Chapel of Hope Stories

Dear Reader:

The older I get the more I realize how important it is to niche out time in each day for reflection…to have a quiet place one can retreat to for some introspection.

One of my favorite artist’s Kelly Rae Roberts is in the midst of figuring this out too. She made the plunge this past year to move herself and her family (with her parents following in suit) from the bustling city of Portland, Oregon to the small artistic town of Three Sisters to slow down her life and provide a different perspective for her young son growing up in a small town versus a large city.

It has definitely had its challenges but at the same time Kelly is already seeing the differences in their before and after life-altering move as they begin settling in. She writes:

“Embracing quiet and the stillness that comes with adjusting to life in a tiny town has been super soul nourishing. The evenings are SO QUIET. The neighborhoods are filled with sounds of birds and wind, with deer and wild turkeys just hanging around. The stars are incredible, the sky wide open and black with silence.”

Kelly talks about realigning her objectives in life and how a lot of it involves unlearning – “The sloooowing it way down, the meandering for found hearts, the cloud watching, the overall consciousness of living a different way. A lot of unlearning. A lot of quiet. Feels good.”

It does take courage to make the changes in our lives to bring us the inner peace we all so seek daily. No one wants to run the risk of trying to do everything all the time, even with the best intentions, only to realize when we over-spread ourselves trying to do good…sometimes we end up ‘good for nothing.’

We have to take time for ourselves and not lose our identifies in the process of living.

Kelly Rae Roberts is offering an on-line workshop to those interested in “exploring the duality of life. How to care for ourselves and still honor the responsibilities we’ve chosen.” This dilemma speaks to many, if not all, of us.

Personally my special time these days is going out on the deck around 7:30 P.M. and watching the lights come on the deck and garden…one by one. It is my good-night ritual to the garden, the sanctuary, in my life. This is when I take time to reflect and plan how to be open to others while not losing myself in busyness.

So until tomorrow…Take time to make time to honor yourself and thank God for your special passions while finding ways to give back to those around you in the process of living life to the fullest.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*I spent last night in Mt. P to be ready to pick up Rutledge and Eva Cate …Today is our big day…we are doing a local scavenger hunt in Summerville, lunch, and then off to the little theater to watch cousin Ady in the Dr. Seuss Musical in town. Aunt Kaitlyn is joining us for lunch and the theater…should be a fun day!

Dear Reader:

I do believe if everyone (all mankind) started out on earth equally…physically and mentally…and lined up next to each other for the Race of Life…given the exact same obstacles (ahead of them) to deal with…some participants would handle the obstacles with little stress or distress…while others would let the first obstacles prevent them from continuing along the path to their personal fulfillment.

The difference? Attitude! 

I read two conversational sentences in the last Mitford series novel that spoke volumes to me Wednesday evening. I went to bed thinking about it and woke up yesterday morning with the scene and conversation swirling around in my imagination.

Let me introduce Harley Welch to you (one of the colorful characters who lives in the fictitious town of Mitford, NC)…a man of many talents and, most importantly, the person who will always have your back through life.

He has grown up dirt poor in Kentucky, has  little schooling, and as a youth and young man resorted to what he called his ‘liquor-running’ days. A neighborhood child, a little girl, actually teaches him to read, write and love history while he protects  and shelters her from an abusive father.

As fate would have it he ends up renting a basement apartment from Father Tim and later moves in with Father Tim’s adopted son, Dooley and his wife Lace (once the little girl who educated him). He is capable of doing just about any kind of work…a jack of all trades and he becomes an essential part of the family…more like a beloved uncle.

One day he tells Father Tim about an episode at school that happened to him on his very first day when he was a little boy. He remembers being so excited to be going to school but he barely had enough clothing to cover himself.

As he heard his name called from the roll…he stood up by his desk (as he had seen the other children do) and repeated his name… proudly again. Then he noticed the teacher staring down at his feet. She said loudly, ” Harley, you’ve lost a shoe.” Amid the snickers of laughter from his classmates… Harley stared down at his feet and then (proud as punch) grinning from ear to ear responded with…

” No Ma’am…I found one.”

