Well, He said, “I thought more about it and by the middle of the week I was also battling self pity.”
“also”…did he just say “also”?
Self pity is what Junior High girls do, right????
_________________________________
After my conversation with Jim I decided to look up the definition for self-pity:
Psychiatrists have an interesting name for people who habitually indulge in self-pity–it’s “injustice collector.” These are the folks who are constantly dwelling on their hurts and hardships – whether real or imagined – and they enjoy thinking about them and talking about them. They lovingly collect and number each and every offense that others commit against them, and they search out people who will sympathize with them and commiserate with them. All this keeps the focus on themselves, which is what they want most.”
Dang, some of that felt a little too close to home.
That is the last thing I want rolling around in my brain!
I”m beginning to think self pity is a lot more common than I realized.
I’ve been calling it other things like ” being in a funk”, “being down” “discouraged” “feeling rejected” feeling down”
My wife’s daily devotional had a warning about self pity this past Saturday:
“Be on guard against the pit of self pity.
When you are weary or unwell, this demonic trap is the greatest danger you face.
Don’t even go near the edge of the pit.
Its edges crumble easily, and before you know it, you are on the way down.
It is ever so much harder to get out of the pit than to keep a safe distance from it,
“I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest thing we know.” Emerson
_______________________________________
This morning I found myself struggling with two “friendships.”
I was feeling rejected and slighted.
It wasn’t until this afternoon that I finally got past being stuck.
I realized ( yet again) that I was reading more into a certain relationship than I should.
Just because I feel a certain connection with another person doesn’t mean they feel the same way towards me.
Quick word picture.
We have an apple orchard.
Every June, after the bees are done doing their thing and the apples begin to form, there comes a point in the maturing process where the apple tree will shed (or thin) a certain percentage of the apples that have begun to mature.
Newly forming apples
They just drop on the ground.
I’d guess 20 % fall off the tree @ this point.
I used to think that was such a waste.
The truth is, that thinning then enables the tree to focus it’s energy on the remaining apples…Less apples but the ones that remain are substantial.
It dawned on me a couple of years ago, that is a perfect word picture when it comes to the people and relationships that come along in my life. Lots of small superficial relationships begin..even here in the blogging world..but check back in a year or two and you’ll discover, many of them will not continue.
I get into trouble when I think there is more to a relationship than there is….
It takes TIME for relationships to form (see below)
You’ve probably heard if we have just one or two deep long term friendships we should count ourselves blessed.
I used to think I was the exception to that statement, and could easily maintain several dozen deep meaningful relationships at the same time.
I know now, that is not reality.
It takes time and energy to keep, and maintain deep friendships and low and behold Emerson was right .
So tonight, I re-post this portion of Emerson’s musing on friendship for myself.
I also want to toast the friendships in my life that have made it past the “thinning” process…
Here’s that portion of Emerson’s essay that I love….
“Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen.”
Bashfulness and apathy are a tough husk, in which a delicate organization is protected from premature ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before any of the best souls were yet ripe enough to know and own it. Respect the naturlangsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in duration.”
Naturlangsamkeit: a German word for a slow process of ripening
In other words, friendships take time to ripen…I can’t hurry the process….!!!!!!!
“There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness .”
“We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds……
“The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity (Magnanimous: generous in forgiving) and trust”.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
______________________________
Tell me about a time you got caught in the trap of “expectations” in a relationship ie. maybe you invited them to something and they never came or communicated, you were going through a tough time, and people you thought would be there weren’t and vice versa …Don’t tell me I’m not the only person who has ever made that boo-boo
“So who do you think are some of the hot girls in your class?” I remember asking my brother Steve one night as we were going to bed. He was 13 and I was 14.
We never talked about that sort of thing but for some reason that night, we did.
One of the girls in his class that especially caught my eye was the doctor’s daughter. Long dark hair, cute smile. friendly…
whoa…….
Yep, he agreed, she definitely needed to be on the a ” hottie” list
But since she was a year younger than I, and I was shy, (I would get tongue tied any time I found myself in the presence of a pretty girl,)
the odds of me going out on a date were slim to none.
Flash forward 2 years.
