My middle daughter Carolyn and her husband Jeremy always host a lovely Christmas party at their home. There’s always a sumptuous spread of appetizers and Christmas treats, music, games, and general holiday cheer. I spent the evening visiting and reminiscing with some of my favorite people.

In this post I shared about how so much of my life would not have turned out the way it has without one woman and her family — Yvonne. She is my late husband Michael’s aunt, and the reason he and I (weirdly) met, married, and raised our family in Minnesota.

From left to right: Jenifer (Frank and Yvonne’s youngest daughter), Yvonne, me, Sara (my youngest), and Carolyn.

I’m giving thanks today for the providence of God, in making sure I met this family when I was eighteen years old, completely unaware of the trials that were ahead. They are part of His story of mercy and joy in my life.

I had my first cataract surgery this month and realize now I don’t have greenish gray paint on my bedroom walls. I have warm gray walls, but there is no green in it. There has been a sepia film over my vision from cataracts for years now, but I didn’t know it.

I’m enjoying seeing true colors from the one eye with a clear new toric lens, and look forward to the second surgery so the other eye loses its beige cast.

My distance vision is pretty sharp now, for the first time since I was a little girl, but my close vision requires readers, until I heal from my second surgery and get a new glasses prescription.

That’s all for now — just jumping in to say a quick hello. xoxo

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

This is a well-known prayer called (in Latin) The Suscipe. It’s pronounced soo-SHEE-pay, and it means “receive.” Some sources say the emphasis is on the first syllable, but the Latin sources say it should be on the second.

This simple prayer of relinquishment was popularized by St. Ignatius of Loyola, and I became aware of it about two years ago. I wrote it in my journal and wept.

I cannot honestly say I dwell in this kind of surrender, but my heart’s desire is to move closer to this each day. Because on my deathbed, I know with certainty that my heart and soul will be crying out, “Give me only your love and your grace, Jesus! That is enough for me!”

Are you familiar with this prayer?

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” ~~~ Jane Austen

I was sitting in my living room this morning listening to the quiet. I looked at this view below and said in my heart, “I love my home.” And I thanked God again for the thousandth time that He has given me a home. When people all over the world don’t have homes, I have one. Why that is so, I have no answers to. I only know that I will not be caught being ungrateful for a sound dwelling where I can sleep in peace, have warmth when it’s cold, prepare food for anyone at my table, read by electric light, and of course pray.

I got up to get water in the kitchen for my 20-ounce navy blue Yeti cup and as I heard the creak of the hardwood floors in the dining room, I thanked God. I realize that I am just a steward of my home, and that it’s God who owns this white house on a corner by Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota. I paused at the dining room fireplace to take this picture:

It reminded me of a promise I believe He made to me decades ago about a very heavy burden on my heart. Cardinals have become meaningful to me, and my home is filled with them because people have given me cardinal gifts after hearing that story.

My 10 year-old granddaughter Miriam asked me not long ago, “Grandma, how many cardinals do you have in your house?” I encouraged her to count, and while the exact number escapes me this moment, we had a fun time going from room to room and she kept exclaiming, “Oh! Here’s another one! And another!”

Here’s a gift I treasure from my friend Su — it was supposed to be a welcome mat but I don’t want it outside to get dirty and wet — so I put it against the living room carpet in the entry way. I step on it every day and think of her, and love its beauty.

I sat in my bedroom chair an hour later and looked out on Lake Superior, on my quiet little neighborhood filled with older homes with young families in them, I looked at the crows on the power lines and the chickadees almost hidden in my hydrangea bush, and I felt gratitude welling up again. I can actually see these things. I can perceive God’s handiwork and His grace to me so that I can see how He works in this world. Slowly. Reliably. In ebbs and flows. With faithfulness.

When I don’t understand what God is doing, looking long and pondering deeply on all His ways in creation helps me. When I see trees that look dead in the winter, I’m reminded that in a few months, the life and fruitfulness that were hidden in the cold and dark were waiting until the proper time to show themselves.