Attitude. I will never forget those two lines for as long as I live…life in a nutshell.

So until tomorrow…”Life is what you make it…always has been, always will be.” Grandma Moses or Eleanor Roosevelt (Good quote even if researchers disagree on the source 🙂

*The comedian Jack Benny once said, “Apparently I have an attitude. Who knew?”  ( The secret is having the right attitude at the right moment in life…timing is everything.)

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Eloise is in training for when she has to push Grandmother Boo in a moving chair one day…hopefully not in the near future!

Joan…it just isn’t Easter without your precious watercolor painting welcoming in the season.

Dear Reader:

Have you ever wondered what kind of music God loves best? The natural music He put on earth in its creation moves me daily…the sound of a breeze blowing through the trees, a creek gurgling over rocks, birds singing, bees buzzing, or rain pattering on the roof at night, just to name a few.

As far as man-made music…I still remember the first time I heard Handel’s Messiah, especially the Hallelujah Chorus sung at a huge church in Raleigh by traveling musicians from New York when I was about ten years old. It was the first time I understood the expression “shivers down my back” because I experienced just that on a long ago Christmas holiday evening.

I really thought God was going to appear as the chorus kept getting higher and higher on the refrain until I thought I would burst open inside from the sheer joy! I was in a daze all the way home that Christmas evening… stunned…I could only nod when my friend’s mother asked if I enjoyed it. It went so far beyond enjoyment that I couldn’t express it in words.

I wondered, as a child, if God felt the same way when He heard it for the first time. It is unbelievable to me that Handel’s Messiah was completed in 24 days of speedy composition. He wrote it in a little over three weeks? I, also, remember hearing that  at the end of his manuscript Handel wrote the letters “SDG”—Soli Deo Gloria, “To God alone the glory”.

What about music in the heavens…don’t we always think of angels singing a cappella….and definitely harps must be involved…but what else? What are the musical sounds of another world going to sound like? I wonder.

I think God smiles down on most music if it delights us and makes us happy to be around…music we listen to on the way to work and back home….I like all music….country, motown, beach music, rock n’ roll, movie themes, classical…music truly soothes the soul and picks up the joyful heart beat.  God obviously knew, like any Father would, that His children would love the gift of music!

In the following true story below….I discovered that God can use music as a God Wink too…even in a potentially serious situation with a sense of humor.

When God Laughs ( Was the song a sign that God had heard and answered her prayer?)

by Annie Williams

I climbed into my van, aka the Mom Mobile, and headed to the library where I worked evenings. Just on the highway, I got an urge to pray. Please, Lord, don’t let anything hit me!

Why on earth had I prayed that?

Okay, I’m a fearful driver. Highways, lane changes, parallel parking all make me nervous. I always prayed before getting on the road. But this prayer was so specific that I decided not to listen to my audiobook or the radio. I had to be super vigilant.

I came up behind a beat-up pickup. The only other vehicle around. A bunch of two-by-fours was piled in its bed. Every time the truck hit a bump, the wood bounced. I peered closer. Nothing was tied down! No ropes or straps. Nothing.

My prayer! I had to switch lanes. Now!

The moment I swerved left, a two-by-four flew out of the truck. If I hadn’t moved, I could’ve been speared through the windshield.

I took the exit for the library and turned on the radio just as a song came on. Guess what it was?

“Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees!

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So until tomorrow…

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*(Gardening is easier when I get a little help from my “friend” Winnie (Thanks again Stephanie for the “Gardening Winnie” you brought me back from Disney World a few years back! Adorable!)

*And for me the beauty of nature and music just go hand in hand!

Besides the pretty flowers…the strangest thing…two of the front bushes by the gate have formed a second entrance into the garden…another God Wink I do believe.

