To Tell the Truth

     "My mother, Vivian Baxter, warned me often not to believe that people really want the truth when they ask, 'How are you?'...No one really expects to be answered, or even wants to know 'Well my knees feel like they are broken, and my back hurts so bad I could fall down and cry.'  A response like that would  be a conversation stopper.  It would end before it could begin.  So, we all say, "Fine, thank you, and you?'
     I believe in that way we learn to give and receive social lies.  ...I wish we could stop the little lies.  I don't mean that one has to be brutally frank.  I don't believe that we should  be brutal aobut anything, however, it is wonderfully liberating to be honest.  One does not have to tell all that one knows, but we should be careful what we do say is the truth."

~Maya Angelou excerpts from Letter to my Daughter, Chapter 7, To Tell the Truth


Well friends, to tell the truth...I need to be bathed in prayers.  We have this wedding coming up you see.  My dad was not doing well healthwise last week at all to the tune of our oldest daughter, Lea crying Sunday morning talking with him over the phone, pleading with him to please hit the emergency button necklace if he needed it, trying to make sure he knew the Father in that personal way... Me sitting at the table with a twitch in one of my eyes,  as our thirdborn, Michelle shares her bride's photo shoot stills with me.  Oh dear ones!  What is a mother and daughter, only-child to do?!  A child at heart that thinks, feels and discerns on steroids. Not a bad thing most of the time when helping people or dealing with foes.  I know what's up before they do usually.  Comes in handy but tends to nerve a person like me up. The same thing that makes me feeling makes me feel.

There are soooo many facets to the story of my father.  I know that my saintly mother, the wife of his youth, whom he left when I was eighteen years old would still care for him...  But he is hours away and most of the time seems to like it like that...until something really horrible happens and usually not then.  Then it is only briefly considered.  Some justice-injustice questions prevail at this very time.  You know Sisters, Brothers?  Sometimes we are just not sure what is a Blessing and what is a curse!  So.  Please pray for me.  Pray for all involved.  This only child can only take so much.  This mama can only take so much.  It's hard, really hard.



Today was nursing home day and oh what a precious blessing that was!  Calvin the precious almost blind, almost deaf man was there and I gave him a handmade bracelet from wooden beads I made with his name:  c-a-l-v-i-n.  He shrieked with joy...Sooooo precious.  Marianna reminds me that this would also help him to tell people his name! 

Becs and I rode together and that was a sweet blessing. I would look up every now and then and see Becs standing sweetly with a resident, just listening patiently, smiling and sharing quietly.  Lunch together was such a sweet time and then back home to the Forest riding past fields and birds and crop dusters...Lovely drive. 

Lea our oldest came to the home too...Do you know what a blessing it is to hear my daughter giving a public message on salvation and encouraging the room full of elderly friends?  Oh may I never lose sight of what God has done!  How blessed I truly am!   GIFTS.



Lately I spend a lot of alone time talking to God, yesterday I sat on the side steps of our home and just kept quiet and looked up at the clouds, thanking the Father for the clouds and trying to remember that the Father created these clouds.  He can help me too.




I'll close with another excerpt from Letter to my Daughter by Maya Angelou.  The Chapter is entitled To Tell the Truth, Chapter 7.  


     "Let's tell the truth to the people.  When people ask, 'How are you,' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully.  You must know however, that people will start avoiding you because they have knees that pain them and heads which hurt and they don't want to know about yours.  But think of it this way, if people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you."

~Maya Angelou



I will go create in the kitchen now with Marianna...Enjoy our fur angels who minister to me daily.  ....I will also meditate, pray and yes.  I will research and pray in my Kerith Ravine.  Check out Sept. 16 reading of Streams in the Desert.

Wedding plans bubbling along on the surface. Prayers going forth internally...in the Forest deep in the Kerith Ravine...
Good Evening Loves,     ~amelia