Words of Importance

Words : Reading, Recording, and Writing

As I have touched, read, felt, and sorted through the tokens of my past, I have discovered some consistencies.  I always kept kind and loving written words from those I honor and love.  I have discovered sweet messages from friends on birthday greetings, wonderful messages from our sons on holiday cards, and Denny’s and my love letters of forty-five years ago tied with a satin red ribbon.

            I packed boxes filled with journals, which reveal my activities, ponderings, faith messages, the prayers prayed over family and friends, and joys and sorrows on Yosemite Drive.  These journals recorded over forty years in Muncie with our crazy weather patterns included.  I kept them and it will be our sons’ decision what to do with them when I am gone.  They are me and I am them.  I cannot part with them any more than I can part with the endless scrapbooks recording our sons' life patterns.  Parties, games, trophies, friends, and family gatherings are all documented in these albums.  Hundreds of photographs show how our lives developed with the blessing of our children.  They created new paths, friends, and goals.  John and Adam shaped us while we shaped them.  Someday they can read the stories and see the photos and know that their mother savored each day of their childhood.

            As I cleared over fifty boxes of books from my library shelves, my search for deeper truths and an understanding of the character of God was obvious.  I could part with most of these books because I had perused and read them enough that they were within.  They could leave my shelves now and serve their truth to someone else. 

            Many of the ousted books held novels that I was “going to read”, when I retired and had long days to fill.  Having been retired over twelve years, I am still looking for those long days. I have chosen to use the Fort Wayne library for my fiction reading. Some of my" how to write" books were packed carefully, and others were distributed to writing friends.  I kept almost all of my art books because I am still on an uphill learning curve.  I kept a giant box of poetry books because their words pluck the cords of my heart.  

            I gave the Mission a large box of new Bibles.  Why new?  Denny and I had almost every new Bible that came out the last twenty-five years.  Some I marked up and wore out the pages.  Others have countless tabs and reference tags.  My favorite is held together by duck tape.  The newer ones were given away, so others could read through the precious words recorded so many years ago.  Those words are truth for a lifetime.  Those are words we will hear in eternity. 

This is what I have discovered in my purging and sorting.  I can part with almost everything except words.  Words create my hope, my visions, my oasis for my spirit, and my life’s landscape.  Because I have taken time to write descriptions of each day, each year, each adventure and trip, I can reread many of my memories. My journals hold the fragrance of happiness of our days past. I can leave my house, but I will take my precious memories in words recorded through the years.  Words have given me life and meaning.  I am so grateful for the Word of God that has read me as I read it.  I never tire of Biblical metaphors, mysteries, and messages. I have experienced wonderful seasons in Muncie and now will continue a new season in my spirit, a new season of listening and learning what God has purposed me to be, to do, and to learn.

Yes, I am sure I will record my emotions and my epiphanies in this next step of life. Journaling is a morning opportunity that keeps me grounded.  It is my time to smell the roses and dry them on the pages.

Walden's Pond

Walden’s Pond

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." These words by Walden inspire me to live life fully. I, like Walden, do not want to come to the end of my days and discover I missed life.

I embrace this idea of living each day by various means. Sometimes living is sitting and listening to a friend’s hurts and concerns. It is taking a morning out to pray for those ill with cancer. It is walking through the golden leaves and feeling the carpet was laced just for me. Other days, it is reading poetry and pondering the earth’s pangs of destruction. Pondering is an important part of the day. It is taking a “time-in “as opposed to a “time-out”.

In this pondering state, I don’t necessarily meditate, but I do sometimes. I just take a period of time where I am not multi-tasking. I am just intentionally in a space where electronics and technology cannot control me. I don’t answer the ringing phone, look at a clock, listen to music, or check my texts. I just am. I am reaching into the deepest part of my knowing and pulling out a memory, a thought, a sound, a smell, or a dream. I begin to fondle it like a lover. I caress that memory and try to pull from it all the thoughts I can. I recollect how I felt when I sat by my father’s side. I can smell the cherry tobacco from his pipe. I can feel his gentleness, and hear his soft, low voice. I just stay there and reunite with that time in my life. If my mind tries to escape, I push it back into that day. If it is a childhood memory, I try to recreate the innocence in which I looked at life, at the little town where we lived, at the teaching given to me by my father. I embrace the presence of that moment and feel the warmth, or sometimes I discover a hurt with which I have never dealt. If it hurts, I may shed tears. If it is affirming, I may bask in that feeling of acceptance. I try to grasp what this moment in time taught me about life. Perhaps this is a whimsical activity to some. To me, it is becoming aware of those moments that shaped me, that formed me into the person that I have become today.

Oh, how I would like to go to the woods and live for two years as Walden did. He pondered how a pine tree’s odor permeated his pores. He observed woodchucks and made them into visitors in his lonely abode. He realized that morning was the most significant time of day. He said, “Let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite till noonday even in the coolest cellar.” I am inspired by Walden’s affirmation of the importance of the morning air. Morning is the most blessed time of the day. We awaken clear minded and in an almost pure state. If we listen to the news, read the paper, or enter into any aspect of worldliness, the freshness of that moment is lost. We must breathe in that “undiluted morning air” and practice being in the presence of the Lord.

I begin each day with writing morning pages of my wanderings. I sometimes begin by reading scripture and God highlights a specific word, thought, phrase or parable. I may have read this many times before, but it is in this morning time that I realize new truth and application to me life. I discover new goals for my life. I realize my shortcoming as God’s word shapes me in the mornings. It is in this molding and shaping that my life has taken direction. Just as in my pondering times mentioned earlier, I begin to wonder how I would have felt at the foot of the cross. I try to recreate the shouts and cries in my head. I see with my spiritual eyes Mary weeping, struggling, begging, and seeing her son dying in such an anguished way. I stay there in that vision. I pull myself back into the vision, the message, and the inkling within me. I stay there and ask God to reveal to me what lesson I am to learn. How can this truth make me really live life? I , like Walden, do not want to come to the end of my journey and discover I missed my morning messages. I don’t want to discover I missed my destiny. I don’t want to regret that I have not lived deliberately.