“When you awake in the night,
transport yourself quickly in spirit before the Tabernacle, saying:
‘Behold, my God, I come to adore You, to praise, thank, and love you,
and to keep you company with all the Angels.'”
St. John Vianney
(sunset over the the gulf /Julie Cook / 2018)
****ok, so I no longer have this particular herniated disc of which this
post highlights, but rather I still, however, find sleep oh so very elusive.
Be it age, hormones, anxiety….who knows the reasons…
all I do know is that both night and sleep have become my equal nemeses…
And thus, I find it perhaps timely that I opt to repeat this post…
as I continue attempting to quiet my mind with the ever ancient prayer…
Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner…
——–
The past several nights I have woken up around 2:30 AM—wide awake.
Hot.
Sweaty.
Uncomfortable.
Despite the AC running and my husband gently snoring, sleep for me is over.
My back aching with the slightest of movements–
and now an aching neck and shoulder add to my misery.
It hurts to turn, to roll, to twist.
Dreams, when they come, have been vivid, leaving me wondering and pondering.
Pondering much too much for such an unwelcoming hour.
Time passes with no relief as the numbers of the clock tick on and on.
No calm nor slumber.
Sleep, for me, is often elusive but more so as of late.
When the morning light comes, it is almost rude and unkind as
I find it harder and harder to get up since sleep now tries to
arrive right when it’s time to get up.
Exhausted and ill, I grouse at the day.
Last night, my brain turned on, my eyes popped open and it was only 2:30—
my mind racing.
I ruminated on and on like a cow chewing cud over my latest odd dream.
Unresolved ancient issues or just the aching of a herniated disc?
I examine the past.
“NO”, I shout to my hyper-focused mind…” this is not the time!”
So my brain now toys with me, as the unending partial lyrics to a song
begin playing over and over as the earworm bores deeper into my brain.
“STOP”, I silently plead to my restless brain….”just let me rest”,
I implore.
And so…I pray.
Focusing on that which is greater than the madness, greater than my weariness.
I offer myself over to You of Lord as a sacrifice…
Hear my prayers oh Lord…
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner”
Over and over I repeat the soothing ancient and time worn words until
I sense my mind and body finally quieting in unison.
Thank you Lord…
“My Lord, I offer you myself in turn as a sacrifice of thanksgiving.
You have died for me, and I in turn make myself over to you.
I am not my own.
You have bought me; I will by my own act and deed complete the purchase.
My wish is to be separated from everything of this world;
to cleanse myself simply from sin; to put away from me even what is innocent,
if used for its own sake, and not for yours. I put away reputation and honor,
and influence, and power, for my praise and strength shall be in you.
Enable me to carry out what I profess.”
Bl. John Henry Newman, p. 135
An Excerpt From
Everyday Meditations
Can’t you see (I’m gonna take a freight train) can’t you see
(I’m down at the station lord) what that woman (ain’t never gonna go back) been doin’ to me
Can’t you see oh can’t you see (gonna ride me the southbound)
(All the way to Georgia) what that woman (till the train run out of track) been doin’ to me
Marshal Tucker Band 1973
(from N-lightenment.com)
Ok, I’m diverging today entirely from any topic we’ve been riding lately.
Driving basically off the cliff and jumping the tracks of all subject matter.
No politics.
No debate observations.
No current civil unrest rants.
No religious tit for tat…
Something entirely off track.
That Marshal Tucker Band song up above, that I’ve allowed to open this post,
is from my youthful days of high school and it came racing to my mind
yesterday morning.
It came after I’d woken from the longest and oddest dream I think I can ever
remember having.
Now, remember I’ve been fighting the withdrawals from my HRT (hormone replacement therapy)
for almost 3 months.
There has been NO, I repeat, NO sleep worth mentioning in all that time—
only insomnia and rolling hot flashes on and on all night long.
I begged my doctor to do something.
Yes begged and pleaded actually…that’s how bad me not sleeping becomes.
Reluctantly she put me back on the HRT but it is a dose fit for a mere ant.
And an ant’s dose isn’t doing me any good.
