More Than Today

“Healing takes time…It takes remembering—sorting through the pieces of your past and savoring what was good, learning from what wasn’t. In that way you honor your yesterdays.” (Remember, Karen Kingsbury with Gary Smalley, page 92) I read this today and it struck me as so true. Healing takes time and remembering. Often when we have been hurt we want to be healed “right now” and even when we have realized that it will take some time, we don’t want to deal with the remembering part. In the remembering, however, we realize that even in the unpleasantness from the past, there were most likely some good things to savor, to enjoy, to remember with a smile… however faint. At different times in my past I have had terrible “break-ups” in job relationships. Other times I experienced separation in relationships with friends and back when I was single, with girl friends. Sometimes the endings were so harsh that I didn’t want to think about them at all and when I did it was just to rem...

Four months ago when I began "writing" this blog called More Than Today, I personally hoped that it would be a way for me to develop my writing abilities and have a place to share my writing with others. But as those of you who have read this know, what it has turned out to be is a collection of my past writings (perhaps you didn't know how past they were) and some excerpts from my current readings. Nothing wrong with that, some of you have even found it helpful...and for that I am glad. But it still hasn't become what I envisioned. Last night on TV I was reading an interesting novel while watching the TV show "Ed" ... doing both and also leaving for awhile to pick up a daughter after her youth group. From what I caught of the TV program, Ed's fiance Carol was writing a novel because she wanted to be a writer and get an agent to look at her work, which was pretty non-existent. She was having trouble writing and didn't know why. Then a frie...

"A Little Girl's Prayer" One night I had worked hard to help a mother in the labor ward; but in spite of all we could do she died leaving us with a tiny premature baby and a crying two-year-old daughter. We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive, as we had no incubator (we had no electricity to run an incubator) and no special feeding facilities. Although we lived in the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts. One student midwife went for the box we had for such babies and the cotton wool the baby would be wrapped in. Another went to stoke up the fire and fill a hot water bottle. She came back shortly in distress to tell me that in filling the bottle, it had burst. Rubber perishes easily in tropical climates. "And it is our last hot water bottle!" she exclaimed. As in the West it is no good crying over spilled milk, so in Central Africa it might be considered no good crying over burst water bottles. They do not grow on trees, ...

Did you hear about this? What with all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person that almost went unnoticed. Larry LaPrise, the man who wrote "The Hokey Pokey" died peacefully at the age of 93. The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the casket. They put his left leg in....and then the trouble started.