Have you ever realized how things seem to simply pile up?
I have just endured about four and a half weeks of reducing these piles, sheet by sheet, stack by stack, and at times it felt like word by word – junk mail, business letters, tax paperwork, newspapers, magazines?
I struggled to catch a breath as I leaned up on my pillow, trying to find the next clear bit of air and pull it into my lungs.
I often wondered if there would be another breath but there was an endless desire to keep trying.
As a child, like many others I suffered from a multitude of ailments that made my stay on this earth sometimes tenuous.
One of the results of the multitude was asthma that left me with weak lungs that often seize up making exerting myself a dance with living on the edge.
With the caring effort of my mother and dad, rubbing me down in mentholated rub, beating my back to loosen my lungs, keeping a house as clean from irritants as possible, I know my survival would have been unlikely.
There came a morning when I was about five that I did not awake. I relay the account as shared with me, since I was unable to experience it from a conscious perspective.
After calling my name several times to raise me from my slumber with no avail, my late mother came in to find me laying in my bed, the sight scared her, her boy there, still, staring up at the ceiling, lifeless. In her words, “Your eyes were set back in your head and you were not breathing.”
She grabbed me up wrapped in the quilt that I was sleeping in, threw me over her shoulder, picked up the kitchen phone calling the doctor’s office, saying, “I’m bringing him in.” She jumped into our blue 1964 Chevy Malibu and as she said, didn’t stop for a single light as she drove the five miles to his office.
She rushed through the waiting room and the receptionist jumped up, opened the door realizing I was in distress and the immediately took me into an exam room placing me on the table.
The doctor questioned why she didn’t take me to the emergency room. Her reply “He’s here now, do something.”
So he did, with only what he had on hand he started trying to revive me and sent the nurse to get a shot of some kind.
He administered the shot and then turned to mom and said, “All we can do now is pray.”
That’s what they did, pray over my lifeless body with no signs of hope.
After a few moments of prayer, I began to breath and the life that was gone was restored. What accomplished this? The doctor’s sharing his skill with limited means; or the prayers of them standing above my lifeless body calling out to God to not allow the senseless death of a toddler.
Whatever it was, their faith, medicine, it allowed me to breathe again, and grow, struggle, and cling to life again and again, as I battled more childhood adversities carrying me to adulthood. He allowed me to learn, and work, and give, and pray for others. He has allowed me to serve.
For me that day was God’s miracle of life that He gave me initially and He chose to give it back to me because that five-year-old had something more to do for Him.
Once again when I was in my twenties, a water-borne illness had me near death with no medical means of improving my situation. It was mother’s unceasing prayers by my hospital bedside that drew me back to health.
There are two times when I know God intervened in the course of the frailness of the human body and allowed me to continue.
Each day, I know that I fail in using the opportunities He affords, and sometimes I find myself bogged down in my own hopes and desires. But then I remind myself, my presence here is His gift to me, that He has given more times than I can count or even know about.
I try to remember that is my work here to give back and so I pray I always remember and act accordingly. Prayer is a gift – use it, give it, share it.
As I placed the log into the black cast iron stove, I watched the orange sparks rise up from the burning embers within its belly in grandma’s parlor.
I often stood at its front hopeful that it would make me feel warmer. It usually did at least on the one side until I turned and let the other warm.
I remember it as if it was yesterday. The doctor had told my Mom that she might have breast cancer. I wasn’t much more than eight years old and hardly understood what it meant. All I know is that it worried her and she was extremely sad. I was sitting on the bed next to her. She had been crying and I went in trying to console her and make her smile. I do remember that she did stop long enough to smile at me and tell me that she loved me.
As I walked across the yard this morning the wind whirled around me with a chill that reminded me that today is the first day of fall.
I cannot remember a year thus far in my life that has seemed to fly by like this one has.
The cold wind blew hard against the windowpane as I pulled the covers up above my head.
I could barely turn over with the heaviness of the quilts which seemed a foot thick above me.
The back room of Grandma Kitty’s house seemed a long way from the warmth of the stove in the living room.
