Sounds of Hope

It seems my blogging has been neglected of late, hasn't it?  I guess I've been busy.  I think a better word is distracted.  I'm going to be even more distracted over the next few weeks.  It's time for summer ISLE.  No, this isn't some wondrous beach resort where I enjoy fun and sun.  Quite the opposite, it is a grueling 9 days living in a college dorm while taking classes from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.  Sunday and weekends are included.  Yes, 9 straight days of preparation and instruction. I'm not looking forward to it.  Last year I was scared.  I was just beginning to come alive again.  Like the tiniest buds of April, I was just seeing the first glimpses of hope.  This was my first big challenge in a long time.  Could I handle it?  I wouldn't know until I tried.  Despite common perceptions, I'm a very shy and insecure individual.  A whole new group of people, most of them much younger, some the age of my ch...

Memories of my father seem to be on my mind so much of late.  I miss him.  That seems odd in some ways.  I was a mere 19 years old when he died.  Old enough to have some very solid memories of him.  Old enough to have known him as a child knows a father.  But not old enough to know him as a person. On those very rare occasions when my family of origin would gather for an hour or two.  That was all we ever did.  We were never close.  My brother's estranged themselves from my mother and I over thirty years ago.  At first it seemed just the way life was, family, moving and such.  But now I know it was deliberate.  They had no use for their mother and they never took the time to know or care for their sister. When we would meet together, the bond between my brothers was solid.  They would laugh and joke and reminisce about a father I didn't know.  Often I thought them cruel and disrespectful, a strong characteristic o...

There is great risk in what I am doing. It occurred to me that I could be jeopardizing potential jobs in the future. Being old is enough to jeopardize a career, now I add truth, vulnerability and candor to the mix. I am telling you how I got to be that young woman giving birth to her third child while her peers received their degrees. It is frightening to expose myself like this. But I have a story to tell. A story I feel that needs to be told for that one person who needs to know they can pull through by God's grace, mercy and help. The story of your life is not fixed in your past,  it is fixed in today.   It is fixed in getting up today and stepping into your future. I realize whomever it is who reads this story, whether in this blog or a book that may materialize in the future, may think I am foolish. Others may say I am brave. Exposure to the critical eye of another is always both. My motives are not for my own self-promotion, or even self healing. My motives are t...

Sharing my faith in the typical ways is not easy for me anymore. Once upon a long time ago I was involved in a “Summer of Witnessing” as a teen in NYC. Teens from mostly the Midwest came to Brooklyn to use the  Roman Road  and tell people about Jesus. I liked the silent prayer partner role the best. However, I would also take my turn, going through down the  Roman Road  and hope for a prayer. We reported every day of our numbers and have services every night. I don’t remember every seeing any one we witnessed to during the day show up at that meetings. I remember street meetings in Brooklyn that I have already mentioned in this blog. In one of them, with a group from Nyack College, I remember leading someone to the Lord. I never knew what happened to him. I got involved with a group that had a plan for winning Brooklyn for Jesus. We took blocks and targeted them with prayer and door knocking, all very strategic.  All of this was before I finished the tenth grad...

Christmas isn’t Christmas without Salvation Army bell-ringers and red kettles. When I was a child in Brooklyn, those bell-ringers were usually Salvation Army (SA) officers in full uniform. Sometimes there was a small brass ensemble playing Christmas carols rather than a simple bell. They were usually outside of the Woolworths on Fifth Avenue BROOKLYN (not Manhattan). I knew the Captain of the local Salvation Army Corps. Like most everything we associated with in the neighborhood, she was Norwegian. My first memory of the leader of the local corps was walking with my father and coming across a street meeting in progress. Street meetings had a little music, a short sermon, an invitation to receive Christ right there or to the local church. When I was five or six, I first met Captain Johnson. It might have been Lieutenant Johnson then but mostly I remember her as Captain. While we were not Salvationists, my father loved to go to different churches when there was a se...