Tag Archives: Christian living

Cloudland

20 May

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Author, Poet and Artist

 

I was telling about Mother playing with us and training our imaginations by showing us how to find dogs, cats, and worlds of imaginary creatures in the clouds.

There’s a lot to be said about clouds, though, and I’m saying more. It occurred to me that electronic devices use Cloud technology and God uses it too, in a manner of speaking.

Have you ever been concerned that you didn’t pray hard enough or long enough about a situation or that you had to constantly remind God of a need or your prayers wouldn’t get answered? Well, my printer set me straight on that one. I realized that all I had to do was hit, click, or press print and the item I wanted would store itself in the printer and, all things being equal, not go away until it was printed. I began to know that God was like that too. He doesn’t forget. In fact, the Bible says He, or Jesus, or The Holy Spirit, or all three pray diligently for us all the time. Yes.

When I was looking at the clouds I took it a step further. I have a computer, an IPod, and a Kindle. I no longer have to worry about having enough Gigas or whatever it was that happened when I first got a computer. All my devices have lots of room and if they run out of room, it can all go to the cloud and be there if I ever need it again. I guess God has enough memory too. And the thought went even further to trying to remember what I need to do, and ideas I have about things I’d like to do or write or whatever, it gets to be a lot, but hey, maybe all that is in God’s cloud too.

I have one technical question. If God can handle all that “stuff” and God lives in me, does that mean that there’s a place in me that keeps it all and that if I need it, He can make it available to me? Hmmm. Experiment time.

Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the Lord is good.

 

Cloud

 

 

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The Long, Smooth Highway

22 Apr

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Photo by Melodie Hendrix

Photo by Melodie Hendrix

 

One Sunday on the way to church, Bill asked if I had any aspirin. No, but here’s something else if you have a headache. He took it. He was rather sluggish all day, but headaches will do that to you. After lunch he said, I can’t wait to lie down. Though he usually takes a nap it wasn’t’ like him to actually say he was tired.

That night or I should say the next morning at 1:41, he woke me and asked me to take him to the hospital. “I think I’m having a heart attack,: he said.” I got out of bed, went to my closet got warm clothes, but not warm enough as it turned out, got my iPod, we got in the car. I was calm, he was calm. We rode down the smooth newly asphalted highway that runs through town in our comfortable old Merc. We talked about how this might not even be a heart-attack so why get our knickers in a knot. Bill walked into the emergency room while I parked the car. He told them he couldn’t get his breath because of the pain and pressure in his chest, so they didn’t make us wait long. They took me in to him after he got his backless nightie and a nitroglycerin tablet. They gave us blankets from the warmer and they started hooking him up to a beeping machine, drips, tubes and I don’t know what all. We were both praying with faith that was given by God and not of ourselves. An old friend who works in environmental services came in and sat down and talked to us the whole time of her break. It seems like it was a long time and we were happy to have her there, happy for the distraction.

I was thinking our daughter would go to work the next morning and since we didn’t know what to tell her I didn’t call until 6:00 a. m. As soon as she got up and got dressed she came. She had called our son and he came from another town, but didn’t get there until after we’d been moved to a room. Both of them were there when the doctor came to talk to us. It was New Year’s eve Monday so the doctor scheduled a catheterization for Wednesday. The adult children and their support made a tremendous difference. There was no fear, no panic, we all thought it was a small thing and not life-threatening, at any rate we knew everything was going to be fine.

You can imagine our surprise when we saw the video of the catheterization the minute it and the insertion of two stints was over. He could have died, the doctor said. It’s a good thing you came when you did. (He had been saved by medications, especially heparin which thinned the blood and allowed it to pass through the two damaged vessels. ) We left the hospital on Thursday morning. We hadn’t called anyone else, there was nothing anyone else could do. We knew everything was going to be all right. It was especially good to spend the time with our children. At one time a nurse said, “Is your company going to stay all day.” Which meant go away and let him rest, I guess she didn’t know they were the best medicine he could have in addition to the methods and medicaments given to save his life. It was all like a dream, a dream on a cloud where everything ran smoothly just like the car did on the Long Smooth Highway.

