Touching a Fairy Tale

“No matter how forgotten and neglected, there is a child in all of us who is not just willing to believe in the possibility that maybe fairy tales are true after all but who is to some degree in touch with that truth.

You pull the shade on the snow falling, white on white, and the child comes to life for a moment. There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody’s voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears.

Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?

The child in us lives in a world where nothing is too familiar or unpromising to open up into the world where a path unwinds before our feet into a deep wood, and when that happens, neither the world we live in nor the world that lives in us can ever entirely be home again.”

Frederick Buechner – Telling the Truth

 

via Touching a Fairy Tale.

One Day They Will be Grown

It’s not easy, in the midst of a myriad of parenting duties, to keep in mind that one day these children will be grown. One day – sooner probably than I realize – my influence in their lives will no longer be the same. Yes, I will always be their mother, but the mommy dynamics change drastically once they move out. Move out? Ack! (Breathe. Just breathe.)

One day each of my children will come to recognize their God-given calling and realize their life’s passions. One day each of them will reach the point where they have to decide what path they will take. Will it be the road less traveled?

I hope. I pray.

And I think that a major factor that will help to answer that question is my frame of mind as their mother. (The same for fathers too.) If I strive to see every day as an opportunity to prepare them for the day they will be making their own decisions, determining their own road, it just might make a difference.

I hope. I pray.

That they will thrill to the idea of serving God and helping others, find joy in living a life of purpose, and feel the sheer delight of delighting in God and finding that their heart’s deepest desires are returned to them … Or transformed into something greater, deeper, more glorious.

That they will come to know, in the midst of joy or sorrow, a Presence that remains with them through it all. And that during every step they take, they will feel the support and love of their father and me.

I hope. I pray.

Sacred Love

I asked my daughter, who devours as many books as possible on any given day, if any of the books she’s read recently are about blessings in disguise. She said she didn’t know and I went back to the drawing board. She bounded into the dining room a minute later, however, to let me know that she thought of “Where the Red Fern Grows.”

“Is it about good things that happen even through bad times?” I asked her. I read that book so long ago all I could remember was that it was about a dog, and it was sad because a dog died.

“Yes.”

“Did a dog die?”

“Both of them died,” my daughter told me, “but then a red fern grew where they died.”

“Why was that special?” I asked.

“Because of the legend,” Jessica answered. I asked her to get me the book, and while she was searching for it, I Googled it. It went like this:

“I had heard the old Indian legend about the red fern. How a little Indian boy and girl were lost in a blizzard and had frozen to death. In the spring, when they were found, a beautiful red fern had grown up between their two bodies. The story went on to say that only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never died; where one grew, that spot was sacred.”

I found that quote courtesy of Goodreads. That particular quote got 27 “likes.” The following quote got more likes than any other for the book – 61 likes:

“After the last shovel of dirt was patted in place, I sat down and let my mind drift back through the years. I thought of the old K. C. Baking Powder can, and the first time I saw my pups in the box at the depot. I thought of the fifty dollars, the nickels and dimes, and the fishermen and blackberry patches. 

I looked at his grave and, with tears in my eyes, I voiced these words: “You were worth it, old friend, and a thousand times over.” 

I’m surprised my daughter thought of that book. It’s not the more obvious kind of “blessing in disguise” — to lose a pet, two of them actually. But then I thought that, regardless of the pain and sorrow of loss, love is always worth it, a thousand times over. And then some. Love is its own blessing. Its own reward.

And in that place where love is, angels are. And it is always sacred.

[Read the full story at “A Purposed Life” via Sacred Love.]