I took my foster gal to a medical appointment this morning and since it was a blood draw for a future doctor’s visit, we weren’t gone long. Even though we had only driven a couple of miles, waited a few minutes inside the clinic, then driven those same miles home, she said, “It’s good to be home!” when I hit the garage door opener on my car’s visor and we pulled into the garage. She feels it too. She knows God has been so generous with us and we have a warm and cozy place to live out our lives.

Like most people who get to the end part of their lives, I think about dying. I wouldn’t say I’m afraid, but I’m sobered by wanting to be ready. I want all the words and love I have for my daughters and grandchildren and friends to be said, and I’m not doing as well as I’d like. I want everything to be in order… not just my “affairs”, but my heart and soul and relationships. I want to know the voice of Jesus and love Him truly. I have absolutely placed my trust in Christ and have no hope of anything good apart from Him. But I know there are things He still wants to do in my life. In this home.

I would like to die in this home He’s given me, and I have asked Him to grant me that. With my loved ones around me. With songs of His love and greatness in my ears. With nothing left undone.

Today, in the quiet, in the jewel-tones everywhere, in the warmth blowing out of the registers, in the company of cardinals, I thank Him.

From my home to yours,

Hello friends. I thought I would share a little something with you that I absolutely love. It’s called The Pause App, and is available for iPhones or Android phones. It’s put out by Wild at Heart Ministries, and John and Stasi Eldredge.

I love why they built this app — it’s for people who struggle to slow down to truly connect with God. The app has what they call one minute pauses, and it has three minute pauses and longer pauses too. There are different focuses you can check out. I am in the middle of the series on resilience and love it.

I have two notifications set on my iPhone, one in the mid-morning and one in the mid-afternoon, to remind me to take a one minute pause, or sometimes a three minute pause, to breathe deeply, turn my heart and mind to God, and ask Him to fill me and help me again.

I realize we don’t need an app on our phones to help us do this, but I have found this one so helpful. Soothing, hopeful, powerful, peaceful, recalibrating.

I am very fond of two apps on my phone (the other one being Hallow), and this is one. I recommend it to you. (There are other apps called Pause, so make sure you use the one that looks like the one at left.) Download it, set up a notification or two, and use it for at least a month. There have been many times I’ve ignored the notifications because I’m in the middle of something, and that’s okay. Just use it as often as you can, and see what you think.

I think it would be fantastic for young people too. It’s an antidote to anxiety, it helps us surrender ourselves to Jesus again and again, and prompts us to remember we are in His presence, loved and cared for by Him more than we can imagine, and we do not have to live at the pace the world wants us to.

Let me know if you try it.

Blessings,

From the archives…

She goes over the whole house in her mind again. The yellow stucco, the white trim, the half circle driveway out front. Her tiny self standing out there and looking south to the rolling gold hills in the distance, and listening for the call of the peacocks. Heelllp. Heelllp.

She goes back to the small galley kitchen at the front of the house, with a Formica covered table at one end, and the red vinyl banquette behind the table, a novelty to her which she called a booth, the cookie jar on the tiled counter with Nabisco Ideal cookies piled inside, the colored aluminum drinking glasses that gave a metallic taste to the water from the slowly dripping faucet.

She can see the good sized but narrow feet in the sturdy flesh colored sandals, anklet socks neatly turned down, and the stout but long calves above that, and the hem of the flowered cotton house dress above that, standing in front of the gleaming gas range. There is stirring going on, and savory smells she can’t bring to mind now because at that age she hardly ate the things others ate. Eggs, vegetables, pizza, soup, gravy and potatoes, almonds, apricots. All were impossible for her. She ate white rice with butter, Cheerios with whole milk and a spoonful of sugar, Skippy peanut butter and Welch’s grape jelly sandwiches on white Wonder bread, plain hamburgers “meat and bun only,” and Abba Zabba candy bars she bought for ten cents at the liquor store in front of Denel’s house. She would have a small salad if the lettuce was iceberg and the dressing was Wishbone Italian.

