+++ Day Three +++

The week of gratitude continues!! I must confess, I'm enjoying this. It's very good for me to have to spend the whole day contemplating something that I am grateful for - something that's worthy of this list. I find that it keeps the mind and heart cheerfully occupied.. and when the sky is grey and Monday rolls around, there's nothing that can cure the blues like simple gratitude. 

So here's day three ~ Good books. Literature has a wonderful power. It can create an atmosphere where we enlarge our knowledge of the human experience - just by reading the pages in a book. I've spent many good hours in the world of Charlotte Bronte, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, and others. Not only does reading do wonders for your personal writing, spelling and composition skills, it's also a delightful way to pass the time. When I need to get out of my own skin, there's no better place to escape than a good book. My shelves are full of the ones that have become like friends to me. Some of those pages are excerpts from my life it seems... and when I read them, it helps me to see that I am part of something bigger. God has written the most dramatic, life-changing story of all time, and in love, He has allowed me to have a page here and there. Praise Him. 

Here's a taste of my favorite lines from recent reads: 

"And now those divine surgeons had me tied down and were at work. My anger protected me only for a short time; anger wearies itself out and truth comes in."    -- "Till We Have Faces," by C.S. Lewis, Pg. 266

"You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring into his eyes as if he were your mistress:  better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him." -- "The Four Loves," by C.S. Lewis, pg. 71

"No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What odes such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be plated in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of it's summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise." -- "Villette" by Charlotte Bronte, pg. 283

"True love is not simply an emotional response. It manifests itself in acts of kindness, generosity and those actions that produce the greatest benefit to the object loved." -- "Real Christianity," by William Wilberforce

" I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all'; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep." -- "Villette" by Charlotte Bronte, pg. 409

"Live and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day comes when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these words: Wait and Hope!"  -- "Count of Monte Christo," by Alexandre Dumas, pg. 508

"And the joke, or tragedy, of it all is that these golden moments in the past, which are so tormenting if we erect them into a norm, are entirely nourishing, wholesome, and enchanting if we are content to accept them for what they are, for memories. Properly bedded down in a past which we do not miserably try to conjure back, they will send up exquisite growths. Leave the bulbs alone, and the new flowers will come up. Grub them up and hope, by fondling and sniffing, to get last year's blooms, and you will get nothing.

"Unless a seed die..."   {"Letters to Malcom, Chiefly on Prayer," by C.S. Lewis, Pg. 27}

    Walking through fields of memories, I can't help but hope for yesterday's blooms. The sticks are dead, brown, lying on the ground in a trampled mess. How I miss the fragrant blooms of yesterday... blowing in the breeze, waving at me as though the flowers and leaves were saying hello after a long absence. "I'm back!" I want to shout. "Where are you?" The cold winds of winter are my only answer. After the chill, the snow comes gently falling, falling, dancing to the ground in an unsung melody. The tears gather up in my eyes and start to spill over and run down my cheeks. The snow is covering my once beautiful flowers. There's no hope of revival, is there? I'm watching the white flurries cover them like a slow, gradual burial. They are dead and gone.

    Is the death the real tragedy? Or is the real affliction my hopes of conjuring up the past again? I wish for better times... the winds of Summer, the warmth and green of Spring, the newness of everything that blooms when all the frost is gone. Don't the best things happen when you're walking through fields of flowers? When all the world is coming up roses? I'd even settle for cut roses in an ugly vase. Any reminder will do. Any little bridge to the past will suffice. Any sort of escape to "the good old days," will please me.

    The thorns never stay amidst the memories of a rosy past. The prick and poke sharply enough in the present, but memory has a way of cutting them clear off the stems. All that's left for a grieving heart is the beauty and fragrance of the rose. Nothing more, nothing less. "What's the danger in that?" I question. Don't you wonder, too?

    Wishing for nothing more than the glory days of the past is the cunning, deft little thief that has stolen many good hours from me. Good hours, full of potential in the present. Here, NOW. The door to the flowers, sunshine and glories of 2010 stands open to me, and I can do nothing but lie at the door of 2008 and weep. The tears have blinded my eyes. The memories have dominated everything that lies before me. It's time to move.

  
     "Return to your rest, O my soul, For the LORD has dealt bountifully with you. For You have rescued my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.
            I shall walk before the LORD in the land of the living."      {Psalm 116:7-9}