Parents Prayers

Prayers of My Parents Written on Index Cards

parents prayers

Savor & savory

12/5/06 Our Father, as we stand and bow our heads in prayer, hear again our thanks for this day and our fellowship here this hour. And as we anticipate the joy of Christmas help us with our busyness – remind us to pause and savor what we celebrate. Amen

Savor, to taste. A savory flavor is unique and memorable. It stands out.

The smell and tastes of the season are not easily replicated. You have to go to the source.

May we truly savor the joy of God’s intervention on earth, in an unlikely place, in an unlikely form.

Had the hardest time with this entry. Did the draft and then poof, it was gone only to show up a day later. My drafts used to show up on my Android, now they take awhile. Any tips out there? It is very frustrating. I take the picture, type the prayer, think of link, look for link and lose the entry…for a day. Huh?!

Opportunities to Encourage

12/6/05 We pray again, Our Father, for your blessing on this fellowship. Remind us of our several blessings – the value of family and friends – the opportunities each of us has to offer an encouraging word to others and our collective opportunity to serve this community. Amen

Yesterday at lunch a woman in a car stopped me as I walked across the parking lot to ask if I knew where the So & So employment office was. I didn’t, but the address implied it was close. I told her to park her car, it had to be close.

Once inside the quaint indoor old fashioned dining area of Michael’s Bakery, I looked at the tenant directory. There was no “So & So” business listed, but there was an Impact Employment office. I walked down there and checked it out. Yes, that was it. “We tell people to come to the Impact office, they just don’t remember.” She didn’t sound real empathetic.

I went out looking for the woman who had just asked directions of me. I found her and guided her to the proper place. She was cold. The wind was fierce.

She saw the inviting atmosphere and asked if it was an expensive place to eat. I said no, $7 or 8 could get you soup and a salad. She said she could use a chili. She entered the office to fill out an application to work in a factory.

I ate my lunch, but managed to chat with her when she left. I wish I had ordered her a chili to give to her. My loss.

Although I failed to encourage her with food, I provided some other assistance. I pray she finds work. She looked very stressed.

Returning back to work, a young woman with rainbow colored long beautiful hair (I work at the juvenile court) saw me struggling to keep my hood up in the wind. She and I chuckled at the futility.

She then asked if I dyed my hair to get the mostly salt color it is…I looked at her and said, “No way would I have patience to dye my hair any color. No, it is all natural!”

“Grey is very ‘in’ right now!” Was her fashionista response.

“Not with an old face!” was mine.

“You’re beautiful! I love your hair.”

You never know who you can encourage…it may even be an old lady returning from lunch.

Answered Prayers

11/16/17  Bear with us, our Heavenly Father, for our reluctance to give thanks before asking for something else. Remind us of prayers answered – guide our stumbling steps – keep us humble and responsive to the needs of others.  Amen

This photo depicts my family’s “Let it be unto me” china cabinet. As Mary acknowledged to Gabriel (Luke 1:38) my china cabinet/secretary contains tokens and pictures of tacit acknowledgement of God’s blessings throughout my genealogy.

The Greek for “be it/let it be” is γίνομαι, Strong’s G1096 – ginomai. The Blue Letter Bible defines this among other things as, to be made, finished; and of miracles, to be performed, wrought.

I don’t know what Mary’s prayers might have been before she delivered, but as a new mother, I felt Breath of Heaven to the very core of my new motherhood. This was Amy Grant’s rendition, of course, not Vince Gill’s.

On the shelves beneath this Nativity scene (kept up year-round btw) are a German teacup and an etched glass cup given to a distant relative by a more distant parent, as well as little framed portraits of my children when they were young. When the proof of answered prayer in my life was a daily, lively, rambunctious reminder.

Things are quieter now. Life losses and pains obscure the reminders of the answered prayers. Good thing I keep some tokens to remind me in my china cabinet.

Home from a Busman’s Holiday

11/12/17 No prayer of either of my parents, just a story about connections

“Busman’s Holiday” The term derives from the assumption, in the old days that most people used buses as a mode of transportation, therefore, a man who drove a bus for his vocation, would also take a bus to go on a vacation holiday.

It made me wonder if the bus driver enjoyed not being in the driver’s seat, or if he was quite anxious. Like my father when he taught me to drive, and truthfully for years later, his right leg would still reflexively brace at each driver’s decision point. Keep in mind, I was over 50 years old and he still couldn’t relax if I drove.

I wondered if the bus driver would gaze out of the windows in awe at the landscape with his full attention, or if he would be so used to the scenery that he would nod off to sleep?

My “busman’s holiday” was via a plane, not a bus. What prompted the trip was to visit an exhibit related to my work, but it was not a work trip. It was a vacation in the full sense of the word. I planned it. I scheduled it. I paid for it. I did what I wanted when I wanted.

Yet, during my visit, I took rabid notes of great ideas that I heard about from the people I met. You never know where a new idea will come from or prove useful, but if you stay back home in your office all the time, ideas rarely come and fall out of the sky.

During the course of this trip, to Richmond, Virginia, I stumbled upon ByGones Vintage Clothing, a fantastic vintage clothing shop. Realizing that the display cases of jewelry looked like the inside of my collection inherited from my mother and grandmother, I asked if they also bought jewelry. She responded yes, send a picture.

Back home, I was inspecting some of the pieces of my mother’s high school/college pin collection (GAA, National Honor Society, Wright Junior College) when I realized I never knew who the “Wright” was in mom’s Wright Junior College pins. Mom never elaborated on that.

Frank Lloyd Wright? That would make sense, it was Chicago after all.

But no, the college was named for Wilbur Wright, elder brother of the Wright brothers, inventors of experimental aircraft and the “fathers” of modern flight.

It turns out that Wilbur, the more athletic and outgoing of the two brothers, had his front teeth knocked out when he was a young pre-teen. He became withdrawn and bookish after that. He never finished high school. His brother, Orville, dropped out after his junior year to start a printing business.

Yet, regardless of their lack of graduation regalia, they went on to tenaciously pursue making a flying machine, a quest ignited in childhood by a gift of a helicopter toy from their father.

Their early realization that controlling aerodynamics of the machine safely, drove many of their latter decisions and research. They were not foolhardy. They did not want to die in their quest. They built wind tunnels to test models and checked others’ calculations. And they observed how birds controlled their wings to fly.

On the backside of the Wright Junior College Leadership Service award medal (pictured, above) is my mother’s name engraved with the date. Now that I know of the tenacity, brilliance, humility, and bookishness of this man, I am not surprised that my mother received this award. She was diligent at any task before her and she did it without needing the limelight, but her enthusiasm always invited others to try something new.

What if Wilbur hadn’t had his teeth knocked out? What if he’d gone on to Yale as he planned? What if his father hadn’t given him a toy helicopter? The path of modern aviation may have been drastically different.

Our lives turn on major and minor hills, valleys and mountaintops. Undulations, obstacles we see and air flow we can’t see are guiding course change. We have to trust the control to the Driver and the Pilot, the Author of our story.

The circuitous path of stumbling on new things I didn’t know I was interested in learning about is not original. Before such serendipitous scrolling was ascribed to having ADHD or a “senior moment”, another Chicagoan, Sydney J. Harris (September 14, 1917 – December 7, 1986) a journalist, had a feature called, ”Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other Things.”

Check it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_J._Harris

Explore more