On the other side of the kitchen wall was the living room, with colonial style furniture, all arranged so the couple who lowered their bottoms down into the deep chairs and the divan with a sigh could see the television. Ed Sullivan. The Wonderful World of Disney. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins.

There was a corner used-brick fireplace near the large cabinet television, where no fires were ever lit, and a many-spindled maple dining room set neatly pushed up against the far wall of the living room. A large painting of three little girls gathered together reading a book was hung over the divan. She liked being in this house, liked walking around and taking note of things, even though she was mostly invisible when she was there.

In the entry hall closet, which hid a vacuum and a few hanging coats, she always took out the inflatable Peter Rabbit, which was weighted at the bottom and stood taller than she, the single toy in the house that was a punching bag of sorts. It was dark blue, red and pale yellow, and she would give it a few whacks and smile when it righted itself and wobbled until it was still and waiting again.

She can see herself walking down the hallway to the three bedroom and two bathroom part of the house, in white shorts with cuffs, a white knit short-sleeved top, and bare feet. Her strawberry hair is shoulder length and parted on the side, and has the remnant of a pageboy curl at the ends, something her mother created with pink sponge rollers after a night time bath.

One of the small bedrooms had a gold vinyl sleeper couch in it and a desk. It had held her crib when she was brought home from Inter-Community Hospital to this house on Delay Avenue. Before her grandparents had moved here from Kansas and bought the house from her parents.

She looks in the door of the second bedroom, which used to be her two older brothers’ room. It has a double bed, a tall maple dresser and matching vanity and nightstand, and she sees the hardwood floors and the spareness of the room as she passes. Across the hall to the back of the house, she sees the room she was always drawn to the most. Two twin beds with rich mahogany head and foot boards, white chenille bedspreads perfectly made, and three other pieces. A tall, dark dresser, curved at the front, all the drawers stacked in elegant symmetrical unison, a shorter, wider dresser with a huge mirror affixed at the back and twelve graceful drawers, and a single prim nightstand that divided the two twin beds. Years later she met a furniture expert who looked at this mahogany set in her guest room upstairs and said, “Ooohhh, that’s probably a Drexel.” The expert pulled out one drawer, saw the confirming stamp on the side, and said, “Even in this condition you could get $10,000, easy.”

She closes her eyes and continues, tip-toeing around the bedroom, turning the key on the side of the nightstand lamp, on, off, on, off, so she can see the two china globes light so delicately, taking their turns. She was never much interested in what was in all the drawers. The tour around the house, quietly conducted for such a little girl (whose award years later from her Girl Scout troop leaders was a defining ribbon that read, “Perpetual Motion”) always led to the Japanese jewelry box on the long dresser. The outside was black lacquer, the inside had little portions lined with red satin. It had been a gift from her father to his mother-in-law, her grandmother, when he was serving in WW II as Lt. Commander of the USS Magoffin.

She stands in front of the dresser and reverently lifts the middle lid of the box, listening to the mournful tune that plays, and each tinkly note is still sharp and clear in her memory, over half a century later.

She sees herself close the jewelry box, then walk through the house to the kitchen back door, which led to an attached screened porch on the side of the house. A clean cement slab made the floor, the slanted roof was aluminum, which was so loud and comforting in the rain, and there were metal rocking chairs and a dark red stained cedar patio table along the perimeter of the porch. Mr. Clean, a yellow canary who sang and trilled and couldn’t stay out of his water dish, lived in a cage on the cedar table. She would sit close and say bird things to him, loving how he cocked his head at her and jumped from perch to perch.