So yes, me without any real consequential sleep is not pretty.
Just ask my long-suffering husband.
He now gets very little sleep as well because all I do is toss and turn and
kick off covers all night long.
So the night before last, I doubled the CBD oil dose (yes the doctor said she
hears it helps with hot flashes but I take it for IBS and no it is not
helping with the hot flashes) plus doubled my IBS meds.
And so I actually slept without fighting my hormonal self.
Maybe I had drugged myself…but I digress.
But in that sleep came that bizarre dream.
They say that dreams are actually quite brief but I swear this particular dream went
on all night.
Even when I’d groggily come to some sort of consciousness,
I’d quickly tell the dream part of my brain to let it keep playing out because
I wanted to see how it all ended.
I believe that dreams are a mixed bag.
I believe God can speak to us in our dreams.
I believe that the devil can speak to us in our dreams…which are more like nightmares
but again, I digress.
And I believe we can speak to ourselves in our dreams.
So this dream had a younger me and an old childhood friend galivanting about.
I’ve not seen this friend of mine in years so that was the first odd thing.
Plus we were more like our younger teenage selves.
Next, we ran into a former President and first lady.
Now that is really odd because I’ve not thought much of this presidential duo
in several years. A bit of a past president but not too long ago.
Think W and Laura…
And I usually don’t think that much about presidents, let alone first ladies.
There was a woman who I think was actually that first lady.
She was kind and soft-spoken.
In the dream, something bad had happened to her,
a terrible betrayal and I had known about it.
And I felt terrible for her.
Yet there was nothing I could have done to stop it as I realized the trauma when she had–
that being after the fact.
Yet I ached for her anyway.
I can remember looking at her and she looking at me—so I impulsively took her in my arms to
hug her and offer comfort.
Not that I’m a big hugger in real life, but I do hug those who I feel are in need.
People who hurt do need hugs, but overall I’m not touchy-feely.
However, it was the look on her face, the love in her eyes towards me,
and her embrace of me that was what got to me.
Now granted her face is not the face of the real first lady in question.
Dreams work that way…you think it’s a real person but the faces are
never quite what we actually know them to be.
I woke almost with tears in my eyes.
And then started ruminating.
And then the Marshal Tucker Band song just revved up, playing in my head.
And no, the CBD oil does not contain any THC!
This craziness is all me and me alone.
Now we all know that I’m adopted.
We all know how that crazy story played out as I’ve written at length about
being adopted and having learned the identity (sort of) of my birth parents
all these many years later— written just last year.
I know who my biological father was—and from everything I’ve heard, he was a
good and kind man.
My birth mother on the other hand, who is, yes, still living, has not been as kind.
She let her lawyer inform a social worker that I was in the past and that
was where I was to stay.
And I was like, ‘Ok, you’re what…84? and I’m almost 61??…so yeah,
I’ll just stay in that past.’
Paaaallleeeezzzze.
Anyway, I did come to a peace about all of that a while back…something I’d also written
about…so it’s good to have all this material to write about I suppose.
But what I knew from this dream was that something deep inside of me yearns for that
sort of love that I saw in that woman’s eye for me and felt in her embrace.
Something I’ve never seen or felt before.
Nope never.
A deep abiding, unconditional love of a mother to her child.
And all I know is that I wanted it…or shall we say, want it.
Yep, you read it— a 61-year-old sleep-deprived woman is pining for a mother’s love.
Go figure!?!
And yes, I’ve written about this before as well…my adopted mom and I,
before her premature death to cancer at 53, had had a fractious relationship while
I was growing up—especially when I was a teenager.
But I don’t know too many moms and daughters who delight in one another
during said teenage years…
We were much closer when she suddenly got sick and died prematurely.
As that angst-driven teen, I was headstrong, stubborn, and detached from both my mom and my family.
Our family was a dysfunctional hot mess and I resented every minute of it.
I’ve written about that too…
all about my brother’s mental illness and his inability to cope
with his having been adopted…and thankfully we were not biologically related.
So you would think I’d quit having these random, out of the blue, type dreams…
but nooooooo.
And no I don’t need therapy.
