What a strange day. Is it full moon time? ~ My Facebook entry today

My grandson Dylan loves to put together jigsaw puzzles and not long ago I found this great site that has hundreds of them that are age-appropriate for him. He's become a real pro with click-and-drag and navigates back and forth and all over the place, picking and choosing puzzles. This morning he was doing bird puzzles and when he finished one of them he asked me to come over to the desk and look at it. I did. It was a little blue parakeet. I told him what it was and then I launched in to a story about how my family had owned one that looked very similar to the one on the puzzle back around the time I was the same age he is, which is 4. I told him its name was Tweetie Pie and how it could talk, how it would sometimes land on my father's chest in the morning and call out, "Wake up, Victor! Wake up, Victor!" Dylan asked me where it is now. Well, this little bird lived 52 years ago. I told him one day someone had left the door or window open and Tweetie Pie flew out and we never saw him again.

End of story.

I went and sat in the rocking chair with Cooper and he and I were peacefully watching "Cat in the Hat" when Dylan began to sob. Flat-out sob, like his heart was broken. Concerned, I hurried over to him and took him in my arms. "Dylan! What's the matter, sweetheart?" I asked. Thru his sobs he told me, "Gram, that story you told me about the little bird was the saddest story! What happened to that little bird?" This was five minutes or so after I'd told him the story! So I said to him, "Oh, honey...that little bird's in Birdie Heaven. He's ok. You don't need to worry about him!" Finally he began to calm down and, chastised, I went back to sit with Cooper. I never dreamt my story would affect him like that. He is so tender-hearted.

We're coming to the tail end of our beautiful Indian Summer weather we've been enjoying most of the month of October. Today was gorgeous so the boys and I set out to walk to Fred Meyer. We left at 9 am and didn't get home until noon. We stopped and admired every Halloween decoration along the two-mile walk to the store. Counted and flipped over every ancient horse-tether ring cemented in our old sidewalks...25 before they got distracted by some of those big puff-up balloon-style lawn decorations, a black cat, a witch, and several ghosts. As we were admiring those, along came two different people with dogs that needed to be petted and admired. We did our shopping and as we stopped just outside the doors so I could give the boys a cold drink before we set off for home in the double stroller I was approached by two young men. "Excuse me, ma'm," one of them said to me. I smiled at them and said, "Yes?" The one who'd spoken then asked, "Have you ever heard about a treasure hunt?" I thought on that for a moment. "You mean like geo-caching or something like that?" He smiled and said, "No. I'm talking about a treasure hunt where we're supposed to go searching for treasures. One item on our list says we're supposed to speak to someone pushing a stroller. May we talk to you for a moment?" I told them sure they could and the young man told me, "We're Christians and we're supposed to ask whoever will talk to us if they would like us to pray with them." I told them, "Well, I've been a Christian almost 34 years and I would love to have you pray with me." I think I almost knocked their socks off, ha! He asked me, "Do you have a particular burden or need you'd like to pray about?" and I told them something on my heart. Then we bowed our heads right there and that young man said the most beautiful prayer. And it literally felt like Heaven opened up and came down and blessed us right there. It was lovely. For me, and for them. When I told Dear Hubby about it this evening he said, "Maybe they were angels. Maybe that prayer protected you and the boys the rest of the day." Maybe so. I like to think so, anyway.

And then the boys and I set off for the long walk home. As I'm trudging along all of a sudden Dylan starts calling "Keepy!" at the top of his voice and Cooper chimes right in. "Keepy! Keepy!" I asked Dylan, "Who or what is Keepy?!" and he reached over and patted Cooper on the head and said, "Keepy is Cooper's daughter." "His daughter?" I asked, mystified. And Dylan told me very seriously, "Yes." "What happened to her?" I asked. He said, "She went to the beach with my daughter and granddaughters and got lost and we've been trying to find her. Gram, will you help us yell for her?" I thought that one over for a moment, shrugged, and started calling "Keepy! Keepy!" right along with them.

We never did find her.

Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right. ~ John Donne

I was sitting in a pew at church this morning reading a Bible and I opened to this scripture:

"Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come."

Psalm 71:18

Now, if that wasn't God coming to me and hearing me in my hour of deep need, I don't know what is. He was speaking directly to my heart.

I still have the first Bible my Dear Hubby gave to me when we were new Christians. It is so worn out the front cover has fallen off, the pages so thin they're almost transparent. It is held together with a big rubber band. It is tucked away for safe keeping in a bin filled with My Treasures. And written by my own hand on the back pages is this:

"A Bible that is falling apart usually belongs

to someone who

isn't."

And I believe that to be true. No matter what has crossed my path these past 34 years, I have found what I need in God's word. He has never, ever forsaken me.

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one. ~ E.B. White

This morning was cool for the first time in several days so the grandboys and I decided it'd be a good day for a bus ride and walk. I'd given them some of those cheap disposable cameras to take pictures a while back and I've been meaning to get them in to Walgreen's to get the film developed. I am notoriously bad about doing stuff like that, so those cameras have been battered and banged about and chucked in to the bottom of the toy bins more than once. In fact, we had to empty out one of the bins this morning to find one of the cameras. Once we got them collected we took off to walk the two blocks to the bus stop where we'd catch the first bus on our trip.



