Pray and Draw

   A couple of hours ago, I woke up. I had been dreaming that my life and all the things around me were swirling out of control, and I could not think of a thing to rectify the situation. It was chaos, and I was helpless to do anything.

   So I got up with those thoughts still there and sat down to read and pray and look for some semblance of order in all of this. Then the website for the Scripture for this day just gave me an error message, saying that it could not be found. It did not look good.

   Then as I walked, it began to sprinkle and then rain a little harder. Finding a house with a raised back porch, one that I knew no one was home at the time, I ducked under to wait out the weather. As I stood and watched and thought and prayed, I realized that this was what I needed. A forced wait, a quiet time to think and pray, and so I did.

   As I returned to the condo, I remembered that I could access the day's Scripture with a different approach, so I did, and this is what I found in the Psalm 71 reading:

"Do not cast me off in the time of old age;
Do not forsake me when my strength fails."

   Yes, it was the way I felt and the verse rang true.

   I thought back to our recent trip. On the "at sea" days, our friends brought out a game that both couples enjoyed playing, a domino game, called Mexican Train.

   Sometimes you draw a hand, and nothing seems to fit in place. Everywhere you look to play, there is no match and you are forced to draw again and again.Everyone else has their train moving, but your's is stalled, and the tiles that will count against you just keep piling up.

   How to cope with a "no control" situation?

   Pray and draw again…

   There were times on that trip when we had events planned that we wanted to be able to enjoy. Realizing the control over these that I did not have, I just prayed. There were a lot of things that could have damaged the day, but God was gracious and the days played out well. I was grateful, and still am.

   Sometimes the dominos just line up to be played.

   Even then I realize that any control over that game, or life, is not mine, so what do I do when things swirl.

   Pray first and then keep drawing.

 

Scottish Independence

   While we were in Scotland some few days ago, there were signs everywhere like this:

   Basically just  one word signs, simple words, but ones that can make the difference in my day, and, through the extension of this day, to my life later, depending on which I use.

   And the answer I give, using one of these, depends on the question I ask.

   In Scotland today, the basic question relates to control.

   In my life today, there is that same question. It may take many forms before this one day is over, and it will not be settled for all time with the mark on a ballot, and, just as those folks over there may not see the implications of their answer on their futures, neither do I on mine.

   When I got up this morning, my day was stretching out in front, and the first verse I read in Matthew 6 stated:

"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."

   What would I seek first today? What suited me, or what God wanted? If the question was who would I serve today, was I going to go for independence and have my own way, or dependence, and be guided by One that knows the way?

   But here is the main problem: I can make the decision to follow that verse, but there will be many other chances to deviate from that course as the day progresses. I may set the tone for my future decisions with this quiet time, but, unless I stay close to the divine source of my guidance, I can vote for independence at any time.

   So, if the question continues to be this day, will I remember God and follow Him, I want to not only answer YES right now, but continue to answer that way all day.

   And continue to ask that question.

   Living in the sunlight of His Will.

 

 

The Best Day (Part II)

   Little did I realize, when putting our cruise trip together, what one day of the whole 2 weeks would mean to all concerned. Looking back from this time vantage point, I can tell some of it at least.

   When the friends who had gone with us wrote the other day, his line was:

"We also had a ball on the trip.  The visits to Mrs. Jorges' childhood home and place of work were meaningful to us because we were able to see just how much they meant to Mayre Lou."

   That probably sums up my take also. I knew my wife wanted to go and see all that, but just did not realize what the impact would be, or turned out to be. Even to this day, as she reads some of the things that I have written and looks at the pictures of that day, she tends to tear up and say something like "I can't believe we got to do all of this".

    But we do need to look at this day some more.

   After the visit to Carluke, the cemetery and the Hillhead cottage there, we took off for the village of Hyndford Bridge. We had a house name, but no specific address, so we just went. When we did not spot anything on the way through, we continued on to Lanark where we did have the name and address of the factory where Mamie was a bookkeeper after she finished school. We found it.

   When she worked there, the name was A MacDougall, and we found that name on one of the old doors.

   Everyone was leaving for lunch, so we just snapped a couple of shots and went to get a bite ourselves.

   While we were inside the cafe getting something to eat in the car, Tom was in the van making calls. I'm not sure what he did, but he ended up talking to the lady who lived in the house we were looking for. She gave him directions and off we went back to Hyndford Bridge.