I have been prayed over long ago for healing and healing came.
But to still want that sort of love is not to simply be dismissed
or even purged.
There’s something there and it keeps knocking
at a deep door in my being.
It’s a good thing to want love and to be loved.
I don’t think there’s a whole lot of that running around this country of ours these days.
So maybe that’s it.
God is bringing the idea of unconditional love to the forefront of my thoughts
because we are all living knee-deep in divisive hate.
And no, that is NOT the fault of the sitting president…it is
the fault of every human being who is ranting and raving these days.
So yes, I still yearn for that embrace.
Just as I still yearn to see that look of love in some unknown mother’s eye.
And I suspect, one day…I will both see and feel that look and that embrace…
So here’s to love.
Ture abiding love…
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
1 John 4:16
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139:23-24
An odd thing happened two nights ago.
Now you need to remember that I was taken off my HRT (hormone replacement therapy)
about 7 weeks ago.
Hormones, I’d been on nearly 30 years.
Sleep has never been great, but take away the hormones and things immediately went
from bad to really really bad in literally a single night’s time.
However two nights ago, despite battling the need to breathe while living
with a sinus infection along with poison ivy, I was actually asleep.
How do I know?
I was flat on my back.
I’m usually a side to stomach sleeper yet at some point or other,
when I’m really asleep, asleep—
I’m always mysteriously flat on my back.
At 1:30 in the morning, I became aware that I was itching.
Groggily I started scratching at my poison ivy now spreading across my torso.
Suddenly in my head, I was hearing a song that I know I had not heard playing that day
as some sort of background music in a store.
Clear as day, playing lyrically in my head.
It was a song I’ve always liked..a 90’s sort of song…Why I’ve always liked it,
I don’t know, but it has always made me feel a bit heavy-hearted and melancholy.
Again, I’m not sure as to why.
Although it’s an older song, it seems to still be quite relevant.
Rousing my brain to full awake mode, I opted to get up and head into the bathroom
in order to slather on some more anti-itch medicine— all the
while that song kept ringing in my head…
“And the same black line that was drawn on you
Was drawn on me
And now it’s drawn me in…”
I crawled back into bed now restless as my thoughts were racing.
All the while still itching and listening to non-existent music playing.
Why was this song stuck in my head—especially when I was good and asleep??
The following morning, after grabbing my coffee, I googled the song.
According to Wikipedia , The lyrics are based on Dylan’s (Jakob Dylan)
own experiences while living in New York City, in particular, the story of a homeless man
who would sit outside Dylan’s window and play the same songs every day.
One day, the man was gone, but his things were still there,
until gradually people started taking them.
Well, that seemed to make it all feel even worse…doubly more sad than before.
So I kept digging a bit further.
What did the Bible have to say about a black line??
As I kept looking, I was constantly being redirected to the mark of Cain.
Hummmm.
Remember, being raised a poor illiterate Episcoplain kid, the breadth and depth
of Bible study was never my forte.
But I was now intrigued.
I knew Cain and Abel…really the very first tale of humankind’s lowest moments.
Or actually, that might have been their parents…but either way, we humans weren’t off
to the best of starts.
Choice…we never seem to have mastered choice…but I digress.
Why would God want me to think about all of this at 1:30 in the morning?
I know, I know…time to God is irrelevant but to a woman who hardly ever has deep
sleep, as in REM, I was just a tad frustrated.
There were (are) a lot of articles on the web about the mark of Cain
and many of them have some sort of racist connotation.
Naturally…it always goes back to race.
It seems race has been with us since the beginning of time and we still don’t know how to
deal with it—- gees…!
But again, I digress.
So after reading, I managed to find an interesting article on Bibleodyssey.com
written by Eva Mroxzek, an assistant professor of Jewish studies at Indiana University.
She hit on the whole good mark, bad mark thinking…
Cain killed his brother and God marked him for life.
The question…was or is…. was or is the mark a mark of shame or a mark of protection?
Was it leprosy?
A ‘keep your distance’ sort of mark?
Did God turn his skin a darker color?
Did God have a horn grow out of Cain’s head?
