my childhood memories even though it’s no longer

there, blown away in a tornado a few years ago, it will

always be home in my memory.

Forty

I remember my fortieth birthday.  A milestone in a woman’s life.  It must have been a     Saturday because I wasn’t working.  I came out of the house to go shopping

and a neighbor whistled at me.  I thought “ well, maybe I’m not over the hill yet.”

The neighbor will never know how that whistle made me smile.

Families

It’s curious how families change as society changes.  At one time large families were the norm.  On a farm a large family was an asset.  There was much work to be done and from the youngest to the oldest you had a chore.  My Dad was what was called then “a truck farmer”.  Maybe because then you needed a truck to sell your produce.  Work started on the first warm day of spring and ended when everything had been harvested in the fall.

The planting time meant fields of tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, watermelons and cantaloupes.  The first harvest was in May when the strawberries were ripe.  They were picked, packed and shipped, going by train to some city.  There were daily chores, feeding chickens, gathering eggs, feeding pigs and milking cows. 

There was also fun things to do.  Building a playhouse and making mud pies.  We were good at making up our own games.  We did things children today has never heard of doing.  We played much in the creek that ran through the farm and had no water except when there was a heavy rain.

Growing up in a large family was a blessing I like to remember.  Being the middle child

there was always someone older to help me with my lessons, to come to my rescue  if I was being picked on at school.  We never knew what the word bored meant and when I

hear kids say that today I kinda feel sorry for them.

Days Of Stone

Some days are diamonds, some days are stones.  A line from an old John Denver song.

eight hours at the library.  Four hours too long for an old lady.  Why do people come

 in the last hour and want to stay on the computer for four hours and don’t know

what they’re doing and make a lot of copies they don’t want and don’t want to pay

twenty cents a sheet for them.  Why do they talk mean to their kids when the kids are

not behaving any worse than they are?  Some days I should just be home quietly read-

ing a good book.

A Best Friend

When I think of friends, I always think of Joyce.  She was only twenty days older

than me.  Our junior and senior years in high school was two of the happiest years

of my life and she was a big part of those years.  We spent so much time together,

when she died I met a another classmate and her sister as I was going in the funeral home and she said we thought how close you two were in school and wondered if you would

be here.

 Old friends are the best but some times they leave us here to miss them.

A Widow's Thoughts

Where did all the years go.  As the bible says, like a vapor, they passed so quickly.  Fifty-six years, some good, some not so good.  There was good in even the worse of them.

I think of us, nineteen and seventeen, so young, so dumb.  If we had known what the years would bring, would we have been brave enough to start that journey?

1950 was a different age from today.  Most marriages didn’t start in church but most marriages lasted until death parted the partners.  It was expected to be a lifetime venture.  Ours began in the basement of the preacher’s home.  When the preacher ask what type of wedding we wanted, Bill replied “the shortest and the cheapest”.  I was not happy with that answer.  Apparently he thought the ceremony was not that important, maybe the marriage would be.

Bill worked construction and two weeks after the wedding, he was laid off.  A few weeks later, his mother suffered a stroke.  I was destined to be the caregiver.  Bill took a job on a truck and was gone most of the week.  Not the greatest way to start a marriage, yet

Looking back on that winter, we learned much about each other.  At that time I’m sure

Fifty-six years would have seemed long but looking back on them, they were not long enough. 

A Tribute to Daddy

I can still see him coming in from the fields

Bent with age and hard work

He told us tales of long ago while we sat around

the fire on a winter evening

I remember walking with him to Sunday School on

Sunday mornings

Sitting in his favorite chair reading his bible at night

Hearing him singing as he worked in the yard

I’m thankful for all the things he taught me not only

with words but by how he lived

Thank you Daddy for all the things you gave me

without my even realizing it.