Joy

For three days last week, all five of the younger kids were home at the same time...talk about JOY! They talked, laughed, teased, and played, filling our home to bursting with such happiness! How precious are these times together! I am so proud of each one of them! While each is very different, their love for each other is deep and abiding. I believe they will stay close all of their lives and that makes me so glad! They will have their lives to live independently, but I think it will always be important to each of them to carve out time to be together. What fun kids they are!



What fun, too, to hear the laughter and pitter-patter of the little feet of the five youngest grandchildren, too! May God keep them safe and close always.


Thank you, God, for these treasured gifts.

Dad's Letter, July 1972

Hi, Linda -
I received your note in my "pajama box" tonight.
While the words were very brief, the meaning was very long.
Love is a four lettered word.
Love is many things.
Love is not always apparent.
Love is durable.
Love is often concealed.
Love is sometimes obscure.
The depth of love - like water - cannot be judged by appearance - does not a puddle look as deep as a lake?
Some things which are offered to please the eye and ear are not things which please the heart and mind.
Sometimes the words that emerge from the lips are not the words that the heart cries to speak.
We sometimes hide our true feelings behind a gruffness and 'not caring' attitude because of past hurts and rejections.
You are a product of love between your mother and I. Does a hand not love the blood that flows in its veins?
You are now at an age where many choices and decisions are yours to make. Even the most simple decision made now can have a bearing on your happiness the rest of your life - make each decision with care - but with firmness.

I have learned one big thing in my life, and had I learned it 30 years earlier, I may have had a different lot in life. What I have learned is simply this: Do your earnest best at everything you do. Smile when you hurt the most. Practice the Golden Rule at all times and to everyone. Accept the things you cannot change. Respect the feelings of others. Know the difference between right and wrong and do as you must do.

Love you?

Yes - with a depth you will never understand and an endurance that will never be broken.

Love, Dad

Weathering

Weathering Life...

Life. Breath..a beating heart..a mind..a soul..a spirit.
If I live to fill only myself, then all of my life rots in the grave with my body.
When I live to fill others, I either starve and suffocate myself or else I learn to fill myself by filling others. When I can do that, life is rich both for me and for those around me. My mind...it grows and my thoughts cloud with life's experiences...nothing is as easy as it once was. My soul struggles to fit its own blueprint while coordinating with the blueprints of loved ones around me...nothing ever seems to fit neatly and takes constant work, but it has value that exceeds the battle wounds. My spirit searches, sometimes grows weary, and will someday rest from weathering life's storms.

Weathering Love...

Love. Tender affection..obligation..passionate connection.
Emotion can be an element of love, but love is more of an attitude. Love is my obligation to another that makes me try to love myself by first loving, giving to, and doing for the other; it should allow me to let go of many small disappointments and some big ones. It is also a connection forged by shared dreams, shared memories, and a passionate admiration and respect that nurtures growth in each other and also fulfills physical desire. Ideally, all three elements of love are present at all times, but they often...dare I admit, usually - aren't. That's part of the weathering, like a weather vane that changes direction with each breath of wind.

Weathering Truth.

Truth is absolute only in relation to God. I find no other absolute truth. But simple truth in relation to life, I have found, evolves, changes, adapts, but remains authentic. I have loved, lived; I still love, live; but the shape of both have changed. My life, my love is still authentic; it is just weathered and wears a different expression. a different palette. Do I need to seek truth? No, I don't think so. Truth is. Today, truth is doing what needs to be done and trying to bring joy and kindness to those I come in contact with no matter how I feel because how I feel always changes and is a lousy scale to base truth upon. If I don't feel like it, but still do it, is it authentic? It is, because it's just skipping over the poorer and owning the better. And within myself I become richer, fuller for it - not by keeping score, but by not settling for the poorer. Weathering truth is a life based on making higher choices from our present baseline and authenticating our present.

And what sweet victory there can be.

An Attitude of Gratitude

Many years ago I listened to a tape from a Christian teacher named Russell Kelfer that encouraged me to have 'an attitude of gratitude' in all of life's situations, to look for the blessing behind the immediate crisis or disappointment. In the years since, I have found that this advice has kept me from self pity and despair, no matter what crisis or traumatic event life has brought. And I don't mean that I had to dig hard for them, I really mean that there were always several things to be thankful for. Maybe some times took me longer than others because I was too focused on the crisis at first, but once I started looking it never took very long to find how God had kept His Hand on us.

Around the Thanksgiving table this year, Russ asked us to each say something that we were thankful for. Family, home, job, God's love were all named, and for those things we are truly grateful to God. Our table was one short this year. Dad missed his favorite meal - our first Thanksgiving without him. I had to tell how thankful I was that I had been with Dad for the last week he was alive, without a clue it was his last. I had to tell Jess how thankful I was that her wedding had been that week, which is what had brought me home. At first I had been disappointed because the rest of my family couldn't make it during the time they had chosen for the wedding. But, oh how thankful I am now that God knew when I needed to be there and He knew that Dad would be handsome and smiling and happy for Jess' special day! We all treasure those last wonderful pictures of Dad and the fact that he was there to celebrate with Mom Jess and Tyler's wedding. Yes indeed, God is good.

