Top Seecrit Post

Alice and Carman stopped over last night to return a laundry basket of mine. I hugged that teddy bear of a son and his tiny wisp of a wife, and while we were still standing together asked if I could get them something to drink. "Would you like a beer?" I asked Alice, but she demurred. Still, Carman stood there clutching a coffee mug in his hands, so I asked if he'd like a beverage in there.

"You know how you like coffee mugs?" he started, and I said yes, especially big ones because of my hand tremor. "Alice and I thought we would get you this," he said as he handed it to me. Pretty mug, I thought, with teal coated on the inside, and I turned it around.

And
then
I
saw

"Grandma" written in script with a little flower.

And I didn't have to ask what that meant, because I knew. So I just stood there, and tears sprang to my eyes and I just sobbed, "Oh my God, oh my God."

There were hugs, of course, but really, Oh my God. Thank you, God. A miracle is going on in our midst. This tiny seed is growing and it's too soon to tell anyone, but they had to tell their moms.

And I can leave this out here on the Internet because it's huge place and I doubt anyone will run across it. But I want to remember, and savor such a sacred moment in my life.

The eyes have it

I struggle about writing about personal things. I love when people allow themselves to be vulnerable to others, but I don't know if I should do it myself. When I can't be objective or calm, when I'm feeling emotional, like the depression I've struggled with after finding out I now have wet macular degeneration in both eyes - well, I don't know about letting all that out.

And then I think, oh yes, yes, I should. Stoicism is overrated. Silence can be a breeding ground for depression. So yes, posting here again after years, knowing most likely no one will see it anyway. So it's good practice. I'm 60 years old now and have wet macular degeneration in both eyes. Thank God, though, that there's treatment, which wasn't available at all not many years ago.

Grateful for dreaded and hated shots in the eye.

God and Eyeliner

I have Essential Tremor, which makes my hands shake, which has made it challenging as a female who wears make-up. I've learned a technique for applying mascara - I hold my right wrist with my left hand, which gives me a little more control with a shaky wand. Eyeliner had become a bit more problematic for me, even with the wrist-hand technique, and there were skips and jumps as I struggled to draw a line with my eyeliner pencil.

But then for some reason one day I closed my eyes, positioned the pencil on the outside of my right-eye and started pulling the stroke inward, feeling where my hand was on the lash line of my eyelid instead of using my sight. Maybe it quieted my mind, maybe it tricked my hand into doing some it'd done for years - however it worked, when I opened my eyes I had drawn a thin, perfect line right above my lashes.

I think I'm starting to experience God in a closed-eyes way too. The more time I spend reading about him, focusing my mind on him, trying to still my spirit and listen, the more often I wake up with an awareness and gratitude for the creator of it all. Things look different. The dark silhouette of a tree against an early morning sky is so beautiful it makes me ache and brings tears to my eyes. I wait patiently behind a cyclist in my car on a back road and then give him wide berth as I circle around him. He raises a hand in thanks and his gesture fills me with love. I extend a small kindness which is responded to with acknowledgement - we are two human beings connected by a thread of God's grace.

Just as I am using the sense of touch instead of sight to put on eyeliner in the morning, perhaps I am starting to live my days with a God sense intermingled with my human sense.

"...the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch - the Spirit - and becomes a living spirit." ~ john 3:5, the message

Elsewhere

Just in case someone wanders in here . . .

I'm not keeping up with this anymore, but you can find many other places!

ExtraSprinklesPlease.com

GoodrichDesign.net

Twitter.com/annegogh

Twitter.com/extrasprinkles

Facebook.com/anne.goodrich

Linkedin.com/in/annegoodrich

The Power of Color

I had a fist-sized rock lodged firmly in the pit of my stomach. Too much work, too little time, too much anxiety. Suddenly while researching thumbnails of images for a freelance job, I ran across yellow.

A square of yellow filled with vines and leaves and butterflies. But mostly it was the yellow I saw. My spirit reacted immediately to the sunshine color. Stress was subdued, my brow unfurrowed itself, my soul softened.

I think in heaven there are colors beyond our wildest imagination, and they have more power than we know. Here on earth I can only taste a bit of the emotional impact that color has, and how it can unexpectedly make my soul respond and rejoice.

My Pastor's Email Sig Line

Seek justice. Help the oppressed. ~ Isaiah 1:17

Sweet September

Sweet September. What a golden month it is, when summer clings to many of its days, and Autumn nudges into evenings and early mornings. There's a heaviness to the leaves now, sagging under the thickness of their deep green color. Here and there the landscape is startled by a tree that has jumped the gun and is already turning glorious shades of burgundy and mustard yellow.

I'm going to miss the symphony of crickets and frogs outside my window. Is part of the purpose of their sound to soothe the souls of humans and quiet their minds? I wonder.

My poor blog

I have been woefully neglecting my blog, and yet I've been yearning to blog again. Yes, ironic. The thing is, I've always used this space more to talk about my spiritual journey. But gosh, so many things are part of our soul and who we are. Maybe I won't worry if this morphs or transitions a bit. Maybe I'll just say what I want, whenever.

A Safe Place to Fall

K. will be moving in Sunday night. It was kind of hard to tell Carman because he has to move out of his little bedroom and into what we call the den, and sleep on the futon, which isn't very comfortable.But K. is 19 and has no place to go. She thought she was all right for awhile living in the apartment in back of her grandparent's store.

