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| “Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind." - Henri Frederick Amiel
Grandma Minnie never had much. She grew up poor and learned early the art of survival. A very hard working woman, she was naturally drawn to her opposite, Grandpa Floyd, who had the personality of a grasshopper. A lighthearted man, he loved to play pranks on people and play the banjo, making up his own lyrics to replace the ones that actually went with the melody he was playing. Grandma Minnie did not approve of Grandpa’s “frivolous ways,” as she called them, and she told him so often. She did her best to keep him in line, but the minute she was out of sight, he would be up to his old tricks again. He just loved to make everyone laugh and all the grandchildren adored him.
Grandma Minnie’s house always smelled like roses. Her yard was like an oasis in the barrenness of dry and dusty West Texas. Through an ad in the Clarendon newspaper, she sold the fruit and berries she grew, and she even managed to grow a small grape vineyard. Grandpa grew a patch of vegetables. He would cart his vegetables to town every day right before dinner time and sell them fresh off the back of his wagon.
Grandma knew everyone in town and delighted in gifting others with sprays of her beautiful roses for every occasion. Like a bright bouquet of smiles, she shared her roses along with love and get well prayers with many an ill friend. They became petals of comfort and the sweet scent of solace to those grieving lost loved ones, handfuls of encouragement for those who seemed down.
Grandma Minnie loved brightening another’s day. She loved to comfort those who hurt or lift the spirits of those who were sorrowful. She was a cheerful woman and she spread love and comfort to others everywhere she went. Grandpa Floyd followed behind her with the gift of laughter.
We can all brighten the day of another with whatever our gift is whether it is speech, music, writing, gardening or crafts. Everyone has some gift of the heart to share with others and when we share what we do have instead of focusing on what we don’t have, we find why it is said it is truly better to give than to receive.
For years Grandma Minnie brightened the lives of others with her hand-picked bouquets. Her strong willed ways brightened Grandpa’s life, too, until she passed away in June of 1950. He was never quite the same without Grandma. Sometimes at night he would walk through their old house, still talking to her as if she were there. She was buried within sight of their back porch. Grandpa would sometimes stand out on the back porch looking towards her resting place, his eyes filled with tears. “I miss her,” he would say. In January of 1953, he went home to join her.
The roses live on, a parting gift to the world from Grandma Minnie. Every year, they come back like bright smiles to remind those who loved her that we can all add joy to another’s world in some small way with whatever we have to give.
"The sweetest flower that blows, I give you as we part. For you it is a rose, For me it is my heart." ~ Frederick Peterson 1859-1938
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| “There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts being broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream--whatever that dream might be.” - Pearl S. Buck
Everybody has a dream. What’s your dream? What was your dream when you were young and full of dreams? Have the hardships and disappointments of life taken away that dream?
Sometimes when adversity happens, it feels as though everything meaningful in our life has come falling down around us. Our instinct is to run, to hide from the pain of fallen dreams, from the thunder as our well-made plans begin crashing into pieces like shattered glass at our feet.
The crash of a fallen dream is always accompanied by the sound of a breaking heart. We put so much of ourselves and our hearts into our dreams. We build our lives and plan our activities around our dreams. No matter where we are in life, our eyes are fixed on the fulfillment of the dreams we long to see realized. Our dreams are built of those things we desire at the deepest level of our beings – whether it be the birth of a long-awaited child, a happy marriage, a hard-won career, the happiness of our grown children or grandchildren, wealth or prestige in our community - but whatever they may be, our dreams are what we believe will bring us our highest joy.
We plan, we work, we dream. But life does not always obey our well-laid plans. One day life steps in and destiny reroutes our dreams. Suddenly we are faced with the reality that the dream we have invested in for so long can never be.
What now? Where to now? Our hearts ask of us, now that the perfectly laid plans have turned to ashes. What do I do now?
Heartbroken with the loss of what we have so long believed in, we sometimes fail to realize that perhaps destiny has a better plan for us that we could not see through the forest of our dreams. Perhaps if we look close enough, we will see that, though the dreams we so carefully cultivated and nurtured have fallen to pieces around us, there is now a clearing through which a new plan, a new dream is emerging.
We must learn to be flexible, we must learn to adapt quickly because life seldom plays out as we imagined it would. Destiny’s higher wisdom always intervenes if we veer too far off the path to which our real selves have been called. It calls us back, moving whatever is necessary in order to make the way clear to who we are truly supposed to become.
Life’s tragedies, broken dreams and fallen idols are all are signs pointing us to our true destiny. Destinies we would otherwise have missed because we couldn’t see our true destiny for the dreams that got in the way.
“When your dreams turn to dust, vacuum.” ~ Author Unknown
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| “All God's angels come to us disguised.” ~ James Russell Lowell
She didn’t know what news the doctor would have this time. Her husband of many years was suffering from terminal cancer. She had cared for him and done everything she could to make him comfortable and happy since the diagnosis several years earlier. For awhile, he had done much better, but then the tiredness came, followed by other symptoms. They looked at each other one day with that look – they both knew what it all meant. They wanted to believe there was more time, that somehow it couldn’t happen to them. They hoped for a miracle.
She tried not to fret as she sat waiting with him in the doctor’s office for the results of his latest battery of tests. She tried not to let the anxiety show on her face, she knew he felt the same fear. Their hearts were knit together and after so many years, it wasn’t hard to know what he was thinking. She wanted to be strong for him; she wanted for him to be able to lean on her if the news was worse this time, though she didn’t feel much like a pillar of strength at the moment.
She stuck her hands into her pockets to hide the shaking. Her right hand closed around something small and warm she had forgotten she put in there. She drew it out and as she breathed in the beauty of it, for just a moment, she smiled. Light danced off the prisms of the crystal as she gazed at the peaceful angel poised inside. Her sister had given it to her only weeks before; something she felt would comfort her when she couldn’t be there to do it herself. A tiny gift to remind her she wasn’t alone in the battle she faced. A great peace flooded her soul just as the door opened and the doctor walked into the room.
A small gift, a card, or a note of encouragement can be enough to comfort someone facing one of life’s challenges. It isn’t always possible to be with those we love when they face their battles, but we can send our hearts for them to carry along. We can hug them with words of hope and encouragement for the price of a postage stamp. We can take their hand across the miles and hold it with words of consolation.
If we take the time and give some thought, we can be the angels of comfort to another’s heart during their time of need. We can send our love to hover over them as they face each trying day. We can wrap our wings around another soul, speak love into their aching hearts and help to calm their fears.
The news wasn’t bad at the doctor’s office that day. More doctor visits were to come for sure, but they still had some time left together.
She would be sure to take the comfort of her angel on every visit.
“We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.” ~ Luciano de Crescenzo
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