Really?  Really, God?
After all this time it has come to this?

"Will you play for the service we are going to start at the rest home?" Just once a week for a half-hour.  Can you help us?"

"Miriam, I have an opportunity for you!  We need someone to come to our Alzheimer's unit and conduct a service every week.  There won't be many that come, but they need "soul care" as well as physical care, and I think you could do this for them."

"I understand you play piano, is that right?  We have a facility that has a rest home, an assisted living facility and a rehab unit all in one location.  We really need to offer them some music.  All of them love music--to sing along, to listen.  Will you come and play in all three locations?"

And so I began last August.  I was scared to death.  I kept physically and emotionally distanced from everybody for the first month or so.  And then I began to have the nerve to actually look at the people, to watch as they heard songs from decades ago--hymns that they sang as children, songs of comfort they have sung to themselves looking for peace in a place they never thought they would be.

Perhaps the following descriptions won't be politically correct but you must know the details to understand the stories:  (not their real names)

Sally--African-American with a voice that started softly but when she realized I knew she once had a VOICE, she began "letting it out!" especially with the old Spirituals.  Soon she was staying after the service and choosing her own tunes.  Sally loves to be "in charge" and often attempts to turn the attendees into her backup choir!

Sarah--104 years old.  Sitting directly in front of the piano and singing her heart out and clapping her hands and tapping her feet on the footrests!  She knows every word to every song from the '40s and '50s and doesn't bother with the book of words I supplied.  Her Russian Jewish heritage is exposed when she asks for "If I Were A Rich Man!"  I played it as well as I could and she sang every single word.

Don't know her name:  For the entire hour she sat on a stool, sometimes singing, sometimes just watching.  Very young to be in such a facility, I thought.  Then I played "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" and all her reserve crumbled as she broke into sobs and looked at me and mouthed "Thank You, oh Thank You!"

Just yesterday:  An African-American apparently very old man was wheeled into the service.  His chin was on his chest and he appeared to be asleep.  I was playing hymns prior to our service and began the verse of "In the Garden."  His head moved, he began to sing along in this precious tender tenor voice, his eyes never opened and I was broken one more time.  In the back of the room was one patient I hadn't seen before and she began to sing with "gusto" and she also knew every word and smiled from ear to ear.  Here was the gentleman who is in the room right across from where we meet.  He and his wife share the room.  She was having a bad day yesterday and he came alone in his wheelchair and also knew every word.  I then began "Leaning On the Everlasting Arms" and the old boy in the front row sang tenor to the top of his lungs and I was crying again.

My definition of ministry is being radically changed--but only to the degree that I allow God to soften my heart, open my eyes, adjust my priorities and give me His love for the people I could not love on my own just a few months ago.  In the process I am beginning to earn a nice living.  There are no platforms, no applause, no adulation.  But there is a deep, settled awareness that I have once again discovered "Man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart!"

While cleaning out the garage:

Roy:  What are you going to do with those?
Miriam:  Throw them out.  (Roy saves everything.  I do not.)
Roy: I think you should go through them first.
Miriam:  Maybe.  I'll take the tote inside.

Five days later I open the box.  It is small tote, maybe 16x16x24.  When I open it some of the contents fall out on the floor and I pick one and start to read it.  A note from someone whose name I don't recognize.  She is writing to thank me for something I said at a conference in South Dakota at least ten years ago, maybe fifteen, maybe more.  Her words of gratitude touch me in deep places.  Anytime I think God has used me to change lives through my speaking I am amazed, and deeply moved.

The same card reminds me that I don't do that anymore.  I mean, I don't travel thirty weekends a year speaking.  A sharp pang of grief shoots through my stomach--and my soul--as I remember those days of excitement, airplanes, more invitations than I could accept, lovely hotels and applause--lots and lots of applause.

I continue to pull cards out of the tote, reading each one.  It takes three days to go through the entire box for I can only handle so many precious words at one sitting.  Slowly, very slowly the grief dissipates and is replaced by tenacious faith that the messages I used to preach about "seasons of life" have come home to roost in my own experience!