Did it have to do with circumcision?
Did God give Cain a dog?
Huh???
Did God have mercy on Cain and forgive him for having killed his brother…the first
recorded murder in human history only to followed by the greatest act of forgiveness??
But wait…was that the greatest act of forgiveness or was that actually
during Good Friday…
digressing again…
So, was the mark a mark of forgiveness…
On and on the so-called wise ones have debated this issue for eons.
And yet oddly here it comes visiting me at 1:30 in the morning by way of a 1996 song.
Ms, Mroczek notes at the end of her article… “But the most striking interpretations rely on a later meaning of the Hebrew word oth:
a letter of the alphabet.
A midrashic text suggests that God inscribed a letter on Cain’s arm as a mark of protection
(Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer 21).
Thus, the mark of Cain becomes a sacred sign.
In another midrash (Tanhuma Genesis 10),
it is the word Sabbath that is inscribed on Cain’s face—after the personified Sabbath day
itself begged God to forgive Cain’s sin.
And a targum—an Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Scriptures—
identifies the mark as the holiest sign of all: God inscribes on Cain
“the great and honorable name of the LORD,” namely the tetragrammaton,
the four-letter name of God (YHWH).
Why the song?
Why the direction toward Cain?
And is this a message of foreboding or passage of forgiveness.
I’ll let you know what happens when the next hot flash rouses me from
what little precious sleep there is…I’m sure God will have His say…
I just wish I was wise enough to figure out where He was taking me.
But if I knew that…there’d be so many answers to so many questions…
Heartbreak does seem to be happeing on all sorts of 6th Avenues across this Nation…
Sirens ring, the shots ring out
A stranger cries, screams out loud
I had my world strapped against my back
I held my hands, never knew how to act
And the same black line that was drawn on you
Was drawn on me
And now it’s drawn me in
6th Avenue heartache
Below me was a homeless man
I’m singin’ songs I knew complete
On the steps alone, his guitar in hand
It’s fifty years, stood where he stands
Now walkin’ home on those streets
The river winds move my feet
Subway steam, like silhouettes in dreams
They stood by me, just like moonbeams
Look out the window, down upon that street
And gone like a midnight was that man
But I see his six strings laid against that wall
And all his things, they all look so small
I got my fingers crossed on a shooting star
Just like me just moved on
When confronted with two evils,
a man will always choose the most attractive.
Anonymous
(the quince faded and yet in the summer’s dogdays, are now reving back up / Julie Cook / 2020)
With little to no time to tend to the yard as I would normally do this time of year…sadly,
surreally, this time of year has not been like previous times of year…
So having taken out the garbage the other evening, I glanced once again forlornly,
over to the ever-growing leggy quince, the fledgling maple trees,
and some stubborn resprouting crepe myrtles all dotting the back bank…
Disgusted by what I saw…weeds were thriving amongst that which was treasured.
Neglected entirely too long!
Is this not the current story of our lives?
The negative now flourishing amongst that which we hold dear because of our distractions,
our worries, our heaviness…
So I threw the trash in the bin and grabbed my clippers…enough already!!!!
I went over the quince first.
I wanted to hit the high spots…that obnoxious giant poke salat and those
annoying runners from the crepe myrtle that was cut down years ago and those shoots
from the maple trees…
but as I clipped and yanked with the ire and determination of a woman frustrated with
much more than aggravating weeds…something caught my eye…
WHAT???
Hidden amongst the quice was something rather unkind and most unwelcomed.
Poison Ivy.
Or was it worse..was it the dreaded thunder wood?
I had already clipped and pulled, without my gloves mind you, several of these
“pesky” weeds, before realizing these pesky weeds were much more insidious than shoots,
runners or the blooming plants from random dropped seeds by passing birds.
I dropped my bundle of weeds, along with my clippers, practically running inside to immediately
wash my hands.
The next day I saw this:
Okay I thought, I have prescription cream for such…I’ve got this.
The day after that, two more spots on my shoulder.
Okay, more cream.
The day after that, after itching through much of the night, may we now times these
few red blistery spots by at least 100 that now currently cover my entire torso.
