Saturday Thoughts

 This was the sunrise yesterday morning...I love how the trees frame the sun to make it look as though it is entering the earth through a doorway...

And as the sun enters through the doorway...or a gate, perhaps...an "Eastern Gate"....it spreads its light around and dispels the darkness...

bringing us a renewed hope and peace for the new day...

I look forward to the day that The SON Himself, our Messiah, will enter through the Eastern Gate , and dispel all the darkness for us forever.  

Today is Saturday, a day to rest, play, clean house, cook, bake, get caught up on things left undone all week...prepare for Sunday, the Lord's Day...the true day of rest, worship. spending time with the Lord, with our friends at church, our family, a day to rejoice, a day to pray, a day to prepare our hearts for whatever comes next...For some, it will be another ordinary week...off to work or school, or whatever other appointments you may have...and for way too many it will be a week to continue to pray for deliverance from the mud and mire of the storms of last week...a week to try to put some semblance of normalcy back together if at all possible...for many, it won't be possible. Many have no homes to clean, no kitchen to cook in, no beds to sleep in, and still no electricity even if they do have their homes...And sadly, for too many, they have lost loved ones, they are still looking for loved ones who are lost, they are lost themselves, in sorrow, exhaustion, and the feeling that nothing will ever be the same again.  And it won't. Life will never be the same way as it was a little over a week ago.  Lives have been changed forever...and many will never be the same again.  

Ah, but then we look at the weather report, and there is another storm on the horizon! One that is headed straight for the Florida peninsula!  Thankfully, it doesn't appear to be headed back up to Georgia and the Carolinas, but it is definitely headed for the Florida Gulf coast, the mainland, and then across the state to the Atlantic coast, and most likely it will bring a LOT of rain and wind with it, so we all need to be prepared no matter what part of the state we are living in!

I don't want to sound like doom and gloom here...that's not my nature. But I am being realistic and facing facts...there's a whole lot of tragedy and sorrow going on around us. And it's not just here in this part of the country, but it is in many other places too, and especially around the world in Israel and Ukraine and other places of much unrest and sadness. 

More than anything, we need to pray for one another, for those in dire distress and need of much help...and try to do whatever we are able to do to lift up the fallen.  

Today we took a little walk and I noticed something in this location that I had not noticed before:

It is an old sidewalk, leading to a bare spot in a lot, where once an old house stood.

I just couldn't help myself. I had to walk down this path and stand in the spot where the house once stood.

I looked across the new 4-lane highway that now stands in the way of the once much grander view this house had of the little lake across the way. They had to move the house to make room for the highway.

I know you'll think I'm silly, but as I stood there in that spot, I thought about all the many years that grand old house had stood there, (over 100 years, I believe), 

This was the house that stood there, and this picture was taken when we happened to be passing by back in 2018 and saw them actually moving it to its new location.

And I thought about all the years families had lived in this very spot, living their lives, raising their children, going through all the motions of living from the time it was built in 1890...can you imagine? They must have had a horse and buggy here too!  And they probably didn't have electricity at first, and had to do everything the old-fashioned way! Right here on this very spot, people lived, loved, worked hard, probably had a nice garden, taught their children to be good citizens and hopefully to love God and their fellow man, then laughed and cried, maybe even birthed babies, lived and died. Right here in this spot.  And somehow I couldn't just walk away without saying something about that...it felt like hallowed ground.

This was the view out the other side of the house, which probably looks a lot different now than it did then. There used to be a train track right out there in the middle, and the trains would come and go every day into this little town. It was all a lot different then than it is today, and maybe even better then than it is today...but then again, maybe not. Progress can be a good thing...but that's still a matter of opinion.  

I wrote about this old house HERE, when it was literally moved from this location to a new lot when they widened the highway.  The house now belongs to the Florida Dept. of Transportation, and is still waiting to be sold or auctioned off of something. I feel sad that it is still sitting there, waiting for new owners, new people to call it "home", and make its walls ring with laughter once again.

I picked a little bouquet of flowers from the old house lot, and brought them home with me as a kind of memorial to the memory of that house and the life it once "lived".

I thought about all the people who have been displaced from their homes because of the storm last week...many will never see their old homes again because they were totally washed away. The places where they stood may be caked in mud or covered with rocks and boulders from the many mud and rockslides that took place in the mountains...or here in Florida they may be washed away from the storm surge of the ocean waters and totally destroyed...and lives are changed forever.

But the memory lives on in the hearts of everyone who ever lived and loved in those homes...the memory is something that doesn't just go away overnight.  Even when a person gets a brand new home to replace the one that was lost, for whatever reason, it's never quite the same. 