At least the bedroom was off the kitchen, so when the sounds of rolling dough for biscuits and coffee percolating, most likely, would wake me from slumber before the house filled with the smell of bacon and eggs.
I would lift the covers up so the smells would fill in the gap as I watched my breath raise as I breathed in the smell of breakfast.
My grandmother’s cathead biscuits baking in the oven filled my room with enough aroma to evoke a desire to jump out of bed. Usually that effort would take a time or two. I would muster the strength to throw back the covers only to feel my bare feet hitting the cold floor, just to jump back in pulling the hand sewn quilts of patchwork back over my head.
Soon I would garner the courage to jump out of bed again finding my socks and shoes slipping them on after I pulled up my britches, then I would pull back the curtain to see Grandma Kitty making her way around the kitchen. In the corner sat the butter churn that the day before I wore out my arm on making the butter that we would put on the cathead biscuits.
Grandma was pouring the grease off the bacon and sausage getting ready to stir up some sawmill gravy.
I stood quietly watching the artistry of someone who had for 60 plus years raised before dawn to prepare a meal to keep a family working. Though there wasn’t as much to do and fewer to do it, she still went through the ritual with the joy that the eating would bring to the family as they gathered around the table.
Eventually, my quiet vantage point would catch her eye as she turned to place some meats on the table, and she would beckon me towards her and I would hug her and then find myself consumed with helping until the others joined us as she called everyone from slumber.
It is amazing how the cold outside seemed to disappear around the warmth of her table and the love that found its way seated around it. I pray you find the warmth of your heart as the cold wind blows on your windowpane.
Do you ever find yourself enjoying a perfectly good day and then before your know what has happened you find yourself in the midst of a spell of listlessness or despondency?
There are not many instances that we today have an application for such a question.
Tunnels are few and far in between in our day-to-day travels unless you live where subways or mountain tunnels are the norm. Read more
You know those little critters that move things around when you are not looking.
Mine will leave a drawer open so when I get up in the middle of the night I never seem to miss it. There is nothing like a few vocal exclamation points filling the air as you stumble through the house in the middle of the night.
Many of us find ourselves each morning at least for a few minutes peering into a silver backed piece of glass which reflects back towards us the mirror image of ourselves.
We see the teeth as we brush, the pores of our skin as we wash our face, shave, and/or trim the hairs which grew out since the day before. Finally, we put each hair left on top of our head in place with a comb or a brush.
Then off we go to dress and then we pop back in for one last look before we run off to meet the day and all that entails.
As the day progresses, we will stop by other bathrooms like a racing car making a pit stop, and once again we will have a moment to peer into the silver backed glass to see if all is still in its proper place.
These are rituals that we have been taught passed from parents, siblings, friends and they are common to most every human being who has access to such an opportunity.
As a child, at amusement parks and fairs, I can remember going through a house of mirrors which distorts the mirror image to make us look short or tall, skinny or fat, oddly shaped in all forms and sizes. It was always a laugh to see yourself or your companions going through the metamorphosis of illusions that the fun house mirrors reflected.
The present day mirror was brought to us from the work of German chemist Justus von Liebig about 180 years ago. For nearly 200 years, human beings found the looking glass a means of self-discovery.
I have often heard people say something to the effect of ‘You won’t be able to look at yourself in the morning.’ I really wonder how many of us take that to heart.
Have you ever really looked in a mirror and tried to see beyond the superficial image of yourself staring back? Have you tried to look down into your own heart, soul and mind to see if what is reflected upon that image is something you really want to see or you want others to see of you?
We all have blemishes, scars, warts, sores and sometimes wounds that can be seen when we look close enough that we want to cover over and hid from the outside world. No matter how much concealer that is used, they eventually once again rise to the surface trying to once again draw your or someone else’s attention.
I guess no matter how hard we try, we must learn to live with those and become comfortable in our own skin allowing all those imperfections not to bother us or anyone else. God did not create vessels of perfection in human beings. He created people who have the opportunity to strive for perfection despite the brokenness within their lives and their souls.
The image in the mirror will never be perfect, to strive for that is an exercise in vanity but to use the mirror to step closer to internal perfection might be an interesting step into the looking glass.