Bill is doing great. He has been to all the cardio classes, done the exercise therapy and taken up his other exercises again. If they hadn’t had stints, they would have had to do by-passes. Oh, we are so thankful he didn’t have to go through that. He’s taking good care of himself and has lost twenty-five pounds. We have nothing but praise and thanksgiving to our Lord and to all the wonderful people who took care of him. We’ve seen the veins for ourselves and they are in good shape. We are not worried, should we be? No—it’s not necessary, each day is complete in itself. But I’d say we are all a bit more appreciative of each day we have together and we are hoping for a whole lot more of them, God willin’ and the crick don’t rise.

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Backyard Shootout

13 Feb

A Slice of Life

   Bill Lites

Bill

 As I remember how it happened, one day several years ago, I was looking for something in our attic, when I came across an old pair of suede cowboy boots that I hadn’t worn in years.  I got them down, tried them on, and they still fit.  That prompted me to look for the really neat felt cowboy hat I had worn with those boots when I made business trips to California.  After the job was over, on my way back to Florida, I would usually take a couple vacation days and stop to see my mother and aunt in Albuquerque.  The boots and hat were always in style there and I enjoyed the casual Southwestern atmosphere that allowed me to wear my Western duds.  I had spent my growing up years in Albuquerque, and had pretty much lived in western clothes until I moved away from there when I was 18.

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With boots and hat in hand, I got out one of my best Western shirts and some Levis to see if DiVoran would remember her “Bill” of the past

2“Wow, you look great!” she said, as I strolled onto the back porch.  “All you need now is your leather jacket to complete that outfit.”  So, I went looking for it, and sure enough it did make a striking outfit, if I do say so myself.

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When our daughter, Renie, saw me wearing the hat, she wanted to see how she would look in it.  She found a vest and after much fussing with hair and clothes, she came out to show us her outfit.  “Beautiful.” I said, and told her she could wear the hat anytime she wanted to.

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It was the same with our son Billy, the next time he was over, except he wanted to try out the whole outfit.  That’s when I remembered a matched pair of fake revolvers and handmade Mexican holsters my aunt, Jessie, had given me when I was in college.  She had worn them when riding horseback in annual parades as a young woman in the 1930’s while living in Texas.

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Well, that made quite a sight, when Billy walked around our back yard pretending to be participating in “Quick Draw Shootouts” with the bad guys.  It was a Kodak moment, and as you can see, we didn’t let it get by without a photo to remember the occasion.

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Now our son, Billy, has an 18-year-old son, Jacob, and DiVoran persuaded me to give him my vintage leather jacket, so now it is in good hands.  Who knows, someday somebody else in the family may wear my cherished boots, hat, holster and jacket,

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Note:  We still have my grandfather’s denim work jacket from the 1920’s with the patches             my grandmother sewed on it.  I can’t wear it though because the sleeves are too short.

Scripture:  Isaiah 61:10

                                               

 

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Just Passing By

30 Jul

My Take

 

DiVoran Lites

 “Oh, hi,” I say to the dinner plate sized gopher tortoise off to one side of the trail. Our woods are a kind of sanctuary for them and we see them often. Is this one a boy tortoise or a girl tortoise? Our son, an expert on gopher tortoises, could tell us, but he’s not here, right now.

I walk toward the pass-through into the neighborhood where I live, but before I get there, I spot a smaller gopher tortoise, this one about the size of a Corning salad plate that looks as if he’s about to go into the subdivision.  I’ve never seen two tortoises at the same time so my imagination begins to take over as it usually does when I’m about to meddle in somebody else’s business.

Maybe the big one, is the small one’s, mother. Maybe she’s worried that he’ll go into the subdivision and be run over or attacked by a dog. Anyhow, subdivisions are dangerous for wildlife so I pick him up by the shell and take him over to the big one. If she is his mother, she can look after him and I can go on home.

The minute I set him down, the big one starts bobbing its head so hard I’m afraid it will get a crick in its neck. Right away, I remind myself that gopher tortoises are vegetarians and they don’t have any equipment with which to hurt each other. I hope. Otherwise, it might have been a mistake to bring them together.

Everything seems okay except for the emphatic bobbing. The small one doesn’t bob back, but then he doesn’t pull into his shell either. Now what?The big one starts walking away. The small one follows. Phew. Surely, they are mother and son going home just as I imagined. Wait, though, suddenly the small one dashes around the big one and slips into a hole exactly the size of his shell, leaving the big one on the outside looking stunned. It waits a moment then begins to graze.

We’ll have to talk to our son and see what its all about. Stay tuned. Maybe it’s just one more lesson in minding my own business.

Proverbs 26:17

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