Dear Reader:

Sometimes when I think about the conscious or unconscious influence of being a role model for loved ones coming after me and those who surround me in my daily life…it forces me to never forget just what an awesome influence each of our lives are on the next generation and so on and so on.

As I remember my own personal conversations, messages, and advice with and from mother and grandmother… it only re-enforces the importance of walking the talk each and every time we are with those who are watching to see how we react under different circumstances. *And they will literally follow in our footsteps…good or bad.

*Though sometimes it is appropriate to stop and make fun memories too…. Dr. Seuss “My grandma was a teacher, what did your grandma do?” t-shirts! * (Thanks Pam Stewart for letting me know about the t-shirts back when)…Add some fun “teacher glasses” and let the good times roll! (Two years ago)

Little eyes are always watching…curious to see how adults behave when they think no one is watching. Human behavior relies on reacting to circumstances based on how we see the adults in our own lives reacting to problems while growing up.

Do the adults in the family scream and shout when problems come their way, or are they calm and patient when things don’t go right, are they protective and caring during one’s childhood or apathetic and otherwise preoccupied? The list, of course, could go on forever.

For better or worse, not only are ‘we our mother’s daughters,’ we are also our father’s influence, and vice-versa for son and fathers…with grandparents potentially sharing an important role in the final outcome of how the next generation views the world and reacts accordingly.

At a certain point in our adult lives we start shifting role model observations over to our boss, or co-worker, friend, pastor, any one we admire. There is certainly nothing wrong with this as long as we take the best parts and ingrain the guidance and direction without changing who we are at heart…our true being.

Where the problem arises from copying others, especially their reactions to circumstances in life, is when we stop using our own intuition and follow the “herd” like sheep. How many 60 Minute stories have we seen where someone is screaming for help but spectators from close by, perhaps in high-rises, don’t react because they are too busy watching to see how the other neighbors or tenants are reacting. It is a behavioral defect we have to recognize as humans and react on our own volition.

On the flip side, however, when we watch someone do something good or kind…it has the same effect. Suddenly we want to do an act of kindness also….to take the opportunity to do something positive for strangers in all kinds of diverse situations.

I suppose it was a God Wink but yesterday I was reading random acts of kindness stories and suddenly an old Liberty Insurance one-minute video on ‘Paying it Forward’ suddenly came on… I loved it…what a fantastic clip on what life could be if we all reacted to others the second there was a need. What a different world we would live in.

I played the first two (one-minute video clips) over and over…and realized that it isn’t always the person who has an act of kindness bestowed on him or her that pays it forward…many times it is someone in the crowd who witnesses the kind deed that starts another chain of intentional acts of kindness… with themselves as the leader of another link of kindness!

One of the two (one minute) video clips starts out as a typical day…a toddler drops her doll on a busy sidewalk, a stranger immediately picks it up and hands it back to the parent, then a stranger who witnesses this act of kindness, pushes back a cup of coffee (about to be shoved off the desk by an unknowing co-worker) just in the nick of time.

Another office observer now catches a co-worker before he falls backwards in his desk chair ..so later the act is paid forward by catching a stranger on the sidewalks of NY who is about to stumble and fall ….and so on and so on and so on.

So until tomorrow…Why don’t we try starting a chain of kind acts, intentional kind acts…we might never know the long-term effect or if it just stops with the one person we help today…but then again…it is not important that we know the ending… just that we started a chain of kindness to remind us that we are all human and children of God Whose compassion for us should be shared with (and for) others.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

More pictures by Sarah on the Dingle cuties…what a friend she is to Mollie and Walsh.

*Life really is a roller coaster ride…this past week has been a tough one for Ann Graves, a friend from church, who heard the diagnosis no one wants to hear…breast cancer…but after meeting with the team and her surgeon yesterday…it looks promising that it is treatable and the prognosis is quite encouraging.

My daughter-in-law, Kaitlyn, and her mom, Susan, just heard that Uncle Rusty’s (Susan’s brother and Kaitlyn’s uncle) cancer treatments have not gone as hoped and some tough decisions will have to be made about further options.

