Thursday, July 16, 2009

Images, memories, unexpected blessings

Well, it has taken me a while to figure out how to post photos, but I finally have new ones on my blog. The weather was in the 80's and 90's, a constant breeze and sunny with an occasional brief shower. I sat on the 5th floor balcony overlooking the pool and the beach, and I relaxed. I completely, totally unwound ... so much so that my intentions of writing went kaput! We swam in crystal clear turqouise Gulf water. I baked and sweated early in the morning as I walked the sugar sand beach.

One day, I sent some words heavenward about my daughter-in-law. I quetioned why her eye is not healing. Then I came upon a lone woman sitting in a beach chair. She was writing. I asked if she was a writer or just describing the beautiful view in a letter. She said she was writing in a prayer journal. I asked her to add my daughter-in-law to her list. She jotted her name. I walked on and thanked my angel-mom! The young woman ran after me and she asked if she could pray with me. The words that came out of her mouth were the very words my mother would have prayed aloud if she had been there with me. Tears ran down my cheeks when I realized, she was! I was blessed to be able to commune in such a special way, in my favorite place, through this wonderful stranger, WITH MY MOM. God is good.

I wrote one essay about our favorite campground which has been out of commission since the road washed out. Through all the devastation and pain caused by Hurricane Katrina, one tiny piece of hope emerged as we walked through the abandoned campground, actually a graveyard of skeletal pines, subtropical trees forever hunched, and bushes salt blasted white. Everything was dead. Except for the new life that we discovered atop the higest tree, a male and female Opsrey and their fledgling. I made a fool of myself by telling the lifeguard that I saw an eagle's nest. She laughed and said, "Do you mean Osprey?" Bill and I greeted that bird family. We and the birds ballyhooed at one another, as if to say, "WE'RE BACK!"