The transition from traveler to full-time caregiver has required the help of some godly friends who have held me, let me cry, express my questions.   I also have desperately needed, and received the wise words of a therapist who helps me make sense of my own questionable self.  Most of all, I have had the constant presence of a Heavenly Father who lets me crawl up on His lap and just cry it out.

"Why are you downcast, O my soul?  Why so disturbed with me?  Put your hope in God for I will yet praise Him."  Psalm 42:11

I take the box back to the garage and put it in the stack of things to keep.

I am a "better to ask forgiveness than permission" person.   Tempered by the realities of life--health, promises already made, some relationships, there isn't much that I think is impossible, even for me.  I didn't write my first book until I was 62 and didn't graduate from college until I was 66.  At this point I should confess my motivation for even pursuing a degree: jealousy.  Pure, simple flaming green jealousy.  All three of our sons had degrees, some of them post-graduate accomplishments and I wasn't about to go to my grave letting them get the better of their sweet, old mother!  (not many would describe me with those terms)

I did not begin my life as a risk-taker.  I began my life very frightened, insecure and dependent.  My mom was bi-polar and aggressively mean.  Her language toward me was full of negativity.  "You'll never amount to anything!"  "You'll never find a man who will stay with you six months!"  "I heard that mistake (on the piano).  Can't you get anything right?"  Even my piano teacher didn't believe in my future in music.  I well remember the day she told my parents that the best thing they could do was burn the piano as I would never become a pianist. (I was seven)

But, God had other plans.  Less than six weeks after that less-than-affirming statement from my instructor, my parents were asked if they would give their permission for me to accompany the junior-high school orchestra.  Because I was only seven I had to be accompanied down the long hallways to the junior high orchestra room where I played from manuscripts arranged for much older children.  That was the launch pad for a lifetime behind a keyboard.  Studio musician, church pianist, professional accompanist (my favorite), arranger, and I still play a little piano (no, not a "small" piano, I mean a play piano a little!).

About the business of never staying married?  Fifty-seven going on fifty-eight.

And I could go on, but it would look like sheer self-aggrandizement and I don't need to go there.

So, the reason for this blog today?  Waiting in a doctor's office today I heard a mom tell her little boy:  "You never play nicely with other kids.  You're gonna end up in jail before you're sixteen!"

Has anyone ever told you that you can't do something you really want to do?  Don't ever let another person's stupidity determine your destiny!!

I wonder if everyone feels as I do writing this first blog: awkward.  A very new friend has convinced me to begin sharing myself this way, and I am flattered by her confidence in me and the excitement she has brought to the project.

"i still plant flowers" is my way of saying that I believe in the future.  The words do not imply that I am a Master Gardener!  Far, far far from it.  If they could many a beautiful plant, either inside the house or outside in the window boxes would testify to my genuine ineptness at tending them well.  I count on Roy, the husband of 57 years, to protect them from me.  I actually walk around the plants in the house in order to respect their space.  Works for me.

I don't like flowers from other people's yards or gardens. And don't bother spending your hard earned cash on a bouquet from FTD.

I love flowers that grow around my house.  I knew those plants when they were little and scrawny and weak and their stems looked like they could never support anything of beauty or value and I wondered why Roy had spent good money on them.  I watched him feed them and water them and prune them and talk to them.   And so, when he brings in daisies or roses for me to enjoy, it is a true gift that I have not earned but treasure.

My life reflects a process much like our flowers.  My seventy-three years of life have taught me many things (and you'll read some of them here).  One of them is that it was wise, and safe to put my entire existence in the hands of The Master Gardener (God) as a young person.  I have spent much of my life foolishly trying to tell Him how to feed me, or water me and that I certainly don't need pruning!  But here I am, all these seasons later, a woman of some beauty and great value as a result of His care.

You won't read a whole lot of religious stuff here, but you'll be exposed to my opinions of what constitutes true spirituality.  I can't help it, it kind-of falls out of my mouth when I talk about most everything from grandchildren to cooking (at which I am less than gifted!).  

Finally, if you ever choose to post a comment I only have one request.  Be Gentle.  There is no way of knowing how much any of us have already been pruned today.