The doctor gave me a steroid shot today and a prednisone pack.
Did I mention the 6 or more hot flashes I’m already experiencing throughout the night
due to stopping the HRT?
Itching, hot flashes…
Sleep?!
HA!
Insomnia is my middle name!
Don’t worry about that twitching eye, it’s trained on the madness raging all around us.
Yet in all of this, I was reminded that where we think beauty and peace reside,
where we believe calm and simplicity rest, our ancient nemesis does not sleep.
Remember this as you ponder the current madness ravaging our nation.
(Christ smashing the head of the serpent in the Garden / The Passion of the Christ)
Be sober-minded; be watchful.
Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8
In 2020, Americans are going to be forced to choose between two opposing visions:
the pro-American vision of President Abraham Lincoln
and the deeply anti-American vision of the modern left…
The modern left’s outlook is radically different from —
and deeply hostile toward — the classic definitions of
American liberty and history.
Newt Gingrich
Yep, it’s hard to keep up if you’re of a certain age.
And perhaps even harder if you make the conscious decision to abstain from
social media…
Because it appears that social media is THE place to learn all sorts of new words,
both good and bad, and oh so part of our ‘woke’ culture.
According to an article on business2community.com: The Oxford English Dictionary has added a plethora of new words to their online database.
Those searching their dictionary can now find the definitions of words such
as “woke,” “hygge” and “post-truth,” which they named last year’s Word of the Year.
One of the most notable entries for many on social media was “woke,”
a slang entry that was met with both praise and backlash.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “woke” as:
well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination
and injustice; frequently in stay woke (often used as an exhortation).
In later use perhaps popularized through its association with
African-American civil rights activism
(in recent years particularly the Black Lives Matter movement),
and by the lyrics of the 2008 song Master Teacher by American singer-songwriter Erykah Badu,
in which the words I stay woke serve as a refrain.
In addition to having an original meaning of simply “awake,” the adjectival “woke”
has been around far longer than some may think.
According to Oxford Dictionaries, the earliest use in a figurative sense was
in a 1962 New York Times article.
Titled “If You’re Woke, You Dig It,”
it “describes how white beatniks were appropriating black slang at the time.”
The term is now widely used to challenge others to be more aware of
injustices in the world.
It seems that the folks of all things dictionary, be that Merriam-Webster, Oxford or others,
have actually added 600 new words this past year.
At this rate, my communication skills will no longer be woke but more like asleep…
And I for one find such words stupid…as in dumb, useless and if the truth be told, lazy–
as they are nothing more than slang.
There already exist some pretty great civil descriptors out there–
of which mean very much the same.
Yet I wonder…is it because these existing words are more pointed and
seemingly painfully direct…Because we know this progressive culture of ours is actually
afraid of pointed, direct and painful.
And as a small aside, might I just add that I am sick and tired of hearing,
seeing, reading the ‘F’ word at every turn. We went to the movies last evening
to see the movie 1917 and in the very first preview of coming movies, Will Smith opened
the preview spouting off the F word…sigh…
And despite my having written many a post of the use of vulgar slang as being now
acceptable, I am digressing…
So all this talk of culture, words, and of being woke had me thinking when I caught
the following article by Newt Gingrich.
If anyone out there is woke (please note that my Grammarly correction wants that to read ‘is waking’),
I would think it would be Newt.
As a history professor, author, historian and former Speaker of the House,
Newt knows a thing or two when he looks back while looking forward.
Here are a few tidbits from his latest article followed by a link for the full
story.
Newt Gingrich: In 2020, Abraham Lincoln will be controversial and divisive.
(Yes, Lincoln!) Here’s why
Lincoln clearly admitted that the work of freedom was unfinished and that we owe it to those
who gave their lives to continue the work of extending and improving liberty for all people.
In fact, Lincoln said it is our duty to extend “under God, … a new birth of freedom.”
(Of course, the anti-religious left would scoff at the reference to God.
Yet, both Lincoln and Washington shared a belief that America existed because of
Divine Providence’s benevolence.)
We have moved from government of the people to government of the experts.