Since this going back is a sunny day, she steps out of the porch onto the pink, porous cement block her grandfather has placed beneath the screen door, into the small back yard. There’s a tall, shady tree close to the house, a rose garden with pale pink and yellow wide blooms she pushes her nose into, and some common bladed grass, rather than the springy dichondra lawn her parents had opted for.

She can hear the clatter of dishes being set on the kitchen table. The conversation of her parents and grandparents inside. She doesn’t know why her brothers aren’t there.

She was never invited to spend the night there. There was no sitting on a squishy lap for the reading of a book. She doesn’t remember being asked even one question (How is school going? What books have you read lately? Would you like to help me bake cookies?) or looked upon with delight. She knows they cared, but whether or not they loved has never been firmly established. They came from a different generation of course.

A screech coming from the dining room breaks her reverie and she’s back in her own home, knows her periwinkle colored parakeet, Phoebe, wants a morning greeting and a new stem of millet. She looks around her at the antique mahogany Drexel bedroom set now in her own home these sixty years later, and hums the tune from the jewelry box, long gone.

She has been told lately that she is cold and dismissive, that she is unable to make good human connection or change for the better. She has gone back to rake through the bits to see why this might be, what molds she was poured into that have shaped and hardened into what she is today.

She gleans no shiny treasures that would make her cry, “Aha!”

Except perhaps, just one.

It was in this yellow stucco house on Delay Avenue that she was clothed in a frilly dress and black patent leather Mary Janes. Her own lacy anklets were cuffed perfectly. Her hair brushed while she whined. From this circle driveway, the 1957 Buick LeSabre station wagon carried her off to Sunday School when she was three years old. She was taken into the pretty church, introduced to the warm and loving middle-aged teachers, and then her father drove home, returning to pick her up two hours later.

And this verse comes to her mind.

Philippians 1:6 – And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

She takes the gem and moves it in the light.

“A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on himself. He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.”

~~C. S. Lewis

(Our grief support group has been meeting for many years now, and I thought I’d repost something I wrote about these dear people when I was first getting to know them….)

Twenty minutes after nine. She makes sure the front door is locked, takes her black wool pea coat from the hook in the entry and puts it on, slips her feet into the black suede oxfords with a retro wing-tip design, drops her iPhone into the middle pocket of her sizeable Vera Bradley purse, and heads to the garage. She starts the Outback, pushes the Robin Mark CD into the player, and backs out of the garage and over the berm of snow at the end of her driveway, piled there by the snow plow last week. The streets are wet, not icy, which means it’s already in the mid-thirties. Unusual for February, and not a good sign for the planet they say on the news, but it makes her feel hopeful and glad. The worst of winter has passed. Even if March brings blizzard after swirling blizzard, piles of snow never seem as sinister as temperatures that plummet to twenty-seven below.

She drives the few miles to the hospital and sings with the Irishman,

“Lord Jesus may Your Spirit come
And make this a holy place
For we have longed to gaze
Upon the glory of Your face.
Then every selfish will exposed,
And every vain desire
Are humbled and then purified,
By Your holy, holy fire,”

and it makes her think for the billionth time about her Michael, now moved on to the place and the Person of whom she sings.

She turns into the parking ramp across the street from the hospital, reaches out of the car window to press the blue button and take the ticket that pokes out, then drives to level P3, where she parks in the “Compacts Only” area near the new elevators that will take her up to the skywalk. She steps out of the elevator and passes medical personnel in periwinkle blue scrubs, professionals in work dress who nod, and people walking through the enclosed and windowed sidewalk, three stories up. She looks down on the street below and wonders how many of those cars hold people with pounding hearts and red eyes, hoping today will bring better news of their loved ones in the huge brick building.

Two years ago she was one of those people, doing normal things like driving, parking, walking, breathing, praying, while watching her husband withdraw from this world, preparing to cross over to a timeless land she could not yet enter.

This is why she put on her pea coat and zippered black suede shoes and got in her Subaru to drive downtown, to be with a group of fellow grief-travelers twice a month, where nothing is expected and everything is understood.