Our highschool combined the 9th through 12 grade classes into adviser groups for morning attendance. Imagine my rush of excitement when I realized I’d been assigned the same group as that girl who had caught my eye as far back as 6th grade.. She didn’t have a clue as to my feelings because I couldn’t for the life of me, begin to have a simple conversation with her.
One day in study hall, that girl and her friend Mary were working on their Spanish home work. The three of us were sitting at a round table together and one of them asked me a question… heart beating wildly in my chest, I said something. I’d actually had a short conversation with not one, but two pretty girls
Over the next several days I relived that moment again and again.
I was coming upon my 16th birthday.
I was locked in a life and death internal battle with a monster….
Fear
A Fear Monster
Ever hear of one of those? Me neither
You’ll have to take my word for it, they are just as real, even though they are invisible to the naked eye.
If you ever have the misfortune to be inhabited by one, you’ll know it.
He ruled my inner world … merciless.
The Monster of fearthat ruled my life into adulthood.
I was trapped between this monster and the thought that unless I somehow escaped his grip I would spend the rest of my life single and alone….
and I didn’t want to be alone..
This monster guarded the door to the cave in which I lived….
and the only way out was past him.
I devised a plan.
I would call this young lady up on the phone.
Ask her if she would like to go on a date?
a movie…
Summoning up the nerve to make that phone call took a few days.
I can still remember the shaking of my fingers as I dialed her number….
She was home, we talked. Said she would go to the movie with me.
Went to the movie…
had a nice time. Took her home.
The next Monday at school, she came up behind me in the lunch line.
I panicked. The Fear monster was still calling the shots.
I looked @ this girl of my dreams, mumbled something, excused myself and walked out the door of the lunch room.
She had no idea what had just happened, and wouldn’t know until years later.
We didn’t talk for the next 5 years.
I’d see her cruising around with different guys and kick myself.
After I graduated high school, my buddy Chuck and I stopped by a little pizza joint…This same girl waited on our table.
Chuck knew about my panic attack with her back in the day. Jokingly he says to me…“If you don’t ask her out, I will.”
and the rest is history….
Thirty three years, and four beautiful children later,
she is still my wife and best friend….
Today is Father’s Day 2012.
I’ve told this story before.
If you’re someone who get’s tongue tied when you’re in the presence of the opposite sex, I get it.
I totally get it.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Some girls find that very attractive. ( and there are nice guys who find a shy girl attractive as well)
Find a friend, get some counseling…don’t give up.
It is possible to escape the cave ruled by the Monster of Fear.
…”A few years ago I had been away from home for many weeks on a long trip and had been with people constantly. I was desperate3 to get away from people for a while. So when I got on the plane I sat in an aisle seat. The middle seat was vacant and the window seat was occupied by a young woman. As we waited for the plane to take off, I retreated as deeply as possible into a book I was carrying. It was purely an anti-social maneuver. But my traveling companion wanted to talk. She asked, ” What are you reading?”
“A book,” I replied.
“What is the name of it?” she asked.
“Psycho-cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz,” I said.
“Do you study psychology?”
“No”
Everything was monosyllables. By then the engines were running and we were beginning to taxi down the runway. She kept at it. I had a head cold and could hardly hear. Finally, I closed the book and moved to the vacant seat between us, and we began to converse.
I soon realized what she really had in mind was to find a companion. Going straight to the point, I said, ” I travel a lot and many times I am lonely. I often encounter temptations to be unfaithful to my wife. But I’ve decided it’s not worth it. I know I could deceive her, but the basis of our relationship is our mutual love and confidence. She trusts me, and I trust her.
I’ve lived long enough to realize that meaning in life is not found in seeing what I can get away with, or in bigger achievements, or in a position, or in how my leisure time is spent. I’ve learned that meaning is found in relationships. Consequently, I don’t intend to destroy the best relationship I have. If I came home having been unfaithful to my wife, even though she might not perceive it, and even though I could keep it from her, I’d know. She would come to me with her blind confidence and I’d have to somehow create a distance between us. We’d be pulled apart and she would never know why. Soon we would be strangers living together under the same roof.”
The ones who would pay most heavily would be my wife and children. That strikes me as the height of selfishness.”