So please keep Ann, Kaitlyn, Susan, and Uncle Rusty in your prayers…When fighting cancer there is always a sense of vulnerability and isolation… best put to rest with prayers and encouragement from family, friends and well-wishers for patient and care-givers alike. Thank you.

Dear Reader:

Yesterday I finished the blog post by observing that sometimes we need to stop and look up (the balloons caught in the tree)…you never know what you might see and looking up helps us climb over obstacles. Now I have decided to take my own advice but climb up instead of look up… In fact from up high I look down.  It is amazing how it changes everything.

I climbed up the newly constructed (this past summer) stairs to the apartment over the potting shed and went out on the balcony to look down on the foggy early morning garden below me. What is it about adding height to a situation that gives us new “lenses” to look through?

I was never able to “see” the outline of my garden until I first added the deck to the house…and with just two or three feet of additional height…suddenly my perception changed…visualization took root and with Anne’s suggestions…the garden path began that day.

In the Bible Jesus seeks higher places to be alone or with a chosen few to gather his thoughts and then deliver them like the Sermon on the Mount. In scripture tiny Zacheaus climbed a sycamore tree to get a better glance of Jesus…looking down upon Him  and nothing was ever the same again.

Source: Faithlife Sermons “The Mountain Perspective” (excerpts) Glenn Pease

“Little Zacheaus climbed up a sycamore tree because he could see Jesus from a new perspective, and that climb gave him a glimpse that changed his life forever. Seeing Jesus from a more lofty height is a life-changing perspective.

Mountains give us two different perspectives that help us see life differently. When you are high in them, you can look down and see the awesome scene below, and when you are below you can look up and see the awesome scene of their heights. Either way you look, up or down, you can see what cannot be seen the same from any other perspective.”

“God is saying something to all His people by revealing so much of His will and truth from the mountain top. What He is saying is that our perspective determines our perception, or, in other words, our stand point determines what we see.

Why do men and women climb mountains? It is not just because they are there, but because of what they can see from there. Why do men and women blast off into space? It is because they can see the whole world from a unique perspective. They can see how the laws of nature work differently in that weightless environment. Everything looks different from the heights.”

In the low country we have to try a little harder to get a height perspective but yesterday morning…in the foggy haze I was able to look down on the tree house, as well as, the garden and back yard. Everything looked orderly and well-thought-out…a different sense of sight than the level everyday analysis…where vision is limited by curves in the garden path.

Luke helped me pull down dead limbs from the trees in the back yard late Sunday afternoon so yesterday (Monday morning) everything looked so more open and dead branches no longer blocked the tree house from sight.

I could also see the wild flowers blooming off the scraggly tall shrubs mixed in among the camellia bushes…so beautiful.

Strangely, from my new height advantage, I realized that wisteria was now hanging so low it was softly touching the roof corner of the house.

” Jesus was the main mountain climber of the New Testament. He saw life from a mountain perspective, and he saw people that way as well. He saw their hidden potential to climb far higher than where they were. We are to have the mind of Christ Paul said, and that means a mountain top perspective on life and people.”

So until tomorrow…All of us need to elevate our potential of hidden talents and passions. We can do this by climbing the mountains within each of us to reach our God-given peak.

The best poem has not yet been written.

The best song has not yet been sung.

The best drum has not yet been smitten.

The best bell has not yet been rung.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*(Art work Title: “When No One is Looking on the Farm”– Artist- Lucia Masciullo)

Dear Reader:

*I had to laugh at the artist Masciullo’s interpretation of something that might happen when no one is looking…like ‘When pigs fly on a farm…or perhaps ‘When animals talk on Christmas Eve at midnight‘…but today’s post is about what humans do or don’t do when they think no one is looking.

I remember mother telling me repeatedly (as I approached my teenage years) that the difference between character and reputation is “Reputation is  what others think of you” while character is the most important part of whom you really are. The true test of a person’s character is what he/she does when no one is looking. Always be more concerned with your character than your reputation.” Mom was right.

