Plentiful Pillowcases

She made us these pillowcases with her sewing machine, all of her grandchildren.  Eighteen grandchildren, and we each got pillowcases -- two each.  She made sure we each got two, and sometimes a blanket or a smell-good bathset in a little basket.
She made sure each one of us got a present from her at Christmas time. 



And if you wanted a Christmas present you went to her house.  That's the way it was, as it should be.  And we, all of us, went.

So, we went there to open Christmas presents.  We went there and nowhere else to eat Thanksgiving dinner.  We shelled peas there at harvest time with buckets, bowls, paper sacks, sore thumbs, and great conversation.  We climbed up on the forbidden roof and picked our own switches, and got the spankings of our lives...we darted in and out to say hello, and to get hugs when we were running low.  That was where we went when we fell down running, fell from trees, or skinned our hides to hell and back, or when, as upstanding citizens, we needed to let her know that our cousins weren't obeying the bible.



Her house smelled of old wood and books and good cookin'.  It was nestled beneath the oaks and pines where mosquitoes and fleas thrived off of the many little legs and the huge amount of shade.  And there was plenty of land to run around on, plenty of trees to hide behind, plenty of room to form whatever exclusive cliques between ourselves and the other many cousins that ran around behind the same three-foot-high chain-link fence.  My three sisters, and I, and our mother, and my aunt and cousins all lived in houses within that freest of confines, with regular visits of cousins and other aunts.  And any adult physically present within the commune of that fence was allowed to whip us if we were misbehaving.  As it should have been.  And the matriarch of the Freest of Confines played the songs and sang the words of the first songs we ever heard on her organ.


I remember the sound of her playing it.  We all do.  We heard her sing about her love of the Lord as we learned to walk, and play. 

When she wasn't at home she was at church singing about her love for the Lord there, or driving the kids on her school bus.  We would listen for her bus and meet her at the end of her long dirt driveway at the road, and she would let us get on and ride down behind her house where she would park it.  What a magical place to be, on that bus when there were no other children on it.  Then she'd sweep the aisles of the bus, and sing about the Lord, and tell us to lift up our feet.

I see it now, the way she lived her entire life to teach us that through everything, through all of the work, and the heat, and the hard, through the times of confrontation, through hospitals and sickness, through all of the things that didn't work out, through happy Christmases and pillow cases, her life was this story of love, this list of the many songs to sing.


And now, years later, as we rest our heads on plentiful pillowcases, on everything she made, as we obtain our rest by way of the hands that loved us, we find that her love lives for eternity.


We rest our heads on her love, and continue her story.


Myra Lee Dorman Kelly

Birth:	Jul. 17, 1932 Dowagiac Cass County Michigan, USA
Death:	Aug. 23, 2012 Escambia County Florida, USA
Myralee Dorman Kelly joined her husband in heaven Thursday, August 23, after a courageous battle with lung cancer. Born in Dowagiac, Michigan, Myralee moved with her family to Florida at the age of nine. She graduated from Tate High School in 1950. Myralee was an active member of Oakhaven Baptist Church, was a pastor's wife, and for over 40 years, served as organist for several area churches. Myralee is preceded in death by her husband of 43 years, Joseph D. Kelly; her mother, Gwendolyn Dorman Hopkins; her father, Floyd Dorman; her brother, Billy Dorman; and her Sister, Freida Renfroe. She is survived by her daughters, Paulette Smith (Rex), Cynthia Watson (Donald), Kathryn Taylor (Ronald), and Vivian Cockrell (Billy); 18 grandchildren; 40 great-grandchildren; two sisters; Barbara Hawthorne (Donald) and Martha Emery (Kenneth); one brother, Bernie Dorman (Bonnie); sister-in-law, Evelyn Hines (Bill); numerous nieces and nephews, and good friends.

Leaves Like These

Who says God can't appear like He did in a burning bush all that time ago? 

For as I smoked my cigarette and said, "Take this death from me,"  I looked into the small tree before me.  And the branches moved like free-flowing vines, and the leaves moved with green vibrant hope, and the branches reached like arms waving to get my attention, while the branches of all others were still.

And it held me enthralled as His Spirit filled my eyes and heart.

He said, "My peace is before you, and it is always here.  The calm you seek is I am always here. 
Knowledge is in your awe of Me, wisdom, because you ask Me.  Love, because you need Me.
Peace, for you trust and believe and obey Me.

And I reach for you like these branches.
And you are the wind between leaves like these."


Leaves like these, leaves like these

In none but one tree.
In a face so clear one feels it.

In a life so pure, like air
It is seen and then not seen.
And awake are the eyes that search for Him
And content is the heart that finds Him.
And it matters neither the day nor hour
For His presence never leaves the heart
That holds Him dear.

He tells us, "Be still," when we know not His will
But with leaves like these, leaves like these
All is well, all is well.

There are visions for the eyes that know He is here
In leaves like these, leaves like these.
Joy to the hearts that feel the breath of wind
The touch that doesn't come from skin.

Let none distract us from His love
Let eyes like ours be fixed upon
Leaves like these, leaves like these
In none but One Tree.

Fro Glory

There is nothing softer than my children's freshly shorn hair there spread out on the floor.  Everytime I sweep it up I touch it just to marvel at it's softness.  Three different types of hair -- thick and straight, curly and thin, and blonde feathers... when the Lord's blessings are full to overflowing, overflowing like this hair on the floor.  There is so much of it it's almost this mess of blessings.  What am I to do with it all??? 

I spend much of my time caring for my blessings, and gathering up the abundance of them to give away so that we have room to walk in our home.  I have never known a love such as this.



Now if I walk outside beneath the beauty of the trees, the feel of the soft grass on my feet, the caress and smell of the unbiased breeze, and get into my man-made car and curse God for a flat tire I get that He did not divinely and graciously manifest me a miracle in reconnected treads, and think, "forget Him.  He doesn't exist anyway"...  it is then I fail to see that He held it together with His finger until I got off the interstate with my children in the car.

What is my knowledge, and how omnipotent am I that I could possibly judge what is, and what is not, fair?  How could I possibly think I know all of the things that should go on in a mind?  Who am I that, no matter my age, I am your superior?  He is the "I Am".  And I am the "it is what it is" -- the "it is what it is" that should not judge.



That woman who cares for her sick parents and family, and works two jobs, and never has time for herself got a bad deal in life?  Is it really a burden that she loves that much?  That woman that cares for her mother who has followed the circle of life and becomes like a helpless baby once again....Is it really a pity that she does for her mother what her mother did for her?  To become selfless angel incarnate, finally?

I woke up today to write with a mind covered with a head of hair I had always hated:  Big, and curly, and bushy, that would tickle the nose of any man who could get close enough... but my God loves my hair, and He looks down on it and marvels at all of the strands of His own creation.  So much so that He allows it grow all of my life...even after death it continues to grow, the crown of this physical body.  Just as my spirit continues to grow beyond death into what is good and right.  As the bad now dies a slow death the good takes its place.

Sometimes what we find hideous is, in fact, glorious.  And so, we look twice at the texture.





Proverbs 3:5
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.



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