Month: November 2015

When I started the third grade, we were assigned a story to write about how we spent our summer vacation. That happened to be the only summer vacation I had ever taken, to California with our cousins.

While we were there, we went to Seal Beach, where we found sea shells and made sand castles in the warm sand. I loved the water, but was also afraid of it. As the shallow water lapped my legs, I enjoyed the warmth, so I moved a little closer to the sea.

I felt the waves climbing higher and higher; first my waist, then my neck, then my mouth. I could taste the saltwater in my mouth and nose. I couldn’t breathe. The sun grew dimmer and dimmer. I was going to drown. The waves pulled me out to sea, but just as I was going under for the last time, the strong hands of the lifeguard dragged me back to shore.

However this was happening only in my mind. The gentle waves were too weak to even draw the seashells out to sea, only deep enough to wash the sand off my tiny feet. I had the feeling that I would drown, but my mother and aunts were keeping a close watch on us little ones.

That was the first story I wrote, but that experience stuck with me and I was encouraged to write poetry by a high school assignment. My senior year a poem I wrote in the form of a sonnet was published in the Oklahoma High School English Teachers Anthology.

I’ll never forget the moment that inspiration came to me, when I suddenly saw, really saw a one-way street sign, so that was the first devotional I ever wrote—that there is only one way to heaven, through Jesus Christ.

God has a great plan for us, and I’m so glad that I seemingly stumbled into God’s plan for my life—to be his writer.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 NIV.

I found some pictures of a Thanksgiving dinner table at my mother’s taken in 1986. My husband and my dad sat at each end with my younger sister, all our kids, and me on each side and I guess Mother was taking the picture. The two little kids were seated at a little school desk in tiny school chairs. The baked turkey was on a side table with two pies and the table was full of mashed potatoes, dressing, jellied cranberry sauce, and plastic drink cups. The nice china plates were at each place, with forks, knives, and spoons at the correct position. Oh what I would give to go back to that table to eat.

Mother can’t cook anymore, at almost 98 years gold, but she was a great cook. I know everyone says that about their mother, but our mother has a real claim to fame in our hometown, since she cooked at the school cafeteria for 25 years. Mother and the other cooks went to cook’s school every summer, put on by the state of Oklahoma nutrition program.

Most of the adults who went to school with us remember her great cooking. They remember the homemade yeast rolls, cinnamon rolls, turkey-and-dressing casserole, and peanut butter cookies. The men talk about getting seconds and thirds, especially of the hot rolls, and putting them in their pockets for afternoon recess. They remember her brown beans and cornbread, and chili and beans.

And that is what Thanksgiving is all about, right? No, not really, but that’s how most of us end up spending the holidays, as if it’s all about food, and family, and fun. Each of us has developed our own family ways of celebrating but as a nation this holiday is important for us to give God the thanks for what He has given us.

“ It is good to give thanks to the Lord, And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High;  To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning, And Your faithfulness every night.” Psalms 92:1-2. NKJV.

Let’s make Thanksgiving about the giving of thanks again.

As I walked around the yard, “surveying the estate,” I wandered over to check out the crape myrtle bushes. I have four crape myrtles, three dark pink ones and one lilac one. I thought I bought four alike, but the first year they bloomed I was surprised. Crape myrtles bloom in the heat of the summer when so many plants in Oklahoma have faded and even died.

I first began to notice crape myrtle when I was driving all over the state, working on a traveling crew for the phone company. As I drove along the highways during the drought of August, I began to see beautiful blooming bushes, some almost the size of a small tree, and casually wondered what in the world was blooming that time of year.

One day when I was home, as I drove down my home street, past the house where one of my former co-workers had lived, I saw that same bush and called to see what it was named. Crape myrtle. If I’d heard of it before, I don’t remember it, but I decided that I would plant one when I found a place to buy it. The next spring, when I was shopping for annuals, I found crape myrtle plants and choose those four bushes.

While I was checking out my bushes this week, I saw buds, big fat flower buds, almost ready to open now, in November. Those buds will probably never open up to flower, because it will probably freeze tonight.

Jesus told a parable about a man planting seed, comparing it to the word of God being planted in the ground of a person’s heart. He told of a person who has a heart where the word of God was planted, and Jesus said, “They are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit.” Mark 4:18-20 NKJV.

I don’t want the cares of life, desire for things, and for riches to choke out the good word of God. I want my heart to be good soil, to hear, receive and accept, and grow the fruit that the Word of God produces. I want the buds in my heart to open to full bloom.