So many people, so many places, often very difficult, but much to learn. I look up, listen, ask for wisdom, strength, courage, and love for today's trek.
Showing posts with label Old Lady Dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Old Lady Dreams. Show all posts
Her life has given me glimpses of what mine might be
As I've watched her
Fifty years ahead of me
Aunt Annie,
I hope I will be like you in so many ways
Your positive outlook
Your choosing of grace, forgiveness and service
Rather than self-pity, bitterness or complaining
Your consistently reaching out to others
And yet trusting the Lord yourself too
There is probably much more too
But honestly, we haven't seen each other very often
For me to know more
I'm thankful for the amount of connection we've had
For your emails
For your encouragement
I hope this last leg of the journey goes well for you
I hope you know His comfort
His peace
I hope He holds you, in a very special way
I hope you are at peace
And that there is joy
As you graduate on
To the life after this one
Thank you for this life you have lived
Thank you for showing me how to live it well
To live it with courage
And with grace
I will choose to remember you
And I will take courage from your life
Long after you are gone
Thank you for your faithful journey
Thank you for the strength you have imparted to me
Blessings
Peace
Comfort
Be yours
I wrote another post for Aunt Annie a few years ago, for her 94th birthday. Here is more of this woman, and how she has blessed and impacted me: Thanks Aunt Annie!
Update: on Nov. 10, 2017 Aunt Annie took her last breath...
I have a new hero--and I'm always looking for heroes. She's 83, and I have the privilege of taking her in to the hospital for her mastectomy tomorrow. Just a few years ago her husband died**. What a blow that must have been. Tomorrow she's going to bring me a copy of her story--the challenges faced in earlier years in Germany--so I can read it at the hospital while I wait. I suspect I'll be even more amazed at her after the reading.
After the tests today, and facing surgery tomorrow, she's thankful. I asked if she's nervous or fearful about the surgery. On Sunday she had said she was a little nervous, so I don't think she's afraid to admit the truth. Today, she's not too bad, after the tests, and knowing the schedule for tomorrow. "Oh, I appreciate the Lord," she said. "The older I get I trust Him more and more." She's thankful they found the cancer so early, and that they are doing the surgery so soon.
She was telling me how she swims and walks. "I had polio you know," so on the right side of her body the muscles are weakened. It's why her body is twisting and leaning, but the walking helps. She walks inside when it's cold, because she doesn't need to break a leg outside, but she must walk. And after the surgery, she's going to walk. She's told herself she is going to make herself walk, she's not going to give up.
If the Lord lets me live to to be 83, I hope I am as positive, cheerful,
laughing, smiling and trusting the Lord as she is--even after all she's been
through (much I don't even know), and in the face of difficulty now.
What a woman!! And...
Thank You Lord, for the people ahead of us on the journey, giving us a vision of how to follow You, how to trust You, how to faithfully follow, and how You are faithful, even to our old age and grey hairs. As You have faithfully been with her, sustaining, granting peace and joy, so You will be with me.
**Correction: Earlier I had said he died "tragically and suddenly, physician's error in or after surgery, I believe," but that is incorrect. He was quite ill for about 6 months, and there was one small "physician incident" error but it did not result in his death. Of course before those 6 months of severe illness his diabetes was already at a pretty advanced stage--he was going in for dialysis a couple of times a week, etc.
There you are, 50.5 (+ 9 days!) ahead of me, and I just want to tell you that I'm glad to have you in my life! I'm thankful to, for all these years, be able to keep looking ahead to where you are, ahead of me.
Thank you for letting a twenty something punk come and ask you questions. (Do you remember that? "I have these dreams sometimes--is it God speaking?") Thank you for making the surprise trip just as I was about to go across the pond, to show up at the party, with your pictures and stories, and show me the place to which I was going. (We're are still pretty amazed that, at 71, when conditions where what they were then, you did that trip!) And through the years--you've been one of the most consistent responders when I write--sometimes gently reminding to watch for dangers (and the need to H.A.L.T.), but often with some very poignant and powerful words that show me just how much you understand. I still wish there was a book with the parts that you didn't include in yours :o) ...but I do understand your reasoning on that, and I probably wouldn't know how to find a way to write it either.
This week you turned 94. Do you know, you're one of the people that make up my "old lady dreams"? (I hope those words don't offend--where I live it's considered a good thing to get to be "old".) Years ago, I thought I would die young, but then I realized I may not, and I realized that living faithfully and joyfully over many years is really tough. Some people live it well. Some don't. If the Lord gives me many years, when I get closer to where you are, I hope I live it a lot like you do--reaching out to others, choosing thankfulness over complaining. Maybe there will be some punk 50 years younger that I can encourage. I hope I'll still be relevant to someone 50 years younger, like you are to me!
You have been for me one who does what Rosalind Goforth talks about in this poem (I think she wrote it...in her book Climbing). Thank you for "Calling Back".
CALL BACK!