She waits for the elevator and hits the button for the second floor, down one from the skywalk. The signs taped to the walls point to the carpeted room next to the chapel where between twelve and sixteen people gather, pouring coffee, hanging coats, giving hugs, settling down into upholstered chairs. A facilitator will begin the meeting, going over guidelines for newcomers (crying is fine, expected, and we will wait for you to get through it or you can pass, this is not a therapy group but a support group and we learn from each other, remember to share your name and the name of your spouse and how he/she died, if you have to leave early feel free to slip out quietly, the bathrooms are down the hall to the left) and at ten o’clock they begin.

She feels glad to see everyone there. Dignified Noel, with his hearing device that he places on the coffee table, Dan, with his shock of white hair and shy manner, Vicki, with her knee brace and beautiful empathy, Sandy with his brotherly love and Christian faith that warms everyone. She sees Jim, who wears his grief and joy on his face and makes them all laugh and sob, Lovely Barb, who is furthest on the road they share, hopeful, serene and expectant now, Rod, who drives from almost-Canada to be there and can’t yet speak without the pain cutting his words short, Brenda, kind and sweet, who made a quilt for Vicki’s grandbaby, and Jo, who has lost husband and father, and whose humility and quiet sharing reveal real depth. She sees Lloyd in his chair, man of few words with feelings he either can’t or won’t bring to the surface, Mike, trying to navigate life with his daughters after the sudden death of his wife, and Faye, who also remembers the awfulness of Lewy Body Dementia. Chuck is there for the first time in a while, the oldest member of this senior group, and he deals with his sorrow by sitting with hospice patients who would otherwise die alone.

They know each others’ grief stories. Pancreatic cancer, Parkinson’s, aneurysm and ALS. Death by car accident, by dementia, by stroke, by Agent Orange.

She hadn’t planned on attending any grief support groups, because she thought she had wonderful support already. Family and friends have been so good to her. But Vicki, whose life mirrors her own in countless ways, encouraged her to come, and she has made it a priority for over a year now.

They listen. Pass Kleenex. Welcome the new, tentative folks who wander in with their fogs of sorrow. Heads nod in complete understanding when someone shares. Sometimes a smaller group of them go out for lunch or coffee after the meeting ends, and sentiments are expressed about having friends who truly understand the ways of grief and the scarcity of maps for this journey they were put upon, the emotional ditches they wander into, and how much the new normal hurts.

She eats the rest of her romaine and blue cheese salad while Noel finishes his seafood chowder beside her. Jim works on the sandwich he picked out thinking it was only a croissant, Lloyd crosses his arms and rests them on the table after crumpling up his napkin, ready to bring some of those few words forward now that the group is smaller, perhaps safer. Across from her, Brenda is a good listener and offers cheerful encouragement. She’s thinking about selling her house and moving into an apartment. Shoveling snow when one is sixty-nine is getting old. Sandy says something about how they’re always going to be there for each other, how they’ll keep coming back to this grief group because there are no expectations here about how long they can sorrow, and how they understand each other so well because they’re on the same difficult road.

She wants to believe this is true, but something deep inside tells her it’s probably not. Already one of their group has met a widow at his church and fallen deeply in love. He stopped in at the meeting a few weeks ago, bringing a photo of the two of them smiling and glowing, cheeks pressed together, and wanted to say goodbye to the group he no longer needs.

She knows this will happen again with others, and she knows it will most likely be the men. She thinks that often men need to have someone in their lives to cook for them and take care of them, that perhaps they aren’t as comfortable with aloneness and silence as women are.

After a couple of hours, the lunch/grief group pushes their chairs away from the table and they all pull on their coats. Hugs are exchanged, hats are placed on bald heads, parting words are spoken about anticipating the next meeting in two weeks.

