Cactus Flower

Not too long ago the ladies at church hosted a surprise baby shower for the young lady that was married just before Christmas.  She's not well off and doesn't have much.  She lives in a small house not much bigger than my living room.  As I considered what sort of message I wanted to pass on to her as this important moment, I began to think of what a mother really has to have before that baby comes home from the hospital. Byron and I didn't have too much when little William came home from the hospital in December of 1995.  We had been in Brazil for a year and had come with four Rubbermaid action packer boxes between us.  I had in those boxes the baby quilt I had made back in the States and two maternity dresses (just in case). My mother had been sending shoebox sized packages with onesies and assorted baby clothes all through my pregnancy.  The other missionary ladies had a baby shower for me.  We had a sturdy wooden crib donated that quite a f...

Years and years ago I took a quilting class at a quaint little specialty cloth store in a ritzy part of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  I was around 25 and teaching at a small Christian school.  Another teacher had found out about the class and wanted someone to go along.  I thought it would be cool as both my grandmothers had been a quilters - one perhaps more fancy than the other.  The fancy quilter had just passed away and somehow it felt like a homage to her. My teacher friend and I had to leave school a little early missing a weekly teacher's meeting for several weeks.  Every time the principal saw us leaving he would say silly things about why would a girl going to a tropical country soon to be a missionary need to know how to make quilts? I made a baby quilt mostly because it was less expensive and less time consuming.  Around that same time I went through the grief of two miscarriages.  Babies didn't seem to be on the agenda for my husba...

Once a few years ago I read about a family that got lost on a remote mountain road, stuck in high snow drifts, and froze to death!  It seems their GPS routed them on a mountain short cut that was only open during summer months.  Once they were stuck they were too far from any help and their cell phones were out of the range of any towers. Can you imagine?  I couldn't believe it.  But apparently people blindly follow the directions of their GPS's quite often - even intelligent people like your Aunt Michele!  Sometimes it takes more than once to learn a lesson!  Read on... The first time I remember getting really lost because of a goofy GPS was when we were first back in the States on a furlough in 2014.  We hadn't been in the States but for a few weeks when we went to visit Uncle Randy and Aunt Renee near Walnut Cove, NC.  We were to meet them at their church and then go to their house for lunch.  We headed out of Reidsville towards US Highway...