The gap between Lincoln’s belief in the people and the contempt elitists such
as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.,
have for those who Hillary Clinton called “deplorables” tells you a lot about the gap
between Lincoln’s values and the values of the modern American left.
One of the great challenges for the Trump administration and its allies is
to re-center government on Lincoln’s values and dismantle the elitist
“bureaucrats know best” model that now defines so much of our government.
[Our] love of neighbor is genuine love (instead of common interest) only if it includes the
love of God and leaves the other free for God.
Love of neighbor finds its fulfillment in the love of God, love of God its concretization
in love of neighbor.
Adrienne von Speyr
from The Passion from Within
(The Mayor and Sheriff sleeping until time for me to crawl in / Julie Cook / 2019)
I just got home from spending the weekend with the Mayor and Sheriff.
Leaving is always so hard.
When I’m up visiting and since there are now two babies…
there are now no spare bedrooms and thus my “bedroom” is in the den on
a sofa sleeper.
That means that I have officially turned into my aunt Martha as that
is how it worked years ago in our little world when our son was a baby.
So now when I visit, the Mayor usually sleeps with me, Moppie…
but last night the Sherrif had fallen asleep before his mom has everything situated,
so the two of them “rested” until everyone got to the right bed!!!
The chaos from the outings of the day is quickly forgotten when everyone is sleeping like
little angels…
Yet we all know that all of this peacefulness will quickly change once the sun rises
and the day is afoot as the energy of little people is recharged and renewed!
Reminds me somewhat of werewolves and vampires—but in this case, things are reversed.
Angels at sleep—whirling dervishes with tempers and demands by day…
But it’s all actually really quite grand—despite the exhaustion of adults!
Time for a soothing cup of tea for Moppie!
(an angelic Sheriff with wiley hair/ Julie Cook / 2019)
(let not the Mayor’s restful demeanor fool you for one minute—
aka hell on wheels! / Julie Cook/ 2019)
“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is
that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world
that they cannot all be punished.
But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die,
then the citizen will say, ‘whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial,
for innocence itself is no protection,’
and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be
the end of security whatsoever.”
John Adams
(sleep, the time toddlers return to angelic innocence / Julie Cook / 2019)
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Matthew 5:5-9
“When you awake in the night,
transport yourself quickly in spirit before the Tabernacle, saying:
‘Behold, my God, I come to adore You, to praise, thank, and love you,
and to keep you company with all the Angels.'”
St. John Vianney
(sunset over the the gulf /Julie Cook / 2018)
The past several nights I have woken up around 2:30 AM—wide awake.
Hot.
Sweaty.
Uncomfortable.
Despite the AC running and my husband gently snoring, sleep for me is over.
My back aching with the slightest move–and now an aching neck and shoulder.
It hurts to turn, to roll, to twist.
Dreams, when they come, have been vivid, leaving me wondering and pondering.
Pondering much too much for such an unwelcoming hour.
Time passes with no relief as the numbers of the clock tick on and on.
No calm nor slumber.
Sleep, for me, is often elusive but more so as of late.
When the morning light comes, it is almost rude and unkind as
I find it harder and harder to get up since sleep now tries to
arrive right when it’s time to get up.
Exhausted and ill, I grouse at the day.
Last night, my brain turned on, my eyes popped open and it was only 2:30— my mind racing.
I ruminated on and on like a cow chewing cud over my latest odd dream.
Unresolved ancient issues or just the aching of a herniated disc?
I examine the past.
“NO”, I shout to my hyper-focused mind…” this is not the time!”
So my brain now toys with me, as the unending partial lyrics to a song
begin playing over and over as the earworm bores deeper into my brain.
“STOP”, I silently plead to my restless brain….”just let me rest”, I implore.
And so…I pray.
Focusing on that which is greater than the madness, greater than my weariness.
I offer myself over to You as a sacrifice…
Hear my prayers oh Lord…
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner”
Over and over I repeat the soothing words until I sense my mind and body quieting in unison.
“My Lord, I offer you myself in turn as a sacrifice of thanksgiving.
You have died for me, and I in turn make myself over to you.
