Weakness

I have actually been feeling pretty good the last few days. Something has freed up in my surgical area and it's wonderful. I can bend down and get things off the floor now without that feeling of tightness or the sense that I'm harming something.

Prayer request: I have a friend who was in the hospital at the same time I was there. She and her husband picked me up at the airport (JFK) when I was there alone and I'd never met them before. Her husband checked on me twice a day. And she went through so much, was in the hospital 7 weeks! She has 3 small children. And is a lovely young woman. Now, she has to return, there have been some complications. Please pray mightily for her. My heart just breaks for her.

I went for a walk yesterday across the road. Gushing from the snow melt on the foothills and mountains to the north, the seasonal creek has come alive with a voice and a presence! The water, milky green and clean-looking, is about two feet deep. Quincy and I first checked out an old dump by the cliffs, then picked up the pretty deer trail which led us down to the bottom. It's not far.

Down-creek just a little ways, I then took other trails to end up at a dumpsite I'd never seen before. There are no wheel tracks leading to it, so it seems it is quite old and not been used in a long time. Winds combed the tops of the Ponderosa Pine as I poked around and found a rusted tube with an interesting aluminum top with a flip-cap. I deciphered the raised lettering on the side of the tube: "Williams Quick and Easy Shaving Powder." I never realised before that there had been shaving powder.

I do remember as a kid that we had tooth powder. I'd shake a bit into the palm of my hand, and then rub a wet toothbrush in it to create a paste with which to clean my teeth. I guess men used to do the same with "shaving powder." I tucked the old tube into my shirt pocket to bring home and put on the shelf in the shop next to the old bottle and the can of Boraxo soap I've already found down there in my explorations.

Though it's not far and I walk very slow and sit down on rocks to rest, coming home I was so incredibly weak, I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I thought of one thing: how weak I was, and then lyrics to an old hymn came to mind: "I am weak but Thou art strong. Jesus keep me from all wrong. I'll be satisfied as long...as I walk, let me walk, close to Thee." That's all that matters.

An old friend called me tonight and we had a deeply touching visit. He encouraged me to try to make it to an annual gathering that I have attended 14 times in the past. I had made up my mind not to go, even though next year will be the 25th anniversary of the event. Now, I can see that by doing that, I am taking the easy way out. Paul encouraged me that I needed to be there, and his words meant so much. I'm rethinking it. It feels good to be missed.

With all the people I know who are suffering and enduring such deep problems and challenges, tonight, I feel almost shamed to have ever mentioned any of my own. I am so blessed in so many ways, on so many levels.