Motherhood, Revelation and miscellany

I was kind of glad Mother's Day wasn't hyped like a commercial event at church today. The focus was on Rogation Day and the usual readings for the day.

Before church, I called my mother at the nursing home to wish her happy Mother's Day. She was pretty incoherent, and kept repeating "Oh, God," in alarm as though something must be wrong. I'm not sure if she understood I was wishing her happy Mother's Day. She sounded like she might be in some pain, too. She subsided into silence after a minute or so.

It's hard to tell what's physically wrong, what's Alzheimer's, and what's deafness with her.

I spoke to the nurse afterward. She said Mom had fallen asleep. I asked the nurse about pain, and she indicated she expected Mom would never heal completely from the broken hip, and would have some discomfort. The nurse said Mom does have some more lucid moments, usually when she first wakes up. I'll call earlier next time, and try to catch her then. I always call in the morning, but sometimes my mother is asleep or out of range of the phone, or not lucid -- the case the last few times I've talked to her.

Mom's a time zone behind me, so that's about time I'm getting to work during the week.

I went into the church service with that on my mind.

As we were leaving after the church service, the clergy was handing out long-stemmed geraniums. As I got near the exit, the deacon, who was handing them out at one door, said loudly, "They're only for mothers."

I didn't take one -- hadn't planned to, but as I started down the walk, I reconsidered, and went back inside, and took one from Father M., who was chipperly handing them out without vetting the female's maternal status.


I don't have any children, but I am a mother.

I do have a baby, and if there's anything to this Christian stuff, I will see him again.

You see, I got pregnant during my brief, young-and-foolish marriage. By the time I was certain I was pregnant, I miscarried. Later, I said maybe it was for the best, but I really wanted that baby I call "him" because something made me sure it was a boy, though I was only two months or so pregnant when I lost him.

I did the second reading today, from Revelation 21-22, and it included these words:
"Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever."

The word of the Lord!

John tried to describe the undescribeable, and succeeds to some degree. We don't have the mind to fully appreciate the Kingdom of God, anyway. But images of healing and life, flowing like a river, come through pretty clearly.

And if the promises are true, I shall look upon the face of God, and He shall be my light. And in that light, I shall see all those whom I love, but who live no more, and they shall be healed and restored and whole. That includes my baby.

If it isn't true, I don't care a fig about this eternal life stuff.

But I believe it is true, in some wonderful and mysterious way that's beyond my comprehension. So I went back and claimed a pink-and-white carnation, and have formulated into clearer thought and word, feelings that have been rattling in the back of my brain for years.

Thanks be to God.

Out of circulation

The reason I haven't been writing a lot or posting on your sites much lately isn't 'cause I don't love you wild and loony religious-zealot-malcontent bunch of fellow bloggers. I started working part-time again, so I'm putting in some long hours during the week, but pretty much have my weekends free. Yazzoo!

Last year, when I did cooking demos part-time, it was long, on-your-feet-all-day weekend hours and I never had a day off. So we'll see how this goes. I'm working at a little junior college in the evenings, and the pay is pretty decent.

Weather gone wild

I put this ("Weather gone wild") in as a headline for a newspaper story I wrote last week, and the editor let it stand. It has been wild and weird in Florida.

I had gone on line a few days earlier, pulled up a satellite image to check the wildfires blooming all over South Georgia and pretty much the whole state of Florida. At first, I thought I'd pulled up an old satellite pic from last year by mistake, because there sat a tropical disturbance, with all the classic counterclockwise whirling shape of a tropical storm, off the southern coast of Georgia.

But no. It was nothing left over from last year. While we were on red alert for fires inland, a tropical-storm watch spread over the Atlantic coastal waters.

Some days, the smoke hung heavy like a pea-soup fog from fires burning to the north of us, to the east of us, to the west of us -- didn't much matter from whence the wind blew -- there was a fire, whose smoke the winds carried our way.

Luckily, there haven't been any wildfires near me, so far.

We got just enough rain from subtropical storm Andrea to dampen the brush's enthusiasm for flame just a bit, and clear the air some, but we're still in a critical fire-threat situation.

The sky was hazy as I headed home from church and a stop at the grocery store this afternoon. It was hard to guess what was cloud and what was smoke hanging in the air. Now, it's thundering to the north of us, and lightning strikes are dangerous. Even with accompanying rain, the mega jolt of heated electricity can spark a new fire.

It's a couple of weeks until the official start of hurricane season, and the National Weather Service is predicting we should start getting rains on time. Thank you, Lord.

And Lord, I hope you won't think I'm being uber-demanding for praying we won't get any nasty storms this year, just a little tropical storm or two, with rain.

Thank you again, Lord.

Signing off for now.


UPDATE MONDAY, MAY 14

We're getting rain, glorious rain!