Since I taught middle school-aged children  (my whole teaching career) I was never so proud and delighted… as when I saw a short video on the CBS Sunday Morning Show that restored my hope in mankind…especially youthful mankind.

After weeks of the most distressful news in the low country coming from an elementary student’s death at school (a fight situation) while we continue to be bombarded with seemingly rampart bullying situations…leading to attempted suicides and suicides in our high schools… I have felt shaken down to the marrow of my bones. I want to go grab all my grandchildren and take then to Never Never Land.

So when the wonderful Steve Hartman (On the Road) came through with this short (human interest) story on CBS News I wanted to shout with happiness.

I loved my middle school’ers and realized right off the bat that the “wonder years” can produce some of the most philanthropic/caring moments in one’s life and this was reaffirmed in this “case-in-point”story.

Follow the crowd

Thirteen-year-old Gavin Mabes, of South Brunswick, New Jersey, was with some middle school friends at a skatepark when they encountered Carter Bruynell, who was there with his mother celebrating his fifth birthday. Big groups of older kids might spell trouble for Bruynell, who is on the autism spectrum, but what Mabes and his friends  initiated was a most unexpected friendship.

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South Brunswick, N.J. — How do kids behave when there are no grown-ups around? Donette Mabes of South Brunswick, New Jersey, says you never really know.

“Because you’re not watching them at that moment, and at that time,” she said.

She had always just assumed her son was good — until recently, when 13-year-old Gavin Mabes got caught on tape showing his true character.

Gavin and some middle school friends had just arrived at a skate park. The park was empty except for little Carter Bruynell, who was there with his mother celebrating his fifth birthday.

Carter is on the autism spectrum. Big groups of older kids can make him nervous, so his mom, Kristen, was fully prepared to get him out of there. But she wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

“I don’t know, they really just shocked me. It was unlike any experience I think I’ve ever had,” she said.

You know how middle school kids sometimes operate like they’re in a pack? Well, that’s pretty much what happened here. Gavin led the way and the others followed. The only surprise was that Gavin didn’t start trouble. He started a friendship.

“Gavin is just going around with him and making him feel special. And the rest of his friends kind of followed suit and then started singing Happy Birthday to him,” Kristen said. “That really blew me away, ’cause you just want to see this sort of kindness in the world.

It was such a great birthday, and such a kind deed, even the local police department responded. They decided to throw them all a pizza party.

But here’s the best part: Since their first meeting, Gavin and the middle schoolers have continued to go out of their way to play with Carter.

“He was just so happy and he made us all happy,” one said. He’s rad!”

As for the moms, this was a moment of parenting utopia, where the only thing better than seeing your kid treated kindly is knowing your kid is treating others kindly, even when you’re not watching.

“I was just so proud of him. He’s good,” Donette said.

Here is the three minute video clip of this incident…grab some tissue.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-a-simple-act-of-kindness-transformed-a-boys-birthday/

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So until tomorrow….”When character is lost…all is lost.” (Billy Graham)

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*I have always heard when you have a problem… look up. I realized the other day at Walmart how much we miss out when we don’t look up. I had picked up some plants in the nursery area of the store… parking purposefully near the end of the parking lot in the shade. While putting plants in the car…I first noticed it…two balloons must have gotten loose from some buyers and were caught in a tall shrub-like tree in the parking lot.

I was sad for the people who bought the balloons and lost them to the wind and also sad for the balloons that their string had hooked around the top branches of the shrub tree permanently. Still…the metallic colors were lighting up the parking lot when the sun, intermittently, broke through the clouds and it was a beautiful sight.

I sat in my car and watched the people come and go (10 minutes) wanting to see if an adult or child would look up and notice the balloons but no one ever did. There is a whole new realm of beauty above us…if we just stop and look up.

