Dear Reader:

*(This post is dedicated to my Ya friend….Jackson-God’s Wink!)

“Holy Moly!”…it is hard to believe that August is winding down…and before we blink September will arrive in all her splendor!

One Sunday back in early June…I remember flipping through the hymnal…with some trepidation. It brought back scary moments and memories…when, as a child, I would start flipping through the hymnal (ours had some pictures in them back then) to keep myself occupied during the sermon.

If mother heard the rustle of pages being turned ….she would lean over Ben and David, slamming the hymnal shut (sometimes with my hand still in it) and pull it towards her with a glare so intense…I could feel the burn two siblings away.

I think I do have to give her credit for my innate “teacher stare/glare”…I was just imitating my mother. She never  taught school but she sure taught us not to deviate our attention away from the pastor for any reason!

As a child, then, and now as an adult…I always wondered why the first hymn in many Protestant church hymnals is “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

I looked it up and saw when it originated in the early 1800’s…how the author died young in his forties and how later the hymn was completed by another musician…but there was no reference to the selection of this particular hymn over hundreds of others for being the first selection.

It is sometimes called the “Trinity” hymn because it addresses the theological doctrine of “God in Three Persons.”

  “Holy” is one of those words that I find hard to define in my own mind. The synonym, sacred, first jumps out…but then nothing else follows…like in “holy” ground.

Madeleine L’Engle in her 40-Day Journey– examines this in one of her forty devotionals.

“Isn’t it a marvelous thing that “holiness” is nothing we can earn? We don’t become holy be acquiring merit badges and brownie points, It has nothing to do with virtue or job descriptions or mortality.

It is nothing we can do, in this do-it-yourself world. It is a gift, a beautiful sheer gift, waiting there to be recognized and received. We do not have to be qualified to be holy. We do not have to be qualified to be whole, or healed.” 

…………………

I really see, these days, that the time I have been given on earth is a holy gift. My diagnosis is what it is…I have a certain form of breast cancer. But the prognosis is where God comes in as the largest, most meaninful variable in our health predictions.

What I have discovered is that I can be whole... without ever being completely healed. That was a mammoth epiphany for me. “I am well, I am well, in my soul.” (Not even cancer “little c” can ever touch my soul.)

So until tomorrow…Thank you God for Your Holiness that gives us back to ourselves with the wholeness you intended us to have. (Madeleine L’Engle)

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*Honey told me to get some special glue to be able to put the personalized clay labels (on the mason jars) that she made for me. I did and look at the results….(*If anyone has any mason jars just sitting around doing nothing…call me and I will gladly take some off your hands… clear or colored…I will pick up or you can  just drop them off on my front porch.)

Honey and Mike Burrell just got home from White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia…staying at the National Historic Landmark-The Greenbrier (where Mike met Lee Trevino…remember?)

Mike and Honey love visiting historical sites and landmarks (which makes me very happy.) A few summers ago they spent several weeks visiting Civil War battlefields.

One night, during this sojourn,  Mike had a dream at some hotel where he and Honey were staying…and the next day in the car he shared it with her.

He told Honey that he was at the Battle of Antietam…and was talking to several soldiers when he looked up and saw someone who looked so familiar. It was me. He was so startled he wasn’t sure how to handle the situation but he said, “Becky…you can’t be here at Antietam…in my dream…because you have the cancer..remember?” I replied, “Not any more …not any more..I’m not sick any more.”

“Holy Moly” …I sure like Mike’s dreams.

Honey told me that Mike secretly commissioned an artist co-hort of hers (Amy at MobArt in Hendersonville) to paint a picture of their beautiful Hope Falls…this is the result! Holy Moly!

*I thought yesterday was Rudy’s second diagnosis but it is today around 12:30…please keep Kaitlyn, Tommy, and Rudy in your thoughts and prayers as they are praying hard for a different option or any option at all. Believe in possibilities!