I guess I'm a bit nostalgic tonight, but I write this to honor those who have been through so much heartache this past week, and for those who have lost homes, and a way of life that will never come back the way it was, and then for those who lost loved ones, and life is changed forever.

May God comfort the hearts of those who are hurting, grieving, and still in shock.

May He give you strength to keep moving forward, to have the courage to keep trying and not give up.

Amen.

Remnants of the Past - Revisited and Updated

Today, May 7, 2019, marks the 13th anniversary of the day my sweet mother "graduated" to her heavenly home.  I think about her every day, and still miss her so much...and wish I could just pick up the phone and call her. (I do wish they'd install phones in heaven, don't you???)  And now, this week especially, after the passing of my oldest brother, her firstborn baby, I'm thinking about her even more.  My sister Doris had posted this picture (see below) on Facebook this past week, of my brother Russell and also our mother holding him as a baby, and remarked that now our Mother would be holding her "baby Russell" again in heaven.  Of course, he was a full grown man of 75 years when he passed, not a little baby, but I still think my mother was waiting there at heaven's gates to welcome him and I can just hear her voice calling to him, "Oh Russell! We are So happy you are finally home!"  And I am quite sure she held onto him as long as she could with such joy and thankfulness that her firstborn son was safe at last...

So what does that have to do with these pictures and story that I am going to share with you today?

Well, only that as I was scrolling through some of the stories I've written over the past nine or ten years here in blogland, this one stuck out to me as a very special day that I spent with my mother and father, many years ago...and it was just the kind of day that we all loved...exploring an old house in the country that time had forgotten.  We were all delighted in the discoveries we made there that day, and it was, for me, a precious time to be with my parents...just the three of us, making memories and truly enjoying being together.  

I am so glad that we captured this day in pictures as well as in our memories, and so to honor my mother's memory today on this anniversary of her passing, I'd like to share these memories with you as well.  

The Old Whelchel House...a  house that time had forgotten

Me with my mother, Dorothea Tedlie Mursch...we found something really special:  My Mother's Favorite Flower: Lilacs! She was so delighted!

Look at how many chimneys! This house
also had a "dog-trot" through the center of
it, which was typical of old Georgia houses.



Daddy loved the old chevy!

They called it "the Old Whelchel Estate", a house reclaimed by the land.  The lone survivors: a lilac blooming in the sun, wisteria climbing over the rickety porch roof and up the rough fieldstone chimney, the rusty shell of a 1930 Chevrolet Sedan abandoned in the yard.  Remains of a by-gone era such as an ancient feather-tick mattress on the floor of the upstairs bedroom, broken pieces of a cane-bottomed rocker that once rocked restless babies to sleep in the arms of their work-worn mother...shreds of wallpaper peeling off the wall with yellowed newspaper backing, all telling a story of yesteryear. 

Remnants of what must have been an old chest of memories littered the floor. There were scraps of paper with numerous handwritten notes, scrawled in the ancient penmanship of an old scholar. Geneologies, obituaries and wedding announcements from faded newspaper clippings, and fragile pieces of a more recent letter from an old childhood friend gave a poignant portrayal of what used to be. 

"Dear Homer", the letter began, "I sure enjoyed my visit with you. Yes! It was good to see so many of my childhood friends.  I went to the old homestead I knew when I was a child, then I went to the cemetery, looking at the graves of so many I usto know.  then we just spent the afternoon driving over the old roads we usto travel over.  Yes! I shed some tears as well as smiles."  The letter continued on, "Homer, have you ever given any thought of what a wonderful story yours and my life really is? Oh, yes! Our story will never be written, but what an interesting story!  Almost as good as some of the best selling books; but a story that will die when we die.  But such a beautiful story! No wonder we still like to see each other.  Yes! Our lives were interesting!  Know what?  I didn't like telling you 'good-bye'.  I guess you know I began to cry when I left you; so many memories!  You said that one of those lovely old oak trees were hit by lightning.  I do hope the tree will live.  They are so beautiful!"   Love always, Clara."

It was a glorious spring morning the day we made these discoveries.  This old homestead was nestled back in the Georgia piney-woods overlooking a magnificent view of Lake Sidney Lanier.  The weathered boards of the old house were gray from years of neglect.  The voluptuous purple wisteria rambled  across the sagging front porch and wandered up the the sides of the house.  Tangled masses of forsythia and climbing roses hampered our pathway to the porch steps.  Much to our delight a lone lilac bush bloomed gloriously in the side yard...all fragrant reminders of the life that once teemed within the confines of this forgotten habitat.  The "lovely old oak tree" mentioned in the letter truly had been hit by lightning at some earlier time, but the outer limbs lived on.