She was dumbfounded!~
Then she began to open up. She said, “I”m twenty-four years old. I ought to be getting married, but all my married friends have affairs and if that’s the way it is, I don’t want it. When my friends go away for the weekend, their husbands are soon knocking at my door. They are like little boys. I just don’t think I could handle it if my husband were like that.”
Then she added, “I’ve never heard ideas like yours. Where do they come from?”
“You’d laugh if I told you.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” she said.
“I got them from the Bible,” I said. I went on to explain to her what the Christian message is and how it changes a person so he can get his life in order. By then we were about to land. What frustration! We were in the middle of my explanation. She was intensely interested in every word, but we had to quit.
As the passengers moved into the aisle, I let her go on ahead. When I came off a bit later and walked up the concourse, I passed her standing with a circle of about ten of her friends who had come to meet her. They were the ones she had told me about on the plane. She stopped me and made the rounds of introductions. I stood there for at least ten minutes while she related our conversation to them. …
They are a sight to behold when they are all laden with fruit….
These are pictures from 2009 and 2010:
Ginger gold
Red Delicious
_________________________________________
I was out in the orchard today checking on the 2012 crop.
Noticed they are about ready to go through their thinning process :
I took this picture this afternoon.
If you look really closely, there are larger apples as well as little tiny ones.
Just to give you an idea, the larger ones are about the size of a quarter…the smaller apples will drop off in the next week or two so that the tree will pour it’s energy into the apples that remain.
I’ve been blogging since 2007.
Hard to believe.
Noticed on my counter this morning there have been over 300,000 hits, whatever that means
During this time my wife and I have become friends with people literally from around the globe.
I’ve met 4 of you in person, in some cases more than once.
A handful of you are also friends on face book, so that has added another dimension to our interactions.
I have been very intentional from the very beginning to include my wife in all of my interactions on line. We share the same e-mail address, same Face book account, etc. Most of us have heard accounts of people running off with someone they “met” on line. Unfortunately that sort of thing happens in a broken world.
and I don’t want it to ever happen to me….
If you think it could never happen to you, then the slide has already been greased.
Every so often, I will meet another blogger and really “click”…a genuine friendship will begins to form… (like an apple) but then one day, when I log on to visit their blog… poof..they are gone, no notice..just gone….like those small apples that will fall off during thinning.
Even though I know it’s a natural and healthy process, it leaves me a little sad….
That happened again this week.
Blogging friend dropped off the radar.
I was tempted to feel like Puff the Magic Dragon..
Remember the song?
the little boy sudden stops coming to visit…
Fortunately for me,
I am surrounded by several loving nurturing relationships…..both on-line as well as in person.
I thought about the apple tree and its ability to only grow so many apples in a season…
There’s a reason for that.
Even those of us that tend to be more social than others can only maintain and invest in a limited number of relationships.
I used to think there was no limit to the number of friendships I could stay current with.
Not any more
Those of us that blog, blog for different reasons….
If you’re a blogger, why do you blog?
If you’re not a blogger but enjoy reading blog posts..what do you get out of it?
Is it possible to have genuine friendships with people and never meet them in person?
Do you have any friendships that started on line and matured into something significant in your life?
The residents of a Florida apartment building awoke to a terrifying sight outside their windows. The ground beneath the street in front of their building had literally collapsed, creating a massive depression that Floridian’s call a sinkhole. Tumbling into the ever-deepening pit were automobiles, pavement, sidewalks, and lawn furniture. The building itself would obviously be the next to go.
Sinkholes occur, scientists say, when underground streams drain away during seasons of drought, causing the ground at the surface to lose its underlying support. Suddenly everything simply caves in, leaving people with a frightening suspicious that nothing – not even the earth beneath their feet – is trustworthy.
There are many people whose lives are like one of Florida’s sinkholes. It is likely that at one time or another many of us have perceived ourselves to be on the verge of a sinkhole – like cave-in. In the feelings of numbing fatigue, a taste of apparent failure, or the bitter experiences of disillusionment about goals or purposes, we have have sensed something within us about to give way. We feel we are just a moment from a collapse that will threaten to sweep our entire world into a bottomless pit. Sometimes there seems to be little that cane be done to prevent such a collapse. What is wrong?
