NC A Place to Call Home: There she was with a pink and white flowing twirly little dress in the parking lot of Sam's...

NC A Place to Call Home: There she was with a pink and white flowing twirly little dress in the parking lot of Sam's...

Resurrection in May by Lisa Samson

Once again a Lisa Samson novel has completely captivated me.  I invite you to read the latest of Samson's fine works.

Buy		Read

There she was with a pink and white flowing twirly little dress in the parking lot of Sam's...

holding tightly to her mother's hand, barefoot on hot pavement. The child could not have been more than six or seven. A closer look revealed a slightly rumpled dress and hair only slightly less red than her mother's. The young mom, in her early twenties, held the girl by one hand and a small clear plastic box with the other. In the box were small resealable bags with peanuts still in the shells.  "Mammm" she called out to me. "Yes?"  "Mammm, we are trying to get some money for some groceries, would you be willin to buy some peanuts?'  I gave her a few dollars and told her I did not need the peanuts and wished them well . She thanked me and headed the other way with the little girl in tow.  I was clearly rattled as I headed to the entrance to meet my own daughter inside.  As I returned to my car about 15 minutes later I looked for the pair. I wanted to take them shopping or bring them  home or both. But I could not find them in the lot. I do not know if the mom truly just needed the money for groceries or if she was going to use the money for something else. How she was going to use the money was not important, what was important was the fact that she was there in the parking lot with her daughter in hand asking strangers for money.   I wanted to do more, to help more but a plan did not come together at once and then when I had at least the beginnings of a plan, they were gone.  I don't know if they will eat tonight or where they will sleep. I pray that she sold enough peanuts to at least provide food for them for today.  I pray that someone else responded more quickly than me and that the pair will get a new start.  God please protect the little red-headed pair.

Peace for the Journey by Elaine Olsen

I invite you to watch the trailer for this beautiful new book released only today by writer Elaine Olsen! Elaine is the mom of a former student and her dear son contacted me today to tell me about the book! I cannot wait to read Peace for the Journey!

The Summer of '78

The center  of our great nation is not the place one always wants to visit in the summer and yet that summer a trip to visit family in Texas and Colorado seemed like the right thing to do. Traveling for weeks and long distances with two small children can be taxing to any parent but on this trip  I was not feeling well and the visits remain a blur in my memory!  While visiting in the Dallas area my illness was compounded with a terrible uti and I remembered that we had a friend from Bible college days who was now a doctor in the area. What I did not know was that the physican friend was a pathologist and so perhaps began what would later seem as foreshadowing in the story. It seems that even pathologists can write scrips and so I was able to obtain an antibiotic so that the trip might continue.  I know we visited a brother in law in Texas and a sister in law and her family in Colorado, but where else and who else we saw will forever remain locked away in the back of my brain somewhere.  

Upon returning home to the city of Chicago-life quickly fell back into a sense of normal for a few days.  I still had the remants of an upper respiratory infection that I could not shake  and traces of the earlier uti that the medicine had helped ,for awhile , had reappeared.  I vaguely remember being at a church league baseball game and sitting outside at sundown, thinking that I was much sicker than symptoms seemed to indicate.  The role of pastor's wife or in this case assistant pastor's wife was one that demanded mostly my presence at everything and my illness was no excuse to stay away from church services or functions. So I kept dragging myself and my two little girls to all the events of the week.

Returning to my two-night-a-week job as a nurse's assistant for a wealthy North Shore family was in some ways relaxing  from a stress filled home and  hours of relief from the demands of mothering a three year old daughter and a eighteen month old daughter. It was decent pay for the time and it was 12 hours worked twice a week that seemed the easiest to be away. I worked from 7 pm until 7 am usually on Tuesday and Thursday nights... the nights most often void of church services or activities. This was also the time that the girls were usually asleep and so not to much work for their father. On my first night back at work, the other nurse I worked with noticed that I looked sick and sent me to bed once our patient was asleep for the night. 

When I awoke the next morning the first thing I sensed was that the outside of my hands and feet were numb. I tried to shake the numbness away thinking that my hands and feet were asleep as though I had slept in a strange position causing them to fall asleep. When the numbness did not go away I thought that maybe I had pinched a nerve.  By Thursday of that week the numbness had spread to my face and I was getting concerned.  It was as though the face had been given novacaine like the dentist might give for a  filling. Afraid to return to my patient because I thought that I might be carrying a contagious disease I visited a family doctor who assured me that I was a tired pastor's wife and mother and that there was nothing to worry about!  I returned to work and woke up on Friday morning feeling  more numb and as though my limbs weighed hundreds of pounds. I was becoming more fearful by the hour...   to be edited and continued

Blogginess and Purpose...

My blog has been blogged down since last August,not that I do not desire to blog, and not that I do not have things about which to blog, but mostly because the blog seems to have lacked purpose! My original purpose in starting the blog was to write about my family and odd upbringing... this was met with some resistance.. A few who wrote comments thought that this was to much information. However, if my family is ever to know the story it would be wise to journal it somewhere. I could limit my postings to just a few family members, but a wider audience may well benefit from the testimony shared in the telling of these stories. So it is back to square one on my blog journey.
Recently, I shared with some of my students, as I do almost every year, some of the story of my miraculous recovery from Guillian-Barre Syndrome. They said I should write a book... perhaps I will and perhaps it will begin here!