 

As we sifted through the remnants from the past, so many visions of what must have been crept into my mind.  We lingered a while just drinking it all in, and wishing we could turn back the clock.  How I would have loved to have met Homer and Clara and heard their life's story from their own lips; but I guess Clara was right; their story would have to die with them.

Learning about Homer and Clara caused me to reflect on my own life. I wondered, "When my life is over and done on this earth, what would remain for others to remember? Would there be any meaningful remnants of the past left for others to see? When my children or grandchildren sift through the rubble of what was once my prized possessions, what would they think?  Would they find only treasures of dusty photographs, scraps of letters and newspaper clippings, mementos that would only be meaningful to myself?  After the auctioneer has sold to the highest bidder the few furnishings and trappings of my earthly life, what would be left?

Jesus said in Matthew 6:19-21,

  "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  (NKJV)

 

Yes, the treasures I want to remain are heavenly...the faith of a child who first learned about Jesus while being cradled in his mother's arms and listening to her sing, "Jesus Loves Me".  A portrait of a woman who lived a life of faith and commitment to Christ, who never looked back when the going got too tough...A person who treasured her relationship with her Lord, her family, and her friends in Christ.  These are the treasures that would live on and on for eternity; not a house built with wood and stone filled with worthless trinkets! 

A few years after our lovely day at The Old Whelchel Estate I saw in the local paper that old Homer had died in a nursing home at the age of ninety-seven. The property was sold to a relative, and soon the old house was torn down to make way for a new housing development on the lake.  Tears slipped down my cheeks as I mourned the loss.  Then I laughed as I remembered that for Christmas that past year my father had painted two landscape pictures from the past for me...one of the old house just as we had seen it that spring day, and another of the rickety old barn.  Those paintings would live on to retell the story again and again.  I could just picture old Homer and Clara enjoying a heavenly reunion themselves in their "mansions over the hilltop", where neither rust or decay or progress would ever destroy!

As for me, I will continue to thank the Lord for the blessed reminder He gave me that day to lay up my real treasures in heaven with Him!

Note the interesting tree...the one that had been struck
by lightning at some earlier time?

What a wonderful old barn! It's so sad that this is gone forever!

Post Script added 6-8-12: These are the paintings that my father painted from our memories of that special day.  These pictures are very special treasures to me now that both of my dear parents are gone on to heaven. Looking at this story again and the pictures captured that day so many years ago makes me long to have that reunion in heaven soon.  Until then I will cherish these precious "Remnants from the Past".

Interesting Places I've Lived-The Story of the Doughnut Tree

I think this would be fun to do.  Perhaps you have lived in or worked at a very "interesting" or unusual place, house, town...some place that was unique in some way and different from the ordinary.  Wouldn't it be fun to share these experiences and places with each other, and maybe learn a little history about the person or about the location in the process?  Is anyone interested in doing this?  Maybe you lived in Alaska, or another part of the world, or in a commune or convent or who knows where we all have been?!

 I have been chatting with an "old" friend on Facebook about a place where we used to live about 20 years ago. It had a very unique history and many interesting stories.  I will attempt to remember what I can here...and may have to go digging through my old photographs to document this place better, so this may take a while.

Maybe this will help stir up some of your memories of places where you've lived...and perhaps you could share them with us in a future blog.

The house where we lived was in the little town of Fryeburg, Maine, which is an interesting place in itself.  It is the home to The Fryeburg Fair...one of the best country fairs I've ever seen.  (Check on the link for more information about this annual event).

But the place where we lived, albeit, for only about a year, was in a beautiful old New Englander home that was built in 1848.  My hubby was born in 1948, so the house was exactly 100 years older than he was!

This is the front of the house in the snow...Yes, it snowed a LOT in Maine! And that old drafty house used a LOT of fuel to keep us warm!  Another reason we didn't stay there long...

This was the connected "carriage house/barn/attic above where the "treasures" were stored.

I truly loved all the history and interesting nooks and crannies of this old house.  We were only renting it, so we couldn't do much with it except just enjoy it.  The owners were rather particular about our "snooping" too far into the attic of the old house, as they still had many boxes full of family "treasures" stored up there, and they didn't want us to get into them...but we did have one good tour...and there was so much history there I wish I could have stayed up there and gone through every last box.  But anyway, that's another story.

Here's the only souvenirs I wound up with somehow...a couple of old skeleton keys and an iron spike that looks like it was forged in a blacksmith shop...so it must be pretty old...not sure how these made it into my treasure stores...I think it was purely by "accident"....

I wonder what doors those keys would open?