   The couple that lived in that house had occupied it for 49 years. Their last name was Bennie, and they invited us in to see the place and what they had done with it. It was a neat house, and hard to realize that it had been built back in the 1850s.

   The husband wanted me to see his flowers out back, so we did. When I asked him about the name of one of them, he just said "You will have to ask my wife, I grow them, but she knows them."

   It was a great experience, getting to meet with these folks, ask questions and hear of their life there for the past half century. They were good people.

   Seeing these places on this day answered a lot of the questions that Mayre had about her Mom in her growing up days, before coming to America, but it also brought up a lot more that we had never asked.
Like:

   Where did she go to school?

   What kind of school and how far from her home?

   How did she get to school and later on to work in Lanark?

   How did they shop? Where?

   You just can't know the questions to ask that would put her in this place, until you see how it is laid out, and now it is too late to ask those who lived it,

   But all those unanswered things did not dampen our day and neither did any rain. It was a great day, one that will be remembered fondly for years. My only regret was that we did not do it sooner. Oh well, better late than never, I guess.

   My wife says with conviction, "This was the best day ever".

   And we are both Thankful...

The Best Day of Our Trip

   We had done all we could from 4,000 miles away, but it looked like we might not be successful. We had read the book that talked about Mayre's mother's Scotland family and the area that she grew up in. We had read the journal of her trip back in 1964 and the people she met in those Scottish towns. We had done the genealogical research on the family, and we had been in contact with a lady in Scotland, given her our information and received her report as to where we might look when we got there.

   But now on Day 10 of our British Isles cruise, we were on our way from the harbor at Greenock toward Carluke, wondering out loud how successful we might be in finding the two houses mentioned in these reports and journals. It was this quest that began our thinking about this trip, many years previous.

   Our driver, Tom, had been given all we knew, and he was making it his personal quest to help us in ours.

   Arriving in Carluke, we first went to the cemetery where Mamie's (Mayre's mother) father was buried. He was a minister of the United Presbyterian Church, but had to resign his very first pastorate because of health reasons. Mamie was born in 1893 and his death was in 1895.

In Loving Memory 

of

The Rev. John Gray MA

Minister of the UP Church

Rothesay

Who Died at Hillhead Carluke

March 2nd 1895 Aged 39 Years

   This was the tombstone of my wide's Grandfather.

   After this stop, we proceeded to the area south of Carluke where a cottage with the name Hillhead was supposed to be. Our lady in Scotland had sent a picture of the house she had discovered, but our road names and directions did not produce its actual location. After stopping and asking at a gas station, we retraced our route to look once again. Turning off the Lanark road onto Bullhead road, we spotted a cottage on the left as we turned onto Bullhead. The trees had completely blocked its view from the main Lanark road, and we could not even see the front of the house (which was our picture view), so Tom stopped and asked. It was the right place, and the owner was happy to show us around. He even remembered that he had been told when he bought the place 30 years ago, that it was once owed by a retired minister, and once we got around to the small front yard we could see that it was actually the house of our old picture.

   The house had been added to on the Bullhead Road side, and the look changed, but it was the one we were looking for, the one where her mother had been born and spent the first few years of her life

   It was exciting for my wife, and all of us for that matter, for her to see that place and relive some of the history that she had been told by her mother.

   Mayre would go on to say that "this day was the best of the whole trip and worth all the trouble to get there".

   But there is more to this story…

   To be continued...

 

 

Don't Rush to Judgment

   There is an old says about judging a book by its cover. As I think back over our recent trip, these thoughts come to mind.

   We had been at sea for a whole day with all kinds of weather. Periods of sunshine, of rain, of deep clouds and also with blustery winds. We were going to dock in the Orkney Island port of Kirkwall on Friday morning of our second week, and, as my habit was, I woke up early and got up on deck 11 to check out the weather.

   For some reason, I was looking forward to this port of call. A small town right close to the dock in an area of Scotland that spoke of isolation and history, perfect for exploration and picture opportunities.

   As I walked out in the darkness of the predawn, I saw these sights:

   And I thought, "Oh well, we can get off and explore anyway and try to stay dry".

   After breakfast, the announcement was made that we could leave the ship and go ashore. There would be a shuttle bus to take us to the center of that town, and we could come and go as we pleased.

