Change

“Why don’t we eat on the front deck?” Jerry said as I prepared lunch a few hours ago.

“Fine with me,” I said as I reached for a large tray on which to place our food and drink.

We’ve been home here in Crestline for a week and it has been delightful summery weather. We’ve had doors and windows open, I’ve padded barefoot on the decks where I had laid rugs and where I had placed furniture that in the winter time I move inside. I plopped down three elegant pillows on the front-deck swing, and from time to time I sit there and gaze at the swaying trees. Always there are birds. At times they call,  the abundant little chickadees saying chick a dee, chick a dee.Tulips were blooming in the back yard when we arrived last Monday, and I picked one and placed it on the sill in the kitchen, where I admired its ragged shape and deep color. Daffodils by the thousands are blooming here in the San Bernardino Mountains and once on my way back from grocery shopping this week, I stopped longside a mountain roadway and snapped these images, admiring the tender light playing over and through the yellow and white forms.

As Jerry and I ate our lunch, we noticed clouds spilling over the southern rim of the rising mountains and then I felt a chill in the air. We napped, and when I awoke it was definitely cold and I noted the wind to have picked up and that now we were completely fogged in. I dashed about bringing in the rugs and pillows and closing windows and doors. At the kitchen window I checked the thermometer. Three hours after Jerry and I had eaten turkey sandwiches in balmy weather, the temperature had dropped 22 points and now read 48 degrees. Amazing.

“A fire,” Jerry said. “I’m building a fire.” And so he did.

Change. This dramatic alteration in our weather brought me to a place in my mind I often go, for in recent years Jerry and I have had to make severe changes in our lives, and I frequently consider them. These changes owe in part to our ages and again to varied other circumstances. Some of our changes have been difficult; others have been pleasant and easy. Change is inevitable. Comes to all. Let us be prepared for those startling, uneasy moments so that with grace we will accept the unavoidable.

This past week, in ghastly ways, two of my friends have had severe change come to them. In both cases the change involved the death of dear family members; one, the loss of a cherished 16 month-old grandbaby, the other, the sudden unexpected death of an adult son. I am not close friends to either of these godly women, yet I grieve for each of them and have prayed sincerely for God’s comfort to envelop them.

Edit Tuesday, April 24: And a few hours ago another of my friends lost her 30 year old daughter…but listen as this godly woman writes of this dreadful change in her life:

Isaiah 55:8

For my thoughts are not your
thoughts,neither are your
ways my ways,saith the LORD.

He has plans for accomplishing his PURPOSES which are different from ours and he secures our own welfare by schemes that cross our own.We must HEAR the VOICE of God in our thoughts.We have to go GOD’S WAY and not our own way.
When I think of the GOODNESS of GOD my soul cry’s out HALLELUJAH!!Thank God for saving me!
I THANK GOD FOR HIS MERCY!

I want to thank everyone for their prayers for my daughter Vanessa Willet….Vanessa went home to be with the LORD. She was a miracle in our life she wasn’t suppose to live but God had MERCY and at 3 moths old she had open heart surgery…She had congesitional heart failure and by God’s MERCY she lived until 30 yrs old.Gilbert & I will miss her deeply and she will always be in our hearts and thoughts..Our greatest JOY is that she made things right with GOD….My heart smiles to know she made it..

Praise the LORD!
HALLELUJAH!!!
♥ Gilbert & Katy Buelna ♥