For Such A Worm As I

Dear Lydia,   I woke up this morning with your "honey sticks" and hot tea on my mind.  How hospitable you were to the lot of us on Sunday mornings who would file into your home, drink your hot beverages, and discuss the Word of God!  I thought of those tall, Styrofoam cups of hot water steeping one of your gourmet tea bags and your generosity in letting us make ourselves at home in your kitchen, picking out a slender, plastic envelope of tantalizingly-diverse-colored honeys to empty into the hot liquid.    How well your kettle worked!  Often I would sit holding my cup, glancing at it between comments around the circle, and watch the steam rise for almost half the class time, only to down the sufficiently-cooled drink as quickly as possible at class's end so as not to be late to church.   You mean so much to me.  All those mornings spent pouring over the Scriptures as a class, all those weekdays learning from your skilled hands  & knowledg...

The word is celebrate, and 'though there are SO MANY things I could write about celebrations and celebrating, I decided on the idea that first came to mind... Go: My mother's cousin passed away.  It was unexpected.  A shock.  The details were disturbing and made me think about a dear friend of mine, the mother of some acquaintances, who died through mysterious events a few years ago around this time of year.   I think about her every year as fall comes on and miss her.   But then, {as I pondered it today} I thought, what a grand celebration for both my cousin and friend!  Wow! My cousin has been suffering in a fragile body for so many years.  My imagination can't even do Heaven justice as I think about the grandeur that he must be experiencing now reunited with his parents, grandparents, my grandmother, and Most Important of All, his Savior Jesus! I think too about Mrs. C., a pastor's wife, vibrant, a godly mother...  She's still rejoici...

     He doesn't worship him.  He just loved him. And now he misses him.  Twenty-seven plus years and he's still so close to my Daddy's heart, sometimes Dad tears up when he mentions him.  My Grandpa, a man I never got to meet.     "I wish you could have known him," Dad'll say, his mouth quirking at the corners a little, eyes getting a bit red.  My Dad, the strong, the affectionate, the hard-working, showing emotion at the memory and the missing of a man I never knew, a man who impacted his life in more ways than I'll ever understand.                                                                                 --------      Interesting how someone can be h...

   Today is July 2nd.  One day after the first anniversary of my grandmother's passing.  One day before the two-month mark following my grandfather's passing.  It's been a different year.  I felt my grandmother's absence (we call her Meemaw) strongest three days ago.  I was cleaning her house which my family began living in over a year ago to care for Meemaw after she was diagnosed with cancer.  So many memories flooded back as I worked.  There was her hot pink housecoat hanging in her closet, (she loved pink, even before the brand came into being), and her navy houseshoes that I can still hear scuff-scuff ing with her footsteps as she hurried off to some task.  (Yes, we still have them.  Some things just take time.)       I vacuumed around her purple recliner.  Bobby pins used to litter the carpet beside that chair, a testament to her great use of the wonderful little inventions and to the crowdedness ...