...with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. Acts 14:23
I heard from Kate yesterday. Kateryna? Oh yes, ballroom dancer who spent long hours painting beautiful designs on her fingernails so very long ago. And we watched Everything is Illuminatedabout a jillion times because she would laugh until it hurt because it was exactly like Ukraine.
Dear Christy and the rest of the Voelkel family!!)) You are among my best memories and I hope to visit you some day just to tell you how grateful I am for that wonderful time you've presented to me. In my best dreams I eat lovely breakfasts with xoxo cards, walk Daisy in the desert, bake cookies with grandma and listen to guitar at Friday dinners...I wish you to stay as open-minded and caring as you are and be happy!
And there you have it. Paul and Barnabas were whipping through Asia Minor, one city after another, until he was stoned or beaten or worse and then they would roll on over to the next city. But. There is a line here, in chapter fourteen, ...and they remained no little time. And that reminds me how Paul starts all of his letters, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, and I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, and I give thanks to my God always for you.
Something I never particularly noticed before but my, taken in context, grips me profoundly. What beloved people have passed through my life. José and Guadelupe sitting on the broken-block step of their church pieced together with bits of cardboard and flattened metal sheets. Ramoncita and I wandering through the barrio with stacks of clean diapers balanced on our heads laughing so hard we could barely stagger forward. Why I do not know, but it happened. There was some misconceived camping trip over Easter once and it was pouring rain and cold and so very unhappy and then someone, was it the Mustoviches, pulled up into a motorhome and we all piled in smooshed together and were warm all the way down to the weary bones. Hunching over a small smoky fire with a microscopic expresso pot just a few steps from the most glorious golden Grand Canyon and how could one hold so much beauty? Oh yes, and then there was THAT trip when we bundled two-week old Heather into the old green Camp Hy Lake truck and the tent fell down in the middle of the night with snow and Alene was hopping around in her sleeping bag trying to set it up again because it was too dark to find her shoes. And the memories are not just from the long string of poorly planned camping trips that strike dread in my husband’s heart, but ah, those pile upon pile gatherings around the table with mismatched chairs and chipped dishes and heaps of crockpot meat and loaves of bread and God is good and stretched out on white sandy beaches with cold coconuts and horizons reaching far into the sunset and a song and dance at the bottom of the Tucson International Airport escalator about I love you and games of Salad Bowl and lots of fireplaces and glasses of wine and stories that grow and stretch over time into heroic epics but that’s ok because really that is what life is.
And I realize that times have changed and now there are emails and Skype dates and Facebook but not really that much. Really they are the same hearts strung together with tight string and strong moments and a little bit of sad sighs but mostly prayers of thanks and joy and... always.
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