What a lovely memory. It is remarkable to think we once were the youngsters with older folks having that input in our lives. Now we share what we have learned with the young folks! Yep, listening to Him. It’s an art, not a science.
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‘I have always gone from one ‘excitement/worry’ to the next, so often told her of my many troubles.
‘Her standard answer was “Did you pray on this??”
‘“Yes Laura I have been praying...” and I did.
‘Next came:
‘“But did you shut up long enough to listen to his answer?”
‘And we rarely shut up and listen, do we?’
I have been blessed to have 3 older ladies in my world.
All tried to teach me, all they had spent a lifetime learning.
And there was never enough time, I did not learn all they had to share.
Eloise taught me antiques and crafts and ‘life’, I would get in a bind and she would help me figure out what I should do.....
With the most awful solutions.
When I told her “ YOU know I could never do that!!!”
Her come back would be “Well, ok, now you know what you are not going to do, so work on what you will do!!!”.
Laura, saw that I got in real day to day touch with God, not the, by rote ways of some, but the “Thank you God for the smallest blessings”.
And how the midwest cooked.
Mary taught me more than I can tell at one time, she once said that she owed me for giving her 10 years of life, as that is what we had for teaching/learning.
But, I often swear she is here, wanting me to click one more link and see what is on the next page.
How she would have loved a computer.
Mary attempted to teach me, to be patient. A difficult job.
We once heard a juicy bit of gossip, seems a local wife had taken a knife to her husband and removed a couple of inches, after she caught him with a woman.......
But we could not find out who it was, we were sure the story was true, only who? was missing.........Mary said wait, she had lived in Wellton about 60 years then.
5 years later, I had moved up here and was back to spend a few days with Mary, and we went to visit a mutual friend, Reba, who had called a couple other ladies that we both knew, as Mary rarely went out.
The ladies were talking, and some one said do you remember when _______ took the knife to her husband.......I looked at Mary and she was saying to me “I told you to wait, you would learn the rest of the story”.
The lady with the knife, only did what many women have wanted to do over the years, and she was little more than a name to us, but we needed the name for the rest of the story.
When you live in a town of 200 people, it is difficult to not know all the story.
Another local story that I never knew the ladies name, but know the story is true, is about the [then] local Sheriff Deputy Sargent, who in my opinion was a not all that bright small town sheriff.
He went to a house and knocked on the door, he heard a muffled “come on in”, repeated over and over and decided some one was in trouble, so went in.
Went looking for the person calling to him as it was muffled in sound and met the Wife of the home, as she stepped out of her shower and screamed............at him.
She was not aware that her parrot was yelling “Come in”, to all who knocked on the door.
I lived 25 years with a small parrot who would, so have no doubt that hers did.
My Dink always yelled “Howdy, Howdy, come on in”, the lady that raised him from 3 days old was married to a Texan, and when Dink wanted, he was pure Texas.
Or if Dink talked to Mary, he was a pure Victorian Lady, as she was.
Dink never tried to bite Mary, never yelled at her, and then would attack me, when she left.
No, he did not have a cage, just the whole house.
God did give me enough blessings to make it past the unblessed spots.