Dear Reader:

Actually he relented and gave mom enough time to get a wedding dress and tell family and friends to show up on a certain day … and POW they were married! ( As a child I loved hearing mother dreamily retelling the story and I would call out” Again, Again!”

***. When this little narrative was published and given to Henry Ford the, ” The Auto King”, he was so moved by the novel idea behind the book… he ordered 25,000 copies for his employees!

One day it came to Rutledge… ” Creation supplies us with only two kinds of things: necessities and extras. Sunlight, air, food, shelter-these are among the bare necessities. With them we can exist. But moonlight, and starlight are distinctly extras; so are music, perfumes, and flowers. ( The wind is perhaps a necessity-but the song that it croons through the morning pines is a different thing.”

” The fascinating thought behind these startling observations is this question… Who put them here and for what purpose.

One night-sitting with a ” dying friend” something happened to Rutledge’s friend that he never forgot… a mockingbird broke into song in the moonlight… if was as if the mockingbird was chanting divinely. Suddenly Rutledge’s friend sat up… pushed all the medicine off his bedside table and declared that he was going to live! He felt like all that beauty and peace were really the love of God and now he understood that God just doesn’t love us with words but He loves us by giving us everything we need … plus the extras in life.”

” Rutledge concludes that all he knows is that life’s extras had done more for his faith in GOD than all the sermons he had ever heard!” The human mind might reject these different Divine observations but the human heart can hardly do so. And in things spiritual I do not know but that the heart is by far the the better guide. “

The night before mother left for the Presbyterian Home she brought this book over and told me this book did more for her faith through all the hard times than any other but now she wanted me to have it.

I started crying… mother was in middle stage of dementia but still I wanted her to take it… but she admitted she could no longer read… but she wanted me to read it and one day pass it on down. As I started sniffling again… she reached out and squeezed my hand as she smiled: ” Don’t worry… I know it line by line and it is memorized in my heart and I don’t have dementia there. ”

So when Mandy, Lassie, and Doodle left yesterday to return to 100 Rainbow Road to turn off the water… and cover the pipes before the weekend freeze … I made them promise to bring that book back to me… and they did!!!!!!💗

So until tomorrow… stay WARM! And bring in your extras-plants and flowers and watch a sunset!