I am not my own.
You have bought me; I will by my own act and deed complete the purchase.
My wish is to be separated from everything of this world;
to cleanse myself simply from sin; to put away from me even what is innocent,
if used for its own sake, and not for yours. I put away reputation and honor,
and influence, and power, for my praise and strength shall be in you.
Enable me to carry out what I profess.”
Bl. John Henry Newman, p. 135
An Excerpt From
Everyday Meditations
(The Mayor driving herself these days trying to save on staff expenses /Julie Cook/ 2019)
EXHAUSTED!!!!
Just got home from working all week in the Atlanta Woobooville office.
The Mayor did not slow down all week as she pressed forward with all agendas—
adding to the list as she went.
There was…
Breakfast
Napping
Dressing
Bed making
Sorting laundry
Brunch
Playing
Lunch
Napping
Snacking
Supper
Learning to call her dog by her name… Ayyyye yiiiii (Alice)
Standing
Squatting
Falling
Shopping
Picking up the dry cleaning
Dusting
Re-dressing
Diapering
Rolling
Pushing
PJs
Sleeping
Not all in that order…but close.
As Chief aide, I could barely find the stamina to keep up.
For all you grandparents, and even great-grandparents out there,
who have no choice but to raise your grand and great-grandchildren by yourselves,
without the help and assistance of extended family—You have my deepest respect!!
The little ones are extra demanding while the older ones can be an entirely different,
and even frightening, ball of wax.
Hopefully, there will be a post tomorrow offering something a bit more meaty and full of
depth provoking thought…
that is once I actually rest sleep!
I had taken the latest book we were just talking about early last week The 21—
as I was hoping to sneak in a page or two at night…
However, the priority was reading a variety of status reports (aka the Children’s Bible) to the Mayor
who oddly kept a short attention span during reading time…
she is just so hands-on in her job…always finding important things that need doing.
(The Mayor is very obsessive with the sorting and resoring of laundry / Julie Cook / 2019
(The Mayor did seem interested in my latest read, albeit briefly before she thought to tear the cover)
(the Mayor meeting with a representative from the Crab association /Julie Cook / 2019)
(does anyone notice an opportunitst lurking near the Mayor–
seems as if everyone wants a part of her time or even food)
(a small new ride, a gift from the Pig association as in Pepa Pig / Julie Cook / 2019)
(sweet dreams for a busy Mayor / Julie Cook / 2019)
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap,
if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone,
and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
Galatians 6:9-10
(The Mayor on a recent visit to the statalite office of Woobooville / Julie Cook / 2019)
Feeling rather discouraged last evening…as I readied myself for bed, I had hurriedly read the post
of a dear blogger friend in Colorado who was sharing her feelings about adoption,
abortion, Woe v Wade, life, death…
and of course, with my having been adopted, it hit a strong chord.
I have really not felt very well as of late and that has had a great deal to do with how I
filter what it is that I take in from the world around me, around us…
all of which has been at best– abysmal.
The Covington Catholic Shcool debacle has really shaken my feelings about this country of ours.
Add to that a sitting president being told by the speaker of the house that he cannot deliver
a state of the union address…
yes all lower case letters because it is such a true all-time low that this
Nation of ours has hit.
As I was putting down my phone for the evening, having tucked my laptop in for the night…
I told my husband, as I turned out the bedside light, “you know, despite all the bad, all the
negative, all the hurtful and distressing…
I still feel a tremendous sense of hope.
There are folks all over out there…
out in Colorado, California, Virginia, Washington, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arkansas, Texas,
England, Wales, Scotland, Africa…
posts I read that offer me a tremendous sense of hope and well being.
Christians who maintain a sound position of Truth.
I am comforted in knowing that all is not lost.
And so I thank each of you who continue to offer me, as well as all of us, the hope everlasting that
is found simply in your words…
You offer the eternal Truth that God remains…no matter what, He remains eternal and Omnipotent.
For all that is bad…
For all that is negative…
For all that is disparaging…
there remains…
Hope…
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
May the angels watch me through the night,
and keep me in their blessed sight.
Amen
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