Archive for the 'Family Stuff' Category

In my post-Christmas, post-flu clean-up mode, I was scrubbing bathrooms this a.m. The hall bath is a guest bath, so though it is often used by visiting grandchildren, et al, the tub is seldom used, and is therefore not on the regular weekly cleaning list. So it has, apparently, been long neglected, as I discovered today when I pulled back the shower curtain. There was my missing scrub brush which I forgot to put away when I was scrubbing the window screens some weeks ago! Aha! I was so pleased to find that thing because I had been hunting for it. But imagine my delight when I also found the three, or was it four, missing green beans! There they were, much to my surprise. And mighty glad I am that I didn’t send some unsuspecting guest in for a bath.

This is quite a little surprise I have to tell you about. Today I had coffee with a college gal who is heading home to Florida after finishing her degree at New St. Andrews. We have gotten together from time to time over the years, and this time was to say our goodbyes. She brought me a little something that her mother had sent for me. It was a beautiful little silver sugar spoon, and as I looked closer I realized Wilson was engraved on the handle. And then when I looked a little more closely, I saw it had E.C. Wilson engraved on the handle. This brought me up short. These are my mother-in-law Bessie’s initials (Elizabeth Catherine). And then I read the note. She bought the little spoon at an antique store in Monterey, California a couple of years ago and was saving it for a friend. But then she noticed the intials, and she knew that Bessie had passed away a few weeks ago, so she sent it to me instead. The amazing part of all this is that Jim and Bessie lived in Monterey while Jim attended the Navy War College around 1954. Then they moved  to Japan, where Heather was born. I’m wondering if this could have be a wedding gift that got left behind when it came time to lighten their load to move overseas. Who knows where that little spoon has been all these years? Rachel commented to me that it was kind of God to save Bessie’s keepsakes for us by having other people hold on to them! What a sweet treasure to receive it now.

My husband’s mother, Bessie, passed on this morning at age 91. We are all filled with sweet remembrances of her life and her character. (And she was a character!) And she was a sweet friend.

Some time ago she gave me a copy of the collected poems of Amy Carmichael (called Mountain Breezes), and she marked all her favorites with a scrap of paper for me. She loved Amy Carmichael’s life and work as a missionary in India. Bessie herself served as a missionary in Japan before she met and married Jim, so Amy’s works resonated with her. Over the many years that the two of them ministered together, I’m not sure if she ever missed a day reading Edges of His Ways or her well-worn copy of Daily Light.

I thought I would print up one of those favorite poems today, to commemorate what she had longed for as long as I have known her: her own homecoming.

Make Me Thy Fuel

From prayer that asks that I may be

Sheltered from the winds that beat on Thee,

From fearing when I should aspire,

From faltering when I should climb higher,

From silken self, O Captain, free

Thy soldier who would follow thee.

From subtle love of softening things,

From easy choices, weakenings,

(Not thus are spirits fortified,

Not this way went the Crucified)

From all that dims Thy Calvary,

O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Give me the love that leads the way,

The faith that nothing can dismay,

The hope no disappointments tire,

The passion that will burn like fire;

Let me not sink to be a clod:

Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.