Coopy loves to hold the bus tickets as we walk along and as we wait for a bus to come. He's quite reliable. He considers himself quite the big boy being given this responsibility and takes it quite seriously. He has never lost or dropped one yet. So when the bus pulled up I lifted him on to the step as Dylan stepped on too and started to get on myself when Cooper looked at me with a stricken look on his face and said, "Ahma! Ticket!" and pointed back out behind me. I turned around and sure enough...the ticket sat in the middle of the sidewalk. So I asked the driver to hold on a sec while I went to retrieve it. I stepped down. And the next thing I know, I'm on the ground. Right on my rear end! In the middle of the sidewalk. But I swooped up the ticket, hopped on the bus, and deposited it in the kiosk. The driver, a woman around my age, was so concerned. "Are you sure you're ok?" I laughed and said yes, I was just fine. The only thing bruised was my dignity. She reassured me, "Honey, no one saw you except me anyway." And I looked back in the bus and all there were for passengers was an older man nodding off in his seat and a teenager with ear plugs hunched over texting away. I sat down with the boys and she and I began to chuckle. "Oh, the things you get to see during the working day, huh? At least when I sat on my seat I was well-padded!" I said. That got us both to giggling and she said, "Honey, you just went down so smooth!"

When I go in for crash-landings that's how I like to do it....smooooooooooooth!

I blame it on my progressive lenses. That's the third time I've misstepped. My depth perception is very tricky with them.

Anyway...we did our walking and our bus transferring and made it to Walgreen's and back and bought a pizza for lunch. The boys took a good nap. I read several pages of a book my bloggy friend Pam had written about on her blog. Dylan woke up first and we went out back to check on the garden. My neighbor Sharon called over the fence and asked us to come over...she wanted to show something to me. She and her husband just had new grass planted in their back yard and they're leaving on Friday to go to Yakima to visit her sick aunt so she showed me the grass and asked if I'd be kind enough to water it on Saturday for them. Not a problem.

Dylan and I went back home and as I was getting some juice for the boys he came in to the kitchen and asked, "Gram, why is Sharon going to Yakima?" And I told him about her aunt who's very sick. He wandered off and then came back to me a few minutes later. "Gram," he said, "Can we pray to Jesus right now and ask Him to make Sharon's aunt all better?"

Oh, that touched my heart! And when I told Sharon about it later, needless to say it touched hers, too.

So of course I said yes, and he hugged me as we prayed together.

A little child shall lead them.

A little faith will bring your soul to heaven, but a lot of faith will bring heaven to your soul. ~ Author Unknown

You can think what you will about this post but because this, most importantly, is my personal journal for my grandsons to read someday, I am going to share this. There may be some of you out there who read this and will scoff. There are those of you who may read it and not believe it. And then there are those of you who will read it and rejoice with me in what a wonderful Savior we serve. But what I am telling you is the absolute truth.

This morning I awoke with a start. I'd heard some kind of noise and I lay there in the dark, straining my ears, trying to figure out what I'd heard. Dear Hubby was already up...the alarm hadn't gone off at 5 and it was now almost 5:45 so I figured he must've awakened before the alarm and turned it off, that he'd be downstairs in his den where he goes to read his Bible and pray every morning. I went down quietly and peeked in the door, not wanting to disturb him. And there he was, just as I knew he'd be, on his knees lost in prayer. So I crept back upstairs, got my breakfast ready, and went to sit on the couch with my coffee and bagel. He came upstairs a few minutes later and as he came in to the living room he told me, "I don't know what's wrong but I'm really confused." Alarm bells went off in my head. "What do you mean? What's wrong?" I asked him. But he couldn't tell me, outside of the fact he was very 'befuddled' and couldn't figure out what was real and what wasn't. I had him sit down. I asked him if he knew what year it was, who's the President of the United States, what year he was born, his birthday. I checked his pupils, had him track my finger with his eyes, and had him write down his name. He passed those tests with flying colors but I could tell there was something really, really wrong with him. So I sat beside him on the couch and we talked. I told him about how I am attacked by the devil sometimes...I spent 7 years deeply involved in satanism and the occult when I was young...and how the devil can get to me in dreams in ways he no longer can when I'm awake, how we're so much more vulnerable when we're asleep. That sometimes after one of those kinds of nightmares I wake up and I don't know where I'm at, whether I'm in reality or still stuck in dreams. It's very disorienting. But he said no, this was different. He couldn't tell if what he was thinking now was something that had happened or if it hadn't. I got up and grabbed my Bible and brought it over to him. I said, "Hold on to this. This is what's real. The Lord knows what's wrong." And as he held it he began to weep. I put my hand on his shoulder and I began to pray with all my heart and what can I say but the Power fell from Heaven like a bolt of lightning. It's giving me goose bumps all over again as I'm writing this. The Lord truly came down and met us there. I have never, ever felt anything like it in my entire life. And as we finished praying together Dear Hubby looked at me and said, "I'm fine now. It's gone!" Just like that, in a moment of time.

You can argue this with me until the end of time but I know this is true. I was there. I witnessed it. God still hears and answers prayer.