But her dad works there, and she found out that he was going through her dresser drawers while she was at work. When she stepped outside late one night and saw him sitting there in his truck with the lights off she knew she had to get out. I don't know the whole story of sexual and physical abuse. I only know that K., this young woman I've just gotten to know, needs a home for the summer.And yes, honestly, it feels a bit sacrificial. Carman and I live in a small mobile home, and a third person definitely makes a noticeable dent in our space -- especially for my son.

And yet, as my pastor quoted tonight from John 1:14 in The Message: "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood." So as a follower of Jesus I need to move into the neighborhood, not just do comfortable acts of kindness that assuage my guilt, not just hand someone a Bible and walk out of their life. I have to move in. Get my hands dirty. Walk alongside someone in need. Enter into all the messiness of life with someone who is in a very broken place.Once upon a time many years ago, another young woman came and lived with me for a short time. We lost touch through the years, but I always knew that I meant something to her.

The last time Sara called me she was a single career woman in her 30s and five months pregnant, with plans to give the baby up for adoption. She called at midnight. She called in pain and confusion and we talked a long time. I tried to call her back two or three times after that but never got her. And then about a year later I read her obituary in the paper. It didn't say how she died, but I knew she had struggled with suicidal feelings before, and so in my heart I know she killed herself. I've prayed many times like that to never stop reaching out to someone when they need me, to always do whatever I can to listen, to talk. To ask my son to move out of his bedroom, so that another young and hurting girl has a safe place to fall.

I'm doing it for Sara. I'm doing it because I want to grow in love.

A Tower of Yes

Each Yes of mine
I added to a tower of others.
With a deceptively sturdy base it
was so easy to add another yes-can.
It began with a foundation
I could build upon.
It was so simple to add one more
seemingly small, aluminum weight yes.
Yes, I can do that. Yes, I will call.
Yes, I will help. Yes, I can listen.
Yes, I will be there, do that, jump that hoop,
ride that rail, hoist that sail, drive that car.
Yes.
And one more.
And another.
But it got hard to reach the top of the pile.
I stretched.
The stack grew higher
And higher
and harder to balance.

And then one inevitable day
a final yes toppled into another.
And another.
And another.
And suddenly with a rush and roar
The cans of yeses tumbled down.
A waterfall of crashing cans
falling in a metallic scream
that finally echoed into silence.
And then...
I heard the calling of the sparrow,
and the singing of the crickets,
the soft brush of an angel’s wing.
And sitting there in my pile of
Yes rubbish
I could hear God’s whisper,
His voice beckoning,
asking me to follow him.
I only needed to answer
with one single, solitary,
Sacred and holy,
Joyful and liberating,
Life-giving, spirit-filling
Yes.
Oh yes.

Love as Choice

In his book Return from Tomorrow, George Ritchie talks about meeting a man who'd been a prisoner in the concentration camp where Ritchie was sent as a soldier right at the end of WWII. He talks about the amazing compassion "Wild Bill" had for all his fellow prisoners and how he was regarded as a friend to all. Wild Bill even counseled others to forgive the Germans for the atrocities they'd been through, and said this:

"We lived in the Jewish section of Warsaw. My wife, our two daughters, and our three little boys. When the Germans reached our street they lined everyone up against a wall and opened up with machine guns. I begged to be allowed to die with my family, but because I spoke German they put me in a work group. I had to decide right then whether to let myself hate the soldiers who had done this. It was an easy decision really. I was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen too often what hate could do to people's minds and bodies. Hate had just killed the six people who mattered most to me in the world. I decided then that I would spend the rest of my life - whether it was a few days or many years - loving every person I came in contact with."

Ritchie continues: "Loving every person...this was the power that had kept a man well in the face of every privation. It was the Power I had first met in a hospital room (during a Near Death Experience) in Texas, and was learning little by little to recognize wherever He chose to shine through - whether the human vehicle was aware of Him or not."

Here's to Love - to the will to love, to the choice of love, to our hearts opening wide and spilling out love during the moments of our lives. May the story of Wild Bill be another way God uses to point me to his Truth.

Advent Giving Calendar

Free for you and your family to print and use - online here.

Wide Open (and really small) Spaces

Jim Palmer, my anam cara, is releasing his book Wide Open Spaces soon. What better place to talk about wide open spaces than in a tiny, cramped drainage pipe...

Blog Excuses & Wide Open Spaces

So...I've been remiss in keeping up my blog. I'm making presents for Christmas - that's an excuse that sounds reasonably noble enough to get myself off the hook. Oh, and freelance work. And dabbling in digital scrapbooking. AND I'm reading my soul-friend Jim Palmer's new book that he sent me last week. I just started it and I love it. It's really good when you have a friend who writes a book and you like it, you know? Anyway, this is an endorsement by one of those Divine Nobodies - Wide Open Spaces - Beyond-Paint-By-Number-Christianity is well worth getting your hands on.

william the wisenheimer

I found an interesting article on msnbc.com. The link I sent to my twin brother said, "Having a male twin can reduce woman's fertility. Women who have a male twin are less likely to marry and have children, perhaps because of being exposed to their brother's testosterone for nine months in the womb, researchers reported."

And then came my twin's reply via email: "And males twins are more prone to drink to excess and mumble to themselves, due to having been subjected to female criticism prior to birth..."



Smarty pants. :)

just celebrating autumn in photoshop

Almost Autumn

For all the parents

Banner Frenziest

Jim may eventually have to put a halt to my banner making, else we may end up with a bazillion pages of banners on our site. But it's so meditative in its own way . . .

I am an atheist

My thanks to Jim for telling me about this.