 This picture was taken when my Mother and Dad had come up to visit from Florida. My mother and I were having so much fun together in the kitchen.  I loved this old fashioned kitchen. All of the cabinets were the old white steel cabinets, and the sink was a large farm style sink.  The old electric range was really special, with double ovens and the old warming well on one of the burners...right out of the early 50's, I'd say. As a matter of fact, the whole kitchen was circa 1950...not one thing had been modernized in all that time....but it still worked!

And here I am visiting with my sweet mother in law, "Nanny", when she came up to visit for Christmas.  Notice the lovely built in china cabinet here in the dining room. There were actually two of them.

I won't bore you with tons of family pictures, but suffice it to say, the house was a fun place for us to live, and we had many happy gatherings with friends, church family and loved ones during our short tenure there...but it ended up being a little too expensive for our budget after we barely survived the winter heating costs. Our next home was back home to Florida, as our parents were getting older and we needed to get back "home", to a warmer climate and to be there to help care for our family in the years to come.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this house was that it was the "caretaker" for the famous "Doughnut Tree" of Fryeburg, Maine.  This was not the original house where the giant Dutch Elm tree had grown into the shape of a doughnut, but when the 100 year old tree was struck with the Dutch Elm disease back in 1965,  Mr. Harry Eastman took the "doughnut" portion of the old tree, and had a special covered shelter built on his estate to keep the "doughnut" for all the world to see and remember.

I happen to own a couple of the old original postcards that were famous about this tree:

These postcard pictures were taken in front of the original house where the tree had grown...before it was removed to the Eastman House.

Google Picture of "The Eastman House", where the remains of "The Doughnut Tree" are kept now.

Here is a photograph of the shelter with the "doughnut" remains that is on the Eastman estate property, as it looked when we lived there.

Click on this link for more information about this famous Doughnut Tree:

https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/6169 - Information about the "Doughnut Tree", Fryeburg, Maine

Here's another old news article about the Doughnut Tree, and it tells where Mr. Harry Eastman took it to his "estate".

We were proud to be able to be a part of this historical old home and the "doughnut tree".  While we lived there one of the classes from the local school came over and helped  clean up and plant some flowers around this display as a class project.

I truly loved this old house, with all of its quirks and stories...another thing I remember was that in the attached woodshed/carriage house/barn, which is the way the old New Englander houses were built so that in winter you didn't have to go outside to get to your wood and feed the animals, there was also an indoor "outhouse"!  Yes, that's right!  There was an actual outhouse built into the attached buildings...and it was still fully functional.  I know, because shortly after moving into this house the indoor plumbing malfunctioned, and we had to use this indoor outhouse for a few days until the plumbing was working again! Now, that was great fun! Ha ha!  It came equipped with corn cobs and Sears Roebuck catalogs...but we didn't use those antiques.

The reason I started thinking about this old house again was in my online conversation with a friend we were discussing the demise of the old Dutch Elm trees, due to a disease/blight many years ago. Elm trees were on my mind because I had posted pictures of me on Facebook planting a Drake Elm tree in our yard yesterday, as a memorial to my father, whose 6th anniversary of his passing was this past week.  (The Drake Elm trees are not susceptible to the blight of the Dutch Elm trees).

We chose to plant an elm tree because my Dad had a huge elm tree in their home (where I grew up), and it had died of old age several years before my mother and father passed away.  We all grieved over that old tree when it had to be cut down, because it gave such lovely shade to their house and yard, and it left such a bright, bare spot when it was gone.  Our current back yard is much too sunny and in need of some shade, so hopefully this elm tree will grow and flourish and provide shade for many years to come.

For more information  about the history of the  little town of Fryeburg, Maine, please check out this website:http://www.fryeburghistorical.org/index.html   

Also, for some wonderful reading into the history of Fryeburg, a friend of mine has written four historical fiction novels about the area. (The Fryeburg Chronicles).  I highly recommend these excellent books.  You can find out more about June O'Donal's books here: http://www.xulonpress.com/bookstore/bookdetail.php?PB_ISBN=9781626979468&HC_ISBN=

So, now back to my original idea: I wonder how many of you will accept the challenge and share some of YOUR stories of interesting places you've lived or worked in over the years. I'll bet there are a lot of wonderful stories out there just waiting to be told.  I actually have a few more up my sleeve and will be sharing them in the future.  If you do post something of this nature, please make sure to call my attention to it here somehow so I will know to check it out.  I don't have one of those group blog connectors, but if this becomes a popular idea, maybe someone can tell me how to set that up!

I don't usually post something like this on Sunday, so please forgive me!  I actually wrote the bulk of this last night, and wanted to get it published before I forget!  I trust you and yours are having a wonderful, God-filled and blessed SONday!  

Joshua 24:15(NKJV)

15 And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. 

But as for me and my house, 

we will serve the Lord.”

Amen.