If you have gone a little way ahead of me, call back; 'Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track; And if, perchance, Faith's light is dim, because the oil is low, Your call will guide my lagging course as wearily I go. Call back, and tell me that He went with you into the storm; Call back, and say He kept you when the forest's roots were torn; That when the heavens thundered and the earthquake shook the hill, He bore you up and held you where the very air was still. O friend, call back and tell me, for I cannot see your face; They say it glows with triumph, and your feet bound in the race; But there are mists between us, and my spirit eyes are dim, And I cannot see the glory, though I long for word of Him. But if you'll say He heard you when your prayer was but a cry, And if you'll say He saw you through the night's sin-darkened sky If you have gone a little way ahead, O friend, call back 'Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track. - Selected
And...since you liked and recommended to me the other Getty's song (even though I'd already been listening to it those days--but what a cool "someone gets it" moment!), I post this one for you--the one with her singing--so you can lip read! ;o)
When trials come no longer fear
For in the pain our God draws near
To fire a faith worth more than gold
And there His faithfulness is told
And there His faithfulness is told
Within the night I know Your peace
The breath of God brings strength to me
And new each morning mercy flows
As treasures of the darkness grow
As treasures of the darkness grow
I turn to Wisdom not my own
For every battle You have known
My confidence will rest in You
Your love endures Your ways are good
Your love endures Your ways are good
When I am weary with the cost
I see the triumph of the cross
So in it's shadow I shall run
Till You complete the work begun
Till You complete the work begun
One day all things will be made new
I'll see the hope You called me to
And in your kingdom paved with gold
I'll praise your faithfulness of old
I'll praise your faithfulness of old
May you continue to know the Lord's presence through the trials you encounter. May you know His strength giving you endurance. May you know His grace and love, both with you each day, and enabling you to continue to reach out to others.
Have you noticed? Some speakers...you heard them, they were really good, but years later, they are still telling the same stories? And I stop listening. I'm not impressed any more. Is there nothing new? Does their faith and experience of God not keep growing? Oh...forgive me if I'm judging here, that's not the point...just...I will choose others to be my guides.
God, preserve in me a fresh faith
One that lasts
But even more important
Is always new
I too have had seasons
Where the wisdom I spouted
Was old wisdom
Good still, but something from the past
Because there was nothing fresh
But that should last
Only for a season
Only a winter
Until spring
Old mixed with the new
Old and new treasures
Because of a life with You
That is alive and growing
You good God
Never stop leading and teaching
And there is certainly
More than a long lifetime's worth
That I have still to learn
For all my days
Whether they be few or many
May there be new
New insight
New courage
New love
New hope
New trials and challenges
New vision of You
New knowing of You
Thoughts from Mark Buchanan's Spiritual Renewal workshop at Break Forth 2013.
The fundamental thing...if you don't have a sabbath heart, you will never have a sabbath day.
"The problem with the culture we're living in is we're trying to solve the dilemma of our extreme busyness and stressfulness and all of that, by simply creating more leisure, and leisure isn't the cure for what ails us, sabbath is."
How do we gain this ability to enter the rest of God...to get to the place where we can really recline with Jesus, without constant agitation, checking email or the iPhone, etc. to just enjoy Jesus, know He likes you and you like Him?
It takes a Sabbath heart, and a Sabbath heart is rooted in one thing in particular: a deep and deepening conviction of the sovereign goodness of God.
If I don't cultivate this sense of God's sovereign overruling transcendent imminent goodness and presence and ability to deal with life in all of it's tumultuousness and make it all work together for good, then I can't rest.
I used to think going out in a blaze of glory was the way it should happen. I used to think I would leave this planet young. I used to think it would be so much better to be a blazing flame for Jesus--better to burn out, then forever be only such a tiny flicker that no one ever noticed. But now I know. Going young and quick would have been the easiest path. And I... I am going to need the years... If all I am going to present to Jesus at the end of this life Is my transformed self Then I am going to need a LOT of years. I think I'll need about 50... at least!
Maybe by 90 I'll have learned... To love To forgive To freely share this grace that He's lavished on me
Until then Or, through the years till then Lord have mercy Christ have mercy Please change this heart of stone into flesh.
Well J.W., what a pleasure to have met you. You are an amazing woman. Down to earth, energetic, easily interacting with all ages. You can laugh, you can cry, and yet know there is an appropriate time for each. You gained my respect almost the first day I met you, and that wasn't even two weeks ago. You're warm, and friendly, and yet could never be mushy or over-bearing about it. You know the pain of the world, of others, and I'm sure you've known your own--yet you bear it without complaining. There is a life to you, a spunk, an optimism, a joy, that has lasted through the years and challenges and transitions. No self-pity. No "oh look how I've served, struggled and suffered." No, none of that, "That wouldn't do now, would it?" (I can hear you saying those very words, your lovely British accent, even now as I write.) You, my dear, have become for me another one who shows me how I want to live. Down the road, another twenty years from now (for you are about twenty years older than me), should the Lord grant me the years, I hope I will be like you in so many ways. Living in hope. Loving my God. Blessing the world.
And while you're certainly not "old" (definitely not!) you've added vision to my Old Lady Dreams...
Thank you. I hope we shall meet again in coming years.
I'm starting to get over the shock of being 38. (Actually, I think what it really is about is how close that number is to 40.) It surprised me the way I was thinking about it actually, especially when in this country you answer with your 'next' age long before your actual birthday. I've been saying, "I'm 38 this year," for months!
Anyway, I have now decided to turn my brain in another direction. I'm now thinking about what kind of old lady I want to be, should I have the opportunity to become one.
Earlier in the year I said, "I want to be a spunky old lady!" I still say that.
At someone's blog (I forget whose) I read about him attending a funeral of an elderly man who had been a mentor and inspiration to him many years earlier, but they had lived in different places in recent years. Someone else, though, who had kept up with the older man, commented that he had never stopped learning and growing, and his relationship with the Father was always fresh, right up to the end. I want to be like that. If I make it to the 80's or even 90's, I want to be always learning--from books, from other people of all ages, from God.
And, I want to be an old lady that blesses and encourages, not hurts and tears down, with her words.
That's enough for now. I've got years of work and 'being changed' to do to work on that last one alone.
Will let you know if I have any more old lady dreams. Maybe pursuit of the my old lady dream will stop me from being so shocked at the numbers as they go by, and not so tempted to get to "39 and holding."
Hmmm...I think I'm also going to have to come up with some "Coffin Dreams."
