Cactus Flower

Piedmont Bible College, 1985 Do you know what attracted me to you when I found myself sitting near you in chapel at Piedmont Bible College all those years ago?  You had a certain style all your own and that quirky, pun filled humor.  I thought you were a good-looking guy especially riding on that motorcycle you had.  I thought you had cute hair, and your ideas for dates were always so cool - circuses and picnics in the mountains.  And you were going where I wanted to go - the mission field. We weren't really all that much alike in some ways.  You were Southern Gospel and I was more like Christian Rock.  You had high standards and I was always pushing the rules to the limit.  Opposites might attract, but something called love drew me to start listening to your music and try to live within the scheme of things.   I guess you grew on me. May 30, 1987 We didn't always see eye to eye and still don't, but we learned, often by the hard ...

August 1994, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil In 1994 I arrived in the tropical beach city of Fortaleza to teach short term at a school for missionary children.  I'll never forget the first Sunday I went to church with my husband.  We didn't have a car, so we chose to walk to the nearest church we knew of.  It was a walk of about 5 or 6 city blocks.  I had on white, high-heel, summer sandals, a pair of Summer L'eggs pantyhose, and my best Lanz summer dress with a pink floral design.  I was in-style, if I'd have been in American, that is!  By the time we got to the church, my feet had blisters, my legs had heat rash, and my pink floral dress was the only one like it in the church that morning.   I quickly adapted on future walks to church to flat sandals, no hose, and simpler outfits.  I learned that women didn't wear their bathing suits on buses even if they were on their way to the beach and dressing up was a fancy blouse with jeans and high h...

Don't we look cute!  This was taken on Easter Sunday.  Just me and the last peep in the nest.  My little chick-a-dee is getting a little too big for the coop.  But, I decided to enjoy a photo with the handsome bird for good old times.  All too soon he'll be flying off for blue skies in other necks of the woods.   Being overseas and away from two of our boy and now two of our grandbabes and our own mothers can be hard on any holiday, but it's especially bittersweet on Mother's Day.   People around me seem to have the "oh-you-must-be-used-to-this-by-now" attitude while they talk about not seeing their own mother since last month or last week or gabbing on and on about their cute little grandchildren who will be coming to visit them on Sunday.  Well, I ask, how can anyone just "be used to it" when it comes to being far from loved ones on special days.  Nonetheless I usually keep my culturally and friendly respectful trap closed and jus...