She walks to her car across the parking lot partially covered in melting snow, thankful for the rubber soles on her shoes. She drives the winding roads past the cathedral and looks at the gorgeous, expansive view of the Great Lake that never fails to uplift. The winter sun transforms the lake into an enormous blue field strewn with glittering gems. She lets her mind recall how it felt when her soon-to-be husband brought her here from sardine-packed Southern California almost thirty-six years ago.

She feels grateful for this group of sojourners she sees twice a month, and the comfort and fellowship they offer. She prays for some of them as she hangs up her coat, puts her shoes on the floor tray to catch the snow, revels in the little howls of greeting her dog gives, and opens the French doors overlooking the lake to let her out. She walks to the bird cage and greets Phoebe the parakeet with a ch-ch-ch sound that makes her hop from perch to perch.

She fills the tea-kettle and sets it to boil on the stove. She walks down the hall to the office and turns on the Mac to get some work done before it’s time to cook dinner. Pounded chicken breasts sauteed in butter and lemon, maybe. Asparagus. She wishes she had bought a baguette while she was still out.

Before she returns to the dining room to let her aging and scruffy Schnauzer back in, she checks the big calendar on her red and cream toile-wallpapered office wall, making sure the words “Grief Support Group” are written on the square for Wednesday, two weeks from this day.

(This granddaughter will be a senior in high school next year, and heading off to college before we know it. I’ve been thinking about what a treasure she is, and how, one day years ago, was one I’ll never be able to forget. Reposting the story today….) Photo by Reyna Meinhardt

One winter afternoon my seven year-old granddaughter went missing, and for the first time in my life I knew what genuine terror felt like.

It was in early 2014, and I was sitting in the living room with Michael as I always did, once we’d reached the point in his illness (Parkinson’s with Lewy Body Dementia) where I couldn’t leave him alone anymore for more than a minute or two. I was keeping him company as he watched Bonanza on TV. My thoughts had turned again toward how I was going to make dinner and keep him from getting up on his own and hurting himself, how could I once again try to explain to him and actually have him understand, that I’d just be in the next room and would be back with him soon.

The phone rang and it was my son-in-law Chris, asking if seven year-old Margaret had come over to my house after school. She had not. Adrenaline shot through me, and in two seconds my mind leaped to this sickening conclusion: Margaret didn’t make it home after school, some evil man had taken her and they were already on their way out of state, we would never see her again, and darkness and despair would engulf and paralyze our family, and we’d never claw our way out of it. The fear that gripped me felt truly hellish.

I quickly moved to help Michael downstairs into the basement, then out to the attached garage and into the car. We raced over to Chris and Sharon’s neighborhood, where several friends were already going door to door asking about a pretty little dark-haired girl in a khaki school uniform and a pink coat. The police were called. A photograph of Margaret was given. A white van with no windows that had been seen exiting the alley around the time Margaret normally got off the bus was reported.

We tried to reach Sharon, my oldest daughter and Margaret’s mom, but her phone was off because she was busy with a photography session at her work studio. In minutes three police cars rolled up, and Chris and Sharon’s house was searched. Chris could tell he was under suspicion, because those closest to a child always are. After the police searched the house once, they asked for permission to search the entire property again, looking deeper and more carefully this time — in the basement behind the furnace, in the attic crawl space, in the garage rafters, under the tarp in the back of the truck.

Margaret knew the rules, that she could never under any circumstances talk to a stranger, or allow them to get close if she could help it. She was an obedient, bright and lively little girl. We all knew she would never have willingly gone with someone. I couldn’t help thinking about how we are the products of a society with Elizabeth Smarts and Jacob Wetterlings and media reporting that never lets up, so we choose the lesser of two evils and instill an unnatural fear in our little ones rather than risk losing them forever to sick perverts.

Had I ever prayed before this day? Had any of my years of seemingly earnest prayers since learning about God’s love and power in my three year-old Sunday School ever really been as true and desperate as this? As Michael and I drove around with our windows open in the bitter cold, the car heat and radio off so we could hear any little cry, I whispered under my breath a thousand times, please God, please God, please God, with every pound of my heart.

