The set of the sails

I decided this morning it was time for Job again.  I return to that book over and over, and every time I learn something new. My fabulous Savior teaches me something new.
 This time I am reading a book, Portraits of Perseverance, by Henry Gariepy, along with it. I am only on page 17, so I can’t really say much yet, but this poem struck me this morning.

 One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
‘Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As we voyage along through life:
‘Tis the set of the soul
That decides the goal
And not the calm or the strife. 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The wind can be strong. The storms can be rough. Sometimes it may feel that we have nothing to say about where we are going and how we will get there.
 And yet...it is still our choice where we set the sails.
 It is our decision whether we try.
 It is our decision whether we trust.

 And trust, trust is the word.

 As the Psalms say so beautifully, we KNOW who stirs the winds. We KNOW who calms the winds.

https://www.bible.com/116/psa.107.25,29.nlt

 So, my friends, take a breath. Be still, and rest.
 Then set your sails, set your soul, and remember that the storm doesn’t have the final say.

Just two words...

When it is all said and done, and life is over, what do you want to leave behind?

I was at Momma’s for a couple of weeks, helping her to sort and clear out and get ready for a move.  Emilee and Kevin have bought a bigger place and have construction going in the basement so Mom can have her own apartment there. They have just added baby number five to their family and right this minute it is crazy there, but soon construction will be done, new baby will be settled and Mom can start a new chapter.

 But right then, I was helping her to pack up the chapter that is closing.

 One evening we went through “the cedar chest”. It is full of the most important things that relatives have left behind. The favorite hat pins, and lace, and gloves. Baby shoes, and blankets and hair. Diaries and Bibles and scrapbooks.

 I cried multiple times. For several different reasons, really, but mostly because of words. Perhaps my favorite words were "fairly recent", in cedar chest measurements. My mom’s mom had started a “my memories” journal and just a few pages in she writes “My life has turned upside down. My Don had an aneurysm at the base of his brain May 16, 1986 and he has been in a coma ever since.”  Seeing her call him “my Don”, the way I call Andy “my Andy” left me sobbing. He never woke up, staying in a coma for almost exactly two years. I was so very young when he died...I had never really thought of how that felt to her. I only saw the loss of my grandfather, not the loss of “Her Don”. Suddenly, all of these years later, I hurt FOR her.

 She came back several years later and finished her memories journal, and wrote one for him as well, with the stories he had shared with her. The stories of their life together were beautiful. They were inspiring. They were PRICELESS.

Probably the last picture of all of us together? Definitely the last I have right now. There was one more grand baby born before his aneurysm, but I don't know if we were all together for a picture. I am the one with curls, far left. 

My mom and her parents. 

 So, what do I want to leave behind me? What will go in a cedar chest when I am gone? Hat pins and lace are fun. Baby shoes and blankets are sweet. But words, words are priceless. So, I want to share with you a few words that have meant something to me recently.

 Back in the mid 1960's my grandfather, "Her Don" was the pastor of a small church in Indiana. One afternoon he and one of the elders sat in a diner discussing what was next. Another job had been offered to him and he thought that, perhaps, he had done all that he could do in this small town. What more could he do there?  But, as another customer walked out he left a simple scrap of paper placemat on the table as he passed by.

 Just two words.

 "Stop limiting"

 "Her Don" got up, tried to follow, couldn't find a person who was leaving, no one in the parking lot. Simply gone. As he returned to the table he really felt God telling him to go to the church. When he and the friend arrived there, two other elders were there waiting, having felt the prompting of God to come too. And right there, right that moment, the things that could still be accomplished, the unlimited working of God, even in a small town, was revealed.

 Just two words.


The same week that I was finding that piece of placemat that had been saved for 50 years, and hearing the story that goes with it, my 16 year old was in a different state; working part time, college part time, highschool part time = crazy busy.
 And yet, God spoke to him too.

He calls it the napkin philosophy, since he wrote it originally on a napkin during a quiet moment at work.

 "Just because something is written on a seemingly insignificant canvas does not mean it itself is insignificant."

 I find it breathtaking that while I was finding words on a paper placemat my son was hearing about words on an insignificant canvas.

 What, my friend, does this mean for you? What words are you missing because they are simple? What words are you avoiding because they are boring? What words are you NOT writing, because you only have a scrap of paper placemat to write them on?

 Stop Limiting my friends.