~Train ride of our Dreams~

 Hello Friends!

Life doesn't always go the way we plan. Surprises~sorrows~joys,
changes of direction,
fulfillment of our dreams~
they all get tossed together in a sort of unpredictable mix
that keeps us awake~growing ~
wondering. 
Since I posted this site over a year ago, a few pretty momentous things have filled my days.  Each one  has changed me in some important ways:

• I wrote a history of our church to celebrate its 50th anniversary
• Our kids put on a big party in honor of our 50th wedding anniversary
• My friend, ellen, and I released our first CD.  
• I discovered I had metastatic breast cancer.  Surgery has been followed up by non-chemo treatments and most recently a clean scan. God is good!
• My husband, Walter, and I took a two-week boat-and-land cruise  to Alaska. We've been dreaming of this for 50 years and it was all we had hoped and MUCH more!

Home from Alaska!

We saw bald eagles and golden eagles, owl hawks and ravens, magpies and a bunch of other unnamed birds, along with seagulls in abundance. They no longer call them seagulls, because they are everywhere, not only over or around the sea. There were ground squirrels. We saw very few sea animals. Whales? Maybe a spout or two. I did see one otter playing on his back. But they pretty much stayed away from us wherever we went. We saw a few harbor seals, but again, not many. While the ship cruised in the College Fjord, we were restricted from one area because it was a place where harbour seals were having their babies in this season, and our presence would have disturbed them. I imagine that out there every ice-berg would have carried babies.

The leading characters on all the landscapes and seascapes were the snowy mountains. Gorgeous mountains on every side. Sharp peaked ones, dome shaped ones in some glacier’s pathway, tall ones, low ones. And in their folds and crevasses a zillion glaciers. Icebergs floated everywhere near the glaciers, and we loved them. Rivers snaked their way through wide, glacier-carved beds and meandered with carefree lack of rush or concern for schedule of any sort.

The whole land was a hallowed sanctuary. Different, set apart from our normal everyday lives and pursuits, everything seemed to call attention to Your incredible Creator’s workmanship.

The schedule was such that I had little time to just sit with my open Bible and journal and meditate the way I do at home. Instead, I spent hours each day gazing on Your handiwork. Every time the sun sparkled on some glorious scenic beauty, a guide would remind us that "tourists rarely see what you are seeing." And when the mountains gleamed at me, sometimes reflected in the perfect mirror of a lake beside the road, the little girl in me wept for sheer joy. I took it all personally. The wonder of each precious treasure was a gift from Your hand, my gentle Heavenly Father.

I found little energy, however, to write about the sights as they accosted us. At times this distressed me. I so much wanted to write about it all and have nothing lost for future contemplation and recall. Sort of the same passion that kept both Walter and me snapping pictures with our cameras. I did have a few occasions when I could sit in the ship’s library, in view of a moving panorama of scenic gorgeousness and write about our adventures, trying always to catch up and get it all down so we would lose nothing to our imperfect memories. But I never caught up, and my journal holds enormous gaps.

The day after arriving home, the morning’s psalm had a word for me here. "My soul waits in silence for God only." (Psalm 62:1) Come to think of it, throughout our entire trip, Alaska was a silent country. The mountains did not sing in audible tones. We scarcely heard the animals we saw through coach windows. When asked about my auditory memories, I had to think hard. Gulls and other birds did pierce the silence here and there. The ship’s engines hummed and people sounds abounded with 1200+ people sharing the boat with us. Ah yes, we heard the swishing of water in the boat’s wake and an occasional waterfall where we got close enough to hear its voice.

Perhaps the sounds that touched me most deeply were the chugging of the trains, the clacking of their metal wheels across the tracks, the long mournful whistle that took me back to my childhood. But mostly I remember the silence.

Now, looking at these words from Scripture, I remember the silence of unwritten words. Can it be, I question, that You desire to give to me freedom from the passion to set it all down,? Freedom to bask in the reality of the presence of the incalculable and often inexpressible gifts You are pouring out so abundantly upon me? Perhaps I needed all my energies just to absorb it.

Ah yes, that is it! You were giving me the freedom to set aside all drivenness of the pen and simply absorb the beauty, the evidence of Your presence, the reflection of Your glory.

Much of the time these past seven months, while struggling with the lack of energy imposed by my illness, has been devoted to the quietness of unrecorded observation. Perhaps this is the gift of weakness to the strengthening of my soul, that all I write may ultimately be Your inscriptions for the world to read and find You.

"Waiting in silence for God only" What does this mean?

I suspect it means waiting, not for answers to requests or solutions to problems or even for words to put on paper so I can hold more tightly to my treasured experiences—not even so I can share them with a needy world. It means waiting for a fuller, richer revelation of Your holy and glorious self, dear God.

To be allowed to express on paper or in spoken words any of the deep things You pour into this brief life on earth, is itself a bonus gift of Your unfathomable grace.

A Quick Book Review

I’ve just been reading a brand new book I wish I could place in everyone’s library!