Up and down the streets we drove, looking left and right, stopping every single person we saw and asking if they’d seen a pretty little girl with dark hair, a khaki school uniform and pink coat? No one had. As I drove east on Superior Street I saw a squad car one street down, driving slowly, looking for my flesh and blood whom I wasn’t sure got a hug and kiss from me the last time I’d seen her.

By this time Sharon had been reached and she had joined in the search. How she was not screaming, I didn’t know. A quiet, fierce determination was on her face as she drove and looked and drove and looked, urgently leaning forward over the steering wheel.

Margaret’s friends’ families were called. No one had seen her. The bus company was called, the bus checked to no avail, and prayer chains activated in California, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Tennessee.

When the sun began to set, Margaret had been gone for over two hours. I had to stop searching and go home to begin dinner and evening cares for my two foster women with disabilities. I wanted to tear my skin off my body with the cruel incongruity of needing to go home to make salad and spaghetti for our fosters and help my husband go to the bathroom while my beloved granddaughter had vanished.

I knew that if the next day came and she was still gone, I would never again be able to do normal things.

After I filled a pot with water and set it on the stove to boil, I went to our bedroom. I vividly remember laying across our bed, putting my face into our sheets and wailing out my prayers to God. I didn’t care if the neighbors heard, and I knew our fosters would be sitting in their rooms wondering what had happened to their foster mom, but that didn’t deter me from sobbing. While my ailing husband sat helplessly in a bedroom chair, quietly distressed and unable to speak well, I howled out my plea to God. PLEEASE! Bring her back! God! You know where she is! I paced, I sobbed, I slashed the air with my hands as I prayed. I got back down on my knees again and pleaded, “Michael, pray with me!” and he bowed his head and whispered the most urgent, “Help us Jesus!” prayers his frozen body and fading mind would allow.

Somehow I served dinner. As the winter sun went down and the outside temperature dropped, my body slowed from exhaustion, but my mind was still under siege: I felt like I was close to losing my grip on sanity. I couldn’t allow my thoughts to wander to what might be happening with Margaret.

I kept crying and praying, begging God to give me another chance to show my love to my precious granddaughter. I couldn’t even bring myself to ponder what her parents were going through as they searched the streets and empty lots, and went door to door for hours.

When the phone rang and I heard Sharon’s elated, “They found her!” I sank to the floor and sobbed in relief and joy. Margaret had gotten off the bus and accepted the invitation of a new little girl in her class to come over and play. She had called out this information to her sister Eleanor and assumed she had heard.

A police officer who’d been searching for two hours spied a little girl with a pink coat bouncing up a neighborhood street on her way home after a nice time at her new friend’s house. Margaret was alarmed when he stopped her and asked her name, then insisted she get in the car with him so he could take her home.

I wept out the words thank you thank you thank you to Jesus over and over that night. I will never be able to thank Him enough for the priceless gift of Margaret. For the riches of all my grandchildren, my daughters, for life.

My own grandmother never hid the fact that she was, at best, ho-hum about having me for her granddaughter. She never really showed me much love or interest. As each of my grandchildren have entered the world and gloriously turned our hearts and lives upside down, I’ve wanted to be different, and make certain they know how much I treasure them.

I don’t think I’ll ever be the same after Margaret came back to us on that historic day. That experience simultaneously freed and imprisoned me.

To the frustration of all my grandchildren, when they ask to leave my yard, perhaps to skateboard down the sidewalk, or ride their bikes on the nearby Lakewalk, unless I’m with them the answer is always no.

But to their reluctant grins and and I hope their delight, they never leave my presence without kisses and hugs, words of encouragement, games of Farkle, and a thousand or so I love yous.

Have you ever missed out on something wonderful in life because you were afraid to fail? I have. More times than I care to count.