   I could tell from the restaurant views that it was still cloudy, but the clouds were moving along bringing periods of bluer skies.

   So we went, and here is the day we received and the sights that we will remember:

                                                St. Magnus Cathedral

                               The Castle of the Earl

                                The Town Hall

   The Day had not started out so good, but it was a glorious time. Isn't that the way it is in life also? Instead of bemoaning the day from the rainy beginning, I needed to just give it over to the Creator and see what He had in store.

   This street sign as we walked back to the shuttle seemed to be the reminder I needed.

   And the day was one of the best of the whole trip.

   And I am thankful for the day and the message.

Normandy, Guernsey, Cobh, Dublin, Hyndford Bridge, Glendalough, Kirkwall

   All through the last couple of days I had repeatedly put off taking my camera out and transferring the pictures from the trip into the processing program on the computer. Maybe, deep down, I was afraid of what I might find. Pictures that look good in the camera sometimes do not seem as good later on. I did not want to find that I had missed some good shots and mishandled some others.

   But this morning I woke up thinking of what thoughts I might write about in this post and also which kinds of pictures I could use from the trip, so I had to get them in the computer in order to see what I had.

   I thought of some ideas, but as I began to upload the shots from the camera to the computer, and as the pictures kept coming in, and in and in, I realized that I did not have any clue about where to begin. The upload was 765 pictures. Even after I went through and culled about 130, the file was still massive.

   So here is a quick overview in pictures of the trip. I have taken a shot from each of several different scene types, ones that I find occurring over and over again as I go down through all the file. There may some psychological disorder that comes out of these fixations, but here they are anyway.

   I find a lot of shots of each of these:

Cemeteries

Cathedral

Ruins

Special Home

Color

Stained Glass

Sunrise

Sunset

There are stories to go with each one, and more to go with the 600+ more shots. Maybe tomorrow I can put some coherent thoughts to go with some.

Stay tuned in.

Happy To Be Back

   Back on August 20th, a few days before we left on our trip abroad, I wrote a blog post on this verse in Psalm 118,

"This is the day that the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it."

   This post was still open on my computer this morning, some 22 days after it was written, and I find that it sounded good when I wrote it, but I certainly did not live by it in those days overseas.

   In the hurry of getting ready to go, in the looking forward to the things we were going to experience, in the long plane rides from Atlanta to London, in the 14 nights on board our cruise, in the bustle of a new port most every day, and in the long and tiring journey home to our own beds, it was easy to let the words of that verse slide into the background.

   Back in the early part of this year, a couple who had been our good friends for over 50 years mentioned that they might like to take a cruise around the British Isles. Mayre and I had been thinking the same thing for several years, but had never gotten to the point of pulling the trigger and doing it.

   This seemed to be the prefect time.

   My wife's mother, born in Scotland in 1893, had immigrated to Canada and on to the US when she was 18 years old. She had always talked about her homeland, and this trip would allow my wife to see the area where she grew up before coming here. We knew from past family members that a couple of her residences were still there and also the factory where she was a bookkeeper. Even before she passed away in 1992, she had put the desire to see those places in the heart of Mayre, although we just never did anything about it.

   So, even at this late stage of life, we bit the bullet and went, and, although I would not like to go again tomorrow, it was a real adventure worth taking.

   God blessed us with good friends on the trip, with an abundance of good weather, with experiences of new places and people, and with a whole day to see those important places that connect us with our past.

   Was it tiring? Well, we got home Monday night after a 24 hour day, and it took me until this morning to actually sit down and write.

   Did we eat too much? Sure, it was a cruise, and that's what we do.

   Did God keep us safe and well? Mayre had a slight stomach problem the first night on board and I came home with a cold, but all the days in between were free of any health issues.

   Did I take some photos? I have over 600 shots in the camera on the memory card and there is no telling how many I culled while looking at them as we went along. I'm sure some will show up on this site in the days to come, along with some commentary on the ports of call.

   So, after a bunch of days without computer access, I write this post to explain our absence. God gave us many days of His presence as we prayed for various things along the way. His hand of guidance and protection let us experience things we had only dreamed about for years, and we are thankful.

   And we did visit the places in Scotland that Mamie had loved, Carluke, Lanark, Stonehouse, Hyndford Bridge, and met people there that blessed us.

   More later, but we are glad to be home.