If we think about it for very long, we may discover the existence of an inner space 0f our private world- about which we were formerly ignorant. I hope it will become apparent that, if neglected, this private world will not sustain the weight of events and stresses that press upon us.
Some people are surprised and disturbed when they make such a self discovery. They suddenly realize that they have spent the majority of their time and energy establishing life on the visible level, at the surface. They have accumulated a host of good and perhaps even excellent assets such as academic degrees, work experience, key relationships and physical strength or beauty.
There is nothing wrong with all of that . But often it is discovered almost too late that the private world of the person is in a state of disorderliness or weakness. And when that is true, there is always potential for the sinkhole syndrome.
We must come to see ourselves as living in two very different worlds. Our outer, or public world is easier to deal with,. It is much more measurable, visible, and expandable,. Our outer world consists of work, play possessions, and a host of acquaintances that make up a social network, It is the part of our existence easiest to evaluate in terms of success, popularity, wealth, and beauty. But our inner world is more spiritual in nature. Here is a center in which choices and values can be determined, where solitude and reflection might be pursued….
….Our public worlds are filled with a seeming infinity of demands upon our time, our loyalties, our money, and our energies. And because these public worlds of ours are so visible, so real, we have to struggle to ignore all there seductions and demands. They scream for our attention and action.
But there is a private world in every one of us.
A world that may be as infinite in size as we perceive our public worlds, to be.
Blogging brings with it the temptation and false illusion of deep friendships.
Last night I was thinking about the many, many people I’ve had the opportunity to get to know via my wordpress blog since 2007
I’ve observed a pattern.
most eventually drift away…not all of them, but most.
It is actually a good thing.
Apple trees do the same thing every summer. (we have a small orchard)
The tree start out with hundreds of newly pollinated apples in late May, but by early June, many have fallen to the ground. The remaining apples will then have the nourishment and energy they require to mature.
______________________________________________
The following is a portion of an essay on friendships by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen.”
Bashfulness and apathy are a tough husk, in which a delicate organization is protected from premature ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before any of the best souls were yet ripe enough to know and own it.
Respect the naturlangsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in duration.”
Naturlangsamkeit: a German word for a slow process of ripening.
(In other words, friendships take time to ripen…you can’t really hurry the process….)
“There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness .”
“We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man, who, ….. cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms…… But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plain-dealing.
“The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity (Magnanimous: generous in forgiving) and trust”.
“I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest thing we know.”
I’ve had the privilege to meet (4) of you fellow bloggers in person since 2008. Felt like I was meeting a long lost sibling each time…which tells me that the process of “Naturlangsamkeit” was in fact taking place….
It is possible to build healthy friendships via your blog.
And finally, I posted this on facebook last night:
There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound. ~Diana Cortes
“I want to be free of self pity. It is a tool of Satan to rot away a life.”
Barbara Youderian
I have often pondered these words of Barbara Youderian, one of the widows of the five American missionaries murdered by the Auca savages in Ecuador on January 8, 1956. This type of devastating event has never occurred in my life (thankfully!), but even so, all too often I give in to the sin of self pity rather than following the example of the apostle Paul who wrote, “...I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.” (Philippians 4:12).
I am going to share two lessons (still in process!) that God began to teach me while my husband was in his first pastorate position.
First, I learned that there can be no true contentment without true forgiveness. I was aware that criticism would go hand in hand with ministry. I expected it.
However, I was not prepared for the depth of the hurt when it did come. I don’t know which is more painful–the criticism that is unfair and untrue, or the type that is true and IS justified.
Could we have done more, prayed more, reached out more in the ministry?
Most likely.
Have I at times been hypercritical of others, misunderstanding my brothers and sisters in Christ and judging them unfairly?
Most definitely.
I have been guilty of the very things of which I have accused in others. I would be wise to remember the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 7:21-22:
“Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you–for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others.“
While I was feeling used and unappreciated by the church community, was I not also guilty of taking those around me (specifically my immediate family) for granted? So how could I not forgive? Oh Lord, may I not be like that unmerciful servant in Matthew 18 about whom Jesus said, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
The second contentment lesson occurred through the painful isolation I experienced in the church
. This was completely unexpected; no one had ever warned me that some church communities simply do not want the pastor or his family involved in their lives.