When I was little I quickly learned the things I did well (swimming and reading, mostly) and spent a lot of time doing those things. But there were things that I was not good at, and while I don’t think I gave it as much thought as I am doing with this post, I kept a low profile when it came to those things.

I was not a fast runner, not a lover of upper levels of math, or someone who was surrounded by swarms of friends. So instead I played basketball, concentrated on the literary parts of my education, and savored my two or three close friendships. I didn’t know it then, but I can look back now and see that I may have had a fear of failing.

My dad was a basketball coach at my high school from the 1940s until the 1970s. I tagged along with him to almost all the games, sitting in the bleachers and watching the basketball excitement cheerleaders. Even when I was seven years old I knew all the cheers, knew all the cheerleaders by name, and would go home and practice cheers in front of the sliding glass window that led from our family room to our patio. I can still do some of those cheers today, but I am certain you would not want to see this.

I knew from a young age that I wanted to be a cheerleader. At the end of my freshman year of high school, I tried out for cheerleading and miraculously made the squad. In Southern California at that time, one group of six cheerleaders was chosen for the whole school year. We didn’t have a group of cheerleaders for each sport like they do where I live now. My squad had cheerleader uniforms for the football season, the basketball season, and we had what we called a rally uniform for when we had pep rallies during school assemblies and did some of our cheers then.

In order to be a cheerleader one had to go through four weeks of cheerleader training after school, where we learned to do the different jumps (air splits, Russians) and the different cheers and the various contortions required. Then the forty of us went through Screen Outs, where professional cheerleading judges were brought in and we tried out in front of them. This narrowed the approximately forty of us down to twelve, and the results were posted all over the school the next day. I was ecstatic to see that I came in third place. But the next part of the competition was what made me the most nervous. The entire high school then had to vote on the twelve girls who made Screen Outs, and the six with the most votes out of those twelve would be the cheerleaders for the following year. I wasn’t certain of my popularity and thought there was a pretty good chance I would not win.

So when I did, I was thrilled and a bit relieved. Maybe I wasn’t the geek I thought I was. And being a cheerleader during my sophomore year in high school was a blast. I was on the squad with five other girls I hadn’t known very well before this, and each one of them was a jewel. Over the next year we competed in different cheerleading competitions, went to San Diego State University for a week of cheerleading camp, had practice two times a week after school, rode on the buses to the games to cheer the teams on, wore our uniforms to school on game days, tried to generate a lot of school spirit during the games, and made lots of memories I still carry with me.

As my sophomore year drew to a close, it was time to think about trying out again for cheerleading the next year. But the more I thought about it, the more I grew afraid that I wouldn’t make it again. I thought that being chosen once was a near-miracle, and that my chances for being voted in two years in a row were unlikely. So rather than just do my best and see what happened, I didn’t try out again. When people asked me why I wasn’t trying out for cheerleading the next year (because most people just kept right on trying out for cheerleading once they’d made the squad) I just casually answered that I didn’t want to. This was not the truth. I really did want to be a cheerleader again, but I was afraid to fail. So rather than try and fail, I just decided not to try at all. And maybe I missed out on another year of wonderful memories.

Here’s the yearbook photo of our cheerleading squad in 1973. Our uniforms were cardinal (deep red) and white:

L-R: Cindy Akin, Shelly Zahrt, Desiree Giambrone (in back), me (doing splits in front), Shawn Cover, Trudy McRae.

How about you? Have you ever refrained from doing something because you were afraid you would fail at it? Have you ever not reached out to someone because you weren’t sure they would accept you? What kinds of things have you missed out on because you didn’t want to fail?

I have failed at marriage, at friendship, at mothering, at being a good Christian, at loving well, at so many things…

And I keep failing. But I’m going to keep trying. With God’s help, I will face my failures, ask Him to help me get back up, trust that He’ll help me do better next time, and try again.