We played Pictionary Telephone and Blackboard Pictionary and had a blast, laughing the whole time. What a great day!

Did I miss the rest of the family that weren't there? Oh, yes. Was I sad that Dad wasn't there with Mom? I sure was. Do we have struggles and worries? Absolutely.

But digging deeper floods me with an attitude of gratitude.

Goo

It was pumpkin carving time in the Burney house last week, and it wasn't just for the 'young in years'; it was for the 'young in heart'.

Ben and JoAnne brought over their pumpkins to add to ours, and we set them out on the kitchen table to go to work on our masterpieces. Each of us drew out a design that would impress and elicit oooh's and ahhhh's from the others and then set to work carving. Russ decided to have Mom, at 81, draw his pattern for him, figuring competition was sharp and he could use the help. Ben had his farm scene already planned and set to carving right away, while Jeremiah found an idea online and free-handed his witch-across-the-moon pattern, adjusting for size and his pumpkin's unique characteristics to come up with his potential champion jack-o-lantern. I drew a cat face on mine, thinking of Brynne and Noah's new kitty and Leah and Alaina's 'Huck' whom they love. Mom set to work cutting out the cat face while I reached in grabbing out the 'guts'.



We all stood or sat around the table wearing our own 'hard at work' expression - tongue hanging out, lips clamped tightly by upper teeth, pursed lips, or slack-jawed... Yep, we were each determined to end up with the 2009's most impressive gourd! Getting gooey is just part of the process and orange slime dripped from our fingers as we dug out the seeds and set them aside for roasting - yum! Leah wasn't too sure she wanted anything to do with the goo, but after some experimental poking and tentative tries, she decided it wasn't so bad and dove in.



When all was said and done, we lit them up and, like every other year, oooh'd and ahhh'd over each one of them, declaring that one could not be chosen over the other. Then we took our picture to commemorate yet another year of Goo and fun together.

Parable

A week and a half ago we moved in. What a wonderful house and yard! Nice neighbors, too. It's soooo good to see the big sky and the way it is always changing, deer and turkeys in the yard, farm fields all around, and of course the skunks and raccoons competing for road space.

But, oh! How I miss little Brynnie! Her quiet little steps up the stairs to deliver paperwork and her pleased giggles when she scares me...or keeping me company working in her office corner, coloring, cutting, and drawing and using miles of scotch tape to decorate my office walls with her amazing budding-artist masterpieces. I miss earnest young Noah sharing the deep workings of his tremendous analytical mind, seeing beyond what is, to the why... I miss the cuddle times with both of them and feeling so much a part of their young lives - part of who they are becoming..tying the past and the present with the future. Can a heart really break??

I miss the others, too, more than I thought I would...I love being Gramma Linda and can't wait to see them at Christmas. While we didn't get together as often, we knew they were there just as they knew we were there - family and those wonderful, house-bursting holidays!

I think I am done with change - it's too hard, too sad, too much work. I want to stay put and be home base, calling the kids home - to stay, or at least to visit hoping to draw them nearer as they and we get older...

Metronome

In a few days it will be two months since Dad died...two months. Every once in a while, it washes over me as if I just got the news and I feel my brain struggling to grasp the thought that he is gone - really gone. And I watch my mother do the same. The other day she washed the clothes he was wearing when he died and it washed over us again. I almost felt a reluctance to have her wash them, not wanting to erase the physical evidence of his being...but I know it is part of staying in the living.

Dad's relationship with Jesus I am not sure of; I wish I could know for sure, but Dad was private about things like that. There were doors that you just didn't open, or when you tried, you found it locked and barred. For now, I will believe that Christ's blood washed him clean and that he is with his Savior, fully understanding the things he struggled with.

I was riding with two of my sons the other night and they were picking my brain, hearing things about me that they didn't ever remember hearing before. As I talked and they exclaimed over things they hadn't known, I realized that those things are almost another person, another life - I didn't remember that I remembered those things. It's odd how many lives I feel like I have lived in this one life.

We are about to enter into another life yet again, a new home in a new setting quite different from where we have been before. I lay awake last night going over things in my mind - what it would be like to live there, where I would put our furniture, wondering if our youngest would find good friends of upstanding character, and anxious to create memories in this new place which is the only thing that ever really makes a house a home. It will not be truly home until every one of our kids has been there to share in making memories, filling the walls with our laughter, sharing, and ghost pictures of our living. May it be a home whose family honors God while loving one another and living in a struggling world.