Even though my husband’s job happened to be that of a minister, I still felt like a normal person! I still needed friends. I just wanted to be “one of the girls.”
For years I wondered what was wrong with me.
Did I not wear nice enough clothes?
Was I just too much of an oddball to fit in with my peer group?
Every Sunday my spirit would sink as I watched the other young families congregate, enjoying fellowship with each other while I was starving for community. Realizing that I should have been rejoicing that our church was growing and thriving didn’t offer me much comfort then.
The enemy got to me in a couple of ways here. Not only was I hurting from the lack of friendships, but it was also like there was a constant accusing voice whispering in my ear that I must certainly be spiritually inferior, because otherwise the “cool Christians” would certainly want me on their “team” and invite me to their exclusive Bible study, and the women would surely come to me for counsel, prayer, or to “just talk,” etc., wouldn’t they?
If I was really the “good Christian” I was supposed to be, wouldn’t I have friends? Wouldn’t people look to me as an example?
I felt so ignored, isolated, and excluded that Sundays for at least a couple of years were completely dark. And as I gave in to the despair, I became incapacitated, useless, ineffective, and unable to see the blessings and beauty around me.
Even the love and acceptance of my husband and children didn’t matter to me in those dark times. It was only after desperately seeking advice from other godly people who had been there–women who had gone through what I was talking about–that I was able to begin accepting that maybe all this isolation was just related to the position I was in–pastor’s wife.
Then it also happened that on one of those Sundays during congregational worship, the hymn, “Be Thou My Vision,” was sung. I don’t know how many times I had heard or sung this song in my lifetime, but it was like I was hearing for the first time the words, “Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise…….” I had been guilty of believing the lie that contentment was not possible with the life I had now, with the gifts God had blesses me with, that I needed something else–friends, and more specifically, the approval of the Christians around me, whose opinions I had come to value more than the opinions of God Himself.
I just hope that now, having learned a little more about humility from my experiences, that I will be more likely to notice the lonely person, less likely to devalue someone (on the basis of appearance, career, spiritual gifts, or whatever) and more careful even with my Facebook posts, so as not to cause someone to feel excluded by what I do/say.
God is not honored when we show favoritism. But neither is He honored when we hold back in welcoming people, giving in to intimidation as we assume their gifts (spiritual or otherwise) are more important than ours.
I am very thankful for the lessons I am still learning about contentment, but I will admit that it is very refreshing to now be in a church environment which is more representative of a true community. From day one, we have felt warmly accepted and welcomed here. The memories of the past still hurt sometimes, but I know God had reasons for placing me (and my family) where He did, “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in [me] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).
________________________________
Post script. I (DM) recently asked some of my friends to think on the topic of Contentment. Some of you reading this were part of that project. This is the first of several essays on contentment.
Six minutes to six, said the great round clock over the information booth in Grand Central Station. The tall young Army lieutenant who had just come from the direction of the tracks lifted his sunburned face, and his eyes narrowed to note the exact time. His heart was pounding with a beat that shocked him because he could not control it. In six minutes, he would see the woman who had filled such a special place in his life for the past 13 months, the woman he had never seen, yet whose written words had been with him and sustained him unfailingly.
He placed himself as close as he could to the information booth, just beyond the ring of people besieging the clerks…
Lieutenant Blanford remembered one night in particular, the worst of the fighting, when his plane had been caught in the midst of a pack of Zeros. He had seen the grinning face of one of the enemy pilots.
In one of his letters, he had confessed to her that he often felt fear, and only a few days before this battle, he had received her answer: “Of course you fear…all brave men do. Didn’t King David know fear? That’s why he wrote the 23rd Psalm. Next time you doubt yourself, I want you to hear my voice reciting to you, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” And he had remembered; he had heard her imagined voice, and it had renewed his strength and skill.
Now he was going to hear her real voice. Four minutes to six. His face grew sharp.
Under the immense, starred roof, people were walking fast, like threads of color being woven into a grey web. A girl passed close to him, and Lieutenant Blanford started. She was wearing a red flower in her suit lapel, but it was a crimson sweet pea, not the little red rose they had agreed upon. Besides this girl was too young, about 18, whereas Hollis Meynell had frankly told him she was 30. “Well, what of it?” he had answered. “I’m 32. He was 29.