Dear Reader:

Today I look at all the career choices young men and women have that were non-existent in the seventies when I graduated from college…especially for women. The career slots were still basically medicine (as a nurse only or lab technician- not a doctor) or a secretary or a dental hygienist (but not the dentist) social services and teaching. There might have been a few more variations of these careers but choices were pretty limited.

Today the choices are endlessly mind-boggling…especially with the appearance of technology in the past two decades. It opened up hundreds of new job opportunities and hundreds more of old professions changed forever by adding computer systems to every form of transportation, education, big business, markets, banks, grocery stores, retail stores, private industries and “ma and pa” once family operated cafes, restaurants, boutiques, etc.

Anyone would be hard-pressed to find a business that doesn’t rely on some form of a computer system.today..not even counting financial transactions.

Sometimes I think, however, we might have had it easier with lesser choices to consider back in my day. I had never considered teaching and not given history much of a  second glance either until the two fell together for me during my junior year in college and I landed exactly I was supposed to be…me and Brer Rabbit. The classroom was my “briarpatch”…where I felt right at home.

When I look around and see the number of young people today who suffer from depression, sleeplessness, and other ailments of modern day society…I can’t help but wonder if all these extra career choices have made people any happier overall. It is always so wonderful to see someone in a career they love…that means their life is so more fulfilling than the “weekend warriors”…just surviving till Friday.

In spite of the pitfalls of jobs and careers living up or not living up to one’s expectations…in a world where we can be anything…the most important choice we make doesn’t involve a job or career…it is the choice to be kind.

Teaching presented me an opportunity to act, perform, story tell…all my favorite passions…to a “captive” audience. As educator Gail Godwin, who so aptly defined teaching said,“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation, and three-fourths pure theater.”

As a teacher myself…I wanted my own children to get those teachers who really cared about their students. Whether those teachers had a masters or P.H.D didn’t mean beans to me…because the old adage is so true….”Students don’t care how much a teacher knows…until they  know how much a teacher cares.” 

Think about the teachers who made a difference in your life…it wasn’t about the subject they taught…it was how they made you feel. So on those days when it is tough to get up and face another challenging day at work…forget the work part and concentrate on the number of ways you can be kind to any and everyone you meet throughout the day. In the end it is the most important “job” of all.

So until tomorrow…Be kind to people…not because they necessarily deserve it or not…but because of who you are.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*”It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Easter”…

Dear Reader:

I thought I had finished the Mitford Series with number 13 when I discovered, last week to my surprise, that a “last” novel (to date – number 14) had been added to the series. I am almost finished…but not quite there. (The book is supposed to come in today from amazon.com and I love the title “To Be Where You Are.”)

After leaving home to serve as an interim pastor, Father Tim and family have lived in the Outer Banks, followed by a year of house-sitting on a farm outside Mitford, then back home to Mississippi to re-discover some secret roots, ensued on the heels of a crime mystery in Ireland (the home country of Father Tim’s ancestors.) Jan Karon, the author, now finally brings Father Tim home again to the fictitious town of Mitford, nestled in the North Carolina mountains where it all started…returning full circle. (“To be where he is and where you are.”)

In life wherever we travel…aren’t we all returning home too? Eventually, at some point along our path, the beginning will start again…in our new home from whence we all came long before our memories. My bouts of homesickness will disappear forever.

I have to admit that I have not always ended up where I originally thought I was going (in my dreams from younger days) but I now know that by the end I will be exactly where I was always meant to be and I won’t have to worry about getting there too early or too late…I will definitely be on time for the last homecoming. We all will.

It is that “Not quite” in life that still reminds me there are more adventures waiting to be experienced, more people to meet that will influence my life, and more stories to tell. (Hopefully along the way I will, also, be a blessing to someone else.)

I read the other day that punctuation marks are on their way out. Mrs. McBride, my seventh grade English teacher, must be turning over in her grave. The one mark that is particularly singled out for removal is the period. (This makes me very sad because whenever I finish a blog post…I find such a sense of satisfaction in hitting the period key. Mission accomplished.)

