Category: Family

Thoughts on family past, present and future.

She Keeps On Running!

My daughter is running in a marathon tomorrow. Her team will run in the Cascade mountains, up one hill and down another. She has run the Hood to Coast marathon two times and smaller marathons on several occasions. Whenever I ask her why she does this she answers, “I do it for God.”

She was born with Hydro Syphilitic disease, where a membrane is around the lungs so she couldn’t breathe. The doctor told us that if she didn’t break the membrane within three days she would die. She broke it on the third day! The doctor told us there might be brain damage but we were too excited to listen.

She was developing like any baby but when it came time for her to learn to walk, she just went around on her tummy pushing herself with her hands. Then came the running around to children’s doctors and getting no answers. One doctor said he might be able to fit her with braces when she reaches the age of ten.

One evening, because of a friend’s urging, we took her to a church where this friend said a visiting pastor was holding services. He was supposed to have the gift of praying to receive healing. We were quite skeptical of this but we went anyhow.

When the pastor prayed for our little girl, nearly three years old, she let out a scream and she kept screaming! I had a tough time getting her calmed down. We didn’t see any difference in her the day after the prayer. The next day we were at the park and she wanted to get out of her stroller. I put down a blanket for her to lay on but she would have nothing to do with that. The second I put her down on the blanket, she started to walk! She didn’t walk like a three year old child but like a baby just learning to walk. But she was walking and she has been walking and running ever since.

God healed her and that is a fact. She knows it too and she has been running marathons for God every summer since she has grown to be a lovely young lady.

Harvest Time Is Nearly Here

It’s nearly harvest time. I guess that doesn’t mean as much today as it did in years gone by. Pre-packaged food has become a way of life. However, I still like to “Put up” a few jars of jams and jellies. My daughter enjoys canning and does as much as she has time for. She is a single parent with two girls to raise and is a local teacher too.

Even though I enjoy seeing the rows of sparkling red, purple and gold jars sitting on my pantry shelves I know it would be foolish for me, with my husband gone, to engage in much harvesting. However, there is the nostalgia. I remember my mother standing over a boiling kettle nearly every day during the harvest season. The kitchen was hot and steamy but the fragrance heavenly. It was almost as good as bread baking days!

I think of the farm when I ponder over harvest time. When I was a young girl, I helped out in the cooking wagon at threshing time. It was fun for me and my cousin, Myrtle, but my aunt and her friends thought it was only hard work. They did enjoy it though. I could tell by the laughing and talking they did. When the men came in from the field, they looked tired and hot, but after they washed up in buckets placed near the cooking wagon, they looked fresh and really ready to eat all the food prepared for them. And, did they eat!

After they ate they laid down in the grassy meadow nearby and smoked their pipes, talking together about crops and stuff that I wasn’t interested in at all. There seemed to be a signal because the men stood up at the same time and headed out to the field again. I think threshing time was a good time too. Oh, I know the farming equipment today does the work quicker and better, but the threshing machine went from farm to farm and people all worked together to get the crops in. The women worked together to keep their men fed too. Today we are lucky if we know the names of our neighbors.

How about us? Are we harvesting the good things, working toward inward fulfillment—toward that inner abundance for which we humans yearn? We can only yield the harvest of peace and love by looking to God as the source of our supply Then we will harvest that inner abundance in our lives. Let’s get to know God and make a jar or two of Jelly to bring over to our neighbor, shall we?