His mind went back to that book- the book the Lord Himself must have put into his hands out of the hundreds of Army library books sent to the Florida training camp. Of Human Bondage, it was; and throughout the book were notes in a woman’s writing. He had always hated that writing-in habit, but these remarks were different. He had never believed that a woman could see into a man’s heart so tenderly, so understandingly. Her name was on the book-plate Hollis Meynell. He had got hold of a New York City telephone book and found her address. He had written, she had answered. Next day he had been shipped out, but they had gone on writing.
For 13 months, she had faithfully replied, and more than replied. When his letters did not arrive, she wrote anyway, and now he believed he loved her, and she loved him.
But she had refused all his pleas to sent him a photograph. That seemed rather bad, of course. But she had explained: “If your feeling for me has any reality, any honest basis, what I look like won’t matter. Suppose I’m beautiful. I’d always be haunted by the feeling that you had been taking a chance on just that, and that kind of love would disgust me. Suppose I’m plain (and you must admit that this is more likely) Then I’d always fear that you were going on writing me only because you were lonely and had no one else. No, don’t ask for my picture. When you come to New York, you shall see me and they you shall make your decision. Remember, both of us are free to stop or go on after that- whichever we choose…”
One minute to six- he pulled hard on the cigarette.
Then Lieutenant Blanford’s heard leaped higher than his plane had ever done.
A young woman was coming toward him. Her figure was long and slim; her blond hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears. Her eyes were blue and flowers, her lips and chin had a gentle firmness. In her pale green suit, she was like springtime come alive.
He started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was wearing no rose, and as he moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips.
Going my way soldier?” she murmured.
Uncontrollably, he made one step closer to her. Then he saw Hollis Meynell.
She was standing almost directly behind the girl, a woman well past 40, her greying hair tucked under a worn hat. She was more than plump; her thick-ankled feet were thrust into low-heeled shoes. But she wore a red rose in a rumpled lapel of her brown coat.
The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away.
Blanford felt that though he were being split in two, so keen was his desire to follow the girl, yet so deep was his longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned and upheld his own; and there she stood. Her pale plump face was gentle and sensible; he could see that now. Her gray eyes had a warm, kindly twinkle.
Lieutenant Blanford did not hesitate. His fingers gripped the small, worn, blue leather copy of Of Human Bondage, which was to identify him to her. This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even rarer than love- a friendship for which he had been and must ever be grateful.
He squared his broad shoulders, saluted and held the book out toward the woman, although even while he spoke, he felt shocked by the bitterness of his disappointment.
“I”m lieutenant John Blanford, and you- you are Miss Meynell. I’m so glad you could meet me. May…..may I take you to dinner?”
The woman’s face broadened into a tolerant smile. “I don’t know what this is all about, son,” she answered. “That young lady in the green suit- the one who just went by- begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said that if you asked me to go out with you, I should tell you that she’s waiting for you in that big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of a test. I’ve got two boys with Uncle Sam myself, so I didn’t mind to oblige you.” Sulamith Ish-Kishor
This is me today.
Couple of things right up front if this is your first time here. I grew up on a farm. I'm a general contractor. Someone told me recently, "Do what you love and you'll never have to work a day in your whole life." That's my story.
We live in the Midwest...people still do things around here on a handshake. I married my high school sweetheart (Think Princess Bride...farm boy marries Princess Buttercup). I'm a dad and now a grandpa two times over....do I look old enough to be a grandpa????- I don't think so.
I have a Biblical World View. I'm an optimist 90% of the time, but will freely admit when I'm struggling that 10%. You can read about some of the struggles: here, here or here .
This is not a religious blog, although I am definitely a spiritual person. I hate it when people try to jam their "stuff" down my throat and I work real hard not to do that to you.
If you decide to leave a comment...please work real hard at communicating respectfully and graciously- especially with the other people whose thoughts you may not agree with. (no sarcasm). If you don't I will either delete or edit what you say.
I'm honored that you would take the time to read something I've written.
Recent Comments: If you don’t have your own photo, Wordpress will give you one :-) Good Luck!