The Washington Post (Jeff Guo) had an article recently with the title:

“Stop. Using. Periods. Period.”

“A few years ago, Ben Crair at the New Republic wrote a hilarious history of the period in our new age of instant messaging. “The period was always the humblest of punctuation marks,” he began. “Recently, however, it’s started getting angry.” Crair noticed that in his text conversations, the period has stopped serving any grammatical purpose. Instead, it is mostly being used to express a certain tone or emotion. And that emotion comes across as anger.”

One example:

Have you ever watched parents try to text with their children? One hilarious type of misunderstanding goes like this:

Parent: I am waiting for you in the car.

Child: r u mad?

Parent: I am not mad.

Parent: I am telling you I am waiting.

Child: what?????

The poor mom or dad doesn’t understand one of the cardinal rules of texting, which is that you don’t use periods, period. Not unless you want to come off as cold, angry or passive-aggressive.

Emailing and texting today use speaking rules of grammar and not written rules of grammar. Conversations are carried on as if you are talking directly to the person so all the old formal rules and guidelines for the written word are slowly fading away and speaking words in text are not only permissible…but expected.

Wow! I am definitely feeling old now. One thing I do know however, is that there were “periods” in my life (circumstances) in which I was more than happy to place a period at the end of it. Closures deserve a period – good or bad.

So until tomorrow and until the day a permanent period ends the notice of our passing…Live life to the fullest period and no… I am not angry. 🙂

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Starting to “dress things up” for Easter …and letting nature do the rest.

Dear Reader:

It happened…yesterday at 3:31 p.m. – the number I had been imagining as I (peripherally) glanced at the followers count of 999 while writing three more daily posts…that elusive four-digit number 1000 and then suddenly… there it was!

Oh Happy Day!

And what a God Wink…It was April, the fourth month, on the fourth day (yesterday at almost 4:00) when I was notified by WordPress that someone new was following me. I now have “4-digit” (1000) followers! My first “4-digit day!” I never thought it would come to reality…I just kept writing and letting the chips fall where they may…but then when it really happened I was completely filled with joy!

When I think back to how this blog  came about…all the credit for the original idea goes to Mike and Honey Burrell for finding and then introducing me to the chapel...followed by Georgia Dupree and Mandy. Then it became reality with the help of my son-in-law John.

When I returned from visiting St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope for the first time in July of 2010…excited beyond belief…Georgia just happened to call. As I excitedly told her about my trip with Honey and Mike and this amazing little chapel of hope in Trust, North Carolina… Georgia first uttered the word “blog.”

What was a “blog”? She thought I should share my journey and findings around this chapel. I had definitely experienced an epiphany while there.

I was at Mandy’s house visiting my four-month-old grand-daughter, Eva Cate, when Mandy (who over-heard the conversation) re-enforced this same idea…I needed to start a blog post. I was completely clue-less…but with John’s help that evening…the post was up and ready to go.

Now…what to put in it? It took a couple of weeks for me to gather the courage to start…isn’t “beginning” the hardest part in any worth-while endeavor in life?

The first few days were pictures of St. Jude’s Chapel from my initial visit including all my earliest impressions of it…its amazing history and the story behind Bill and Beverly Barutio’s astonishing contributions to Trust, North Carolina… including the countless thousands of pilgrims today who visit the chapel because of the Barutios’ dream… followed by the actual reality of its construction.

It was also the power of Beverly’s spiritual presence of serenity and quiet encouragement that I felt the minute I entered the chapel…which has been with me ever since.

But when Beverly’s stories ended…what then?

This question was still hanging in my mind when a lovely woman, who used to substitute for me when I taught school, bumped into me at CVS and came over to tell me she heard I had started a blog.

She thought it was great news….While I was still wavering over whether to even continue the post… wondering what to put in a daily blog  …suddenly Ava said…“You have more stories in you than anyone I know…why you were always the “Teacher of a 1000 Stories!”

