The first time I visited my friend’s home, her
dogs curled up at our feet and her horse hunkered just below the front door.
That’s not important really, except I found it odd. The door opened from the
second story. No stairs below, just prairie grass poking through the snow, and
that patient horse, poised like the proverbial steed under a castle window (though
with no waiting knight). If I had the nerve, I told my friend, I’d open the
door, hop on and ride off into the West. She chuckled. “The plan was to put in stairs,
but the horse was free.”
Funny what you remember.
We were three friends gathered, all women. We’d
found a common day, shucked our regular schedules, and carved out time for the
thing women once did more than we do now—get together for an Olympic talking
event.
We ate salad. We drank hot
tea. Then we
swaddled on couches in that cavernous, unfinished, husband-built and mostly
unheated house. A wood stove in the basement puffed its hardest, but 3,000
Asquare feet wants a lot of logs. We kept coats on our shoulders and quilts on
our laps.
Along the west wall the pale winter sun streamed
through a series of floor-to-ceiling windows, setting the counter-less
cupboards and chipboard floors aglow. It dappled the flea market finds and the old
dog on the pillow. The crazy one, leaping from lap to lap, didn’t sit still
long enough for dappling.
Two of us were
grandmothers, but we giddied up like girls. Like men in an ice-fishing shack, but without beer. Our words tumbled out. We interrupted each other. We laughed until we cried. One of
us cried until she laughed. Someone said, “Hey, you
finished now? It’s my turn!”
We spoke of life’s
worries and warts. Of investments gone bad and dreams detoured by debt and
disability. We talked of how dollars depart the bank account before days depart
the calendar. Of faith. Of frailty.
We drank copious pots of
herbal tea, warming our hands on our mugs. We gave each other advice, and
swapped money-saving tips. But we talked longest about what God had taught us
through our hard times.
All that tea has to go
somewhere. I got up and headed south through the house a quarter-kilometre or
so in search of a washroom. On the way, I trod on manna—scriptures scrawled in permanent
marker on the chipboard floors. Living words like these:
“Don’t worry about tomorrow—it has enough
trouble of its own,” and “All things are
possible with God,” and, “Be strong and courageous, all you who put your hope
in the Lord,” and, “Some trust in horses, and some in chariots, but we trust in
the name of the Lord our God.”
Investments crash. Jobs
end. Governments disappoint. Health fails. My friend knew this well, but
creatively chose to remind herself and her large family of life’s only true
security.
Worried? Trust God. If
necessary, buy a Sharpie.
_____________________
Find author, columnist and broadcaster Kathleen Gibson on the web at www.kathleengibson.ca
Sunny Side Up has been published weekly since 2001, in Yorkton This Week and elsewhere. Kathleen also voices a daily radio spot, Simple Words, aired weekdays on internet and conventional radio stations in over twenty countries.
2 comments:
It is very gracious of you, Kathleen, to grant us males a peek at your threesome goings-on -- very engaging! ;)
Ah, but we guys have so much to learn about opening up and sharing deeply, so this is instructional for us.
Among many turns of phrase, I like your "I walked on manna ..."
The conversation among you as reflected in the piece reminds me that we often grow more in character and faith through the tough times than in the easy.
~~+~~
Love this, Kathleen. Thank you.
Not sure my family would appreciate marker on the floor, but I do leave myself faith-building notes around the house.
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