That night as I tossed back and forth I made a leap of faith…I would write a story or post each day for 1002 days and see if I could beat the fictitious Scheherazade (1001 Arabian Nights) by one story in a personal contest between me and time.

Secretly I never suspected that I would still be around in 1002 days…the prognosis of my breast cancer was ambivalent at best. It was a potentially treatable type breast cancer but not necessarily curable (I had been told.) It was a cancer one lives with for as long as God, the Great Physician, intends you to live.

Then it happened…the day came when I broke Scheherazade’s record…I was filled with joy but also uncertainty…what now? Little did I know “What now indeed!” 

Psalm 90:4  “A thousand years in thine eyes are like a day that has gone by, and like a watch in the night.” 

Time has flown since August 2010 (with a few obstacles along the way- like starting over with a clean slate in 2014 with the first four years in archives) but never in my wildest dreams did I ever consider that I would still be here or still writing Chapel of Hope Stories over a decade later… following my first visit to the little chapel of hope in the woods. It is definitely in the right location…Trust, North Carolina.

The essence of the number 1000 is a composite containing the ideas of:

*Self-reliance  *Independence  * Self-determination  *New Understandings  *New Beginnings  * Infinite Potential

So until tomorrow…No one knows what tomorrow brings but as the cross at St. Jude’s tells us…”Fear not tomorrow…Jesus is already there.”

Thank you followers, one and all, for your loyalty, comments, ideas, and most of all encouragement…YOU give meaning to my life beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

*Let us now continue with our lives…  always remembering that possibilities are infinite if we never stop wondering and trusting!

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

So let’s stick together as we “follow the path that leads nowhere…yet everywhere.” (Creative Cafe) The light is calling. And as Roethke once said,  May we all  “Live in perpetual great astonishment!”

*…And on this final happy note…Guess who doesn’t have to travel to Mt. Pleasant to the Comprehensive Wound Center today…on a Friday? (First time since October 20 2018!)   ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂

Dear Reader:

I remember Grandmother Wilson welcoming visitors to the farm house in the spring with these very words “You are as welcome as the flowers in May”…(I always thought it was such a sweet sentiment.)

Today Grandmother would have to reserve that remark for probably March…”Welcome as the flowers in March.” No global warming worries when Grandmother was alive. Here it is the first few days of April and the azaleas are just about all gone…with the Azalea -Flowertown Festival  this weekend.

For the past few years I have wondered why the town council doesn’t just push the festival up to March (at the peak of the azalea season)…but someone told me they keep it going the same weekend of the National/International Cooper Bridge Run in Charleston so people can do that and then come over later that day or weekend to the Flowertown Festival. It is all about marketing. No matter…Summerville is always beautiful!

Actually this old southern welcome remark originates from the lyrics of an Irish ballad which was later re-written and changed by country performer Hank Snow and lyrics by Anne Young. *Lots of barbershop quartets sang it in the twenties through World War II.

In the Irish ballad a boy who left Cork for New York returns home and is welcomed by his mother with this refrain…in the American country music version…the “prodigal” country son roamer wanders back home to his now aged parents and is lovingly welcomed back home by his mother singing the same words.

Look at the pretty flowers in bloom in my yard and garden in the form of hanging baskets. I found one orange trumpet vine blooming in an azalea bush (upclose and personal/breathtaking) whereas all the other orange trumpet blooms are so high up the trees, they are hidden in the wisteria and practically impossible to find. (Lucked up on one combination a little lower on the branches.)

I remember my pastor telling me one time that ‘Grace’ can’t be repaid because of the very nature of its definition of God’s unconditional love. It can’t be earned…but only freely given and received.

I know that to be true but I sure hope God knows how much I appreciate Him leading me along my life path to the town of Summerville where I am so blessed…surrounded and blessed by family, friends and my own little “Garden of Eden” situated in a ‘flower town’ of unparalleled beauty.

So until tomorrow… (Etsy)

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh