Unexpected Grace: Conclusion

An 'Unexpected' Note from Mom (Thanks, Mom! Now I'm beaming...!):

After six weeks with Ronda's live-in loving care, l am missing her.  We had fun together; long talks, movies, lovely candle lit dinners, an excursion to the beauty salon, doctor visits, work on the calendars and notecards, time spent learning about property management and extensive help with my critique group's reorganization.  She brought such energy, cheerfulness and expertness to each task.  And she taught me to be kinder, softer and gentler with the people we work with.  How proud I am of her and grateful too for this wonderful gift of my daughter.

Thank you, Ronda.  And thank you Jim and Courtney for your help in taking over the household tasks and seeing to the care of Evie while Ronda was helping me.

Love, Lynne

Unexpected Grace: Part VII

As the days progressed I found myself settling in and enjoying the rhythms of each day.  Some days I was able to attend morning Mass at St. Francis or get in a two mile walk around Lake Lynn.   Mom's spirits were high as she followed the doctor's orders and helped her healing along.  

By the end of November I was beginning to feel much more comfortable at the significantly expanded Community of St. Francis as well. Though I didn't know many people and had only seen one former neighbor or two, I had enjoyed attending several daily Masses, a "Come and See" with the Secular Franciscans, and a day-long retreat with one of the friars.

I had celebrated the Holy Day of the Feast of All Saints on November 1-- attended by the Franciscan school children dressed as miniature Mother Teresa's and Pope Francis's and various holy people of old.  Then on Thanksgiving Day I had the wondrous surprise of sitting in church right behind my middle school best friend Maureen Clark and seeing her husband, her children, and much of their extended family as well.

We joyfully celebrated Thanksgiving dinner at Mom's house that afternoon with Jim and the kids, Jim's mother Barb, and our little Evie who was in dog heaven with all of the goings on. 

So, it was with mixed feelings that my time staying with my Mom came to a close.  On our last Sunday together we drove to Greensboro for a special brunch and afternoon with our cousins who have become dear friends through the years. 

Then on my last morning with Mom, I decided to attend Mass at St. Francis one more time.  It was December 8th, the Holy Day of Mary's Immaculate Conception, and the liturgy was filled with such joy!  As the music, the preaching, the baptism, and the praise came to a close, I was suddenly filled with the idea of having my father commemorated here.  

So I went to the church office and asked to have my dad's name added to the Memorial Wall.  

The Memorial Wall, also in the Garden, provides room for over 600 memorial plaques.  Memorial plaques are names inscribed in memory of deceased parishioners who are buried elsewhere, or in memory of our parishioners’ deceased family members.  As Catholics, we believe that Baptism is our birth into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; the Eucharist is our meal for life’s journey. Our Memorial Garden reminds us of this mystery. As we pass through the Garden each Sunday on our way to Mass, we come through death to life, through the Garden to the waters of Baptism and the table of the Eucharist. We are travelers passing through, incorporated into the body of Christ, one day to be united with him and with those we love who have gone before us.

For more information about the Memorial Garden and Columbarium, or to purchase a niche or plaque, please contact Tresa Pickup, 847-8205 x 249.

So you see, while I was busy taking care of Mom after her fall in the yard, God was busy taking care of me-- and of Mom too-- through the many outpourings of help and of love from so many in our community.

Thinking back to that conversation in October with the woman at church who asked me if I had faith, and then to the amazing conclusion of my time with my mom which culminated in adding Dad's name to the Memorial Garden at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, I answer once again that, yes, I have faith! And gratitude! And joy! And such great hope in the days to come.

May the Joy of Christ be yours this Christmas and always.

The Priestly Blessing 

(Numbers 6:22-27)

The Lord said to Moses:

Speak to Aaron and his sons and tell them: 

This is how you shall bless the Israelites.  

Say to them:

The Lord bless you and keep you!

The Lord let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!

The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace!

So shall they invoke my name upon the Israelites, and I will bless them.

Unexpected Grace: Part VI

While all of this nursing was being done, my husband and daughter were holding down the fort at home.  There were meals to be made and a growing puppy to be cared for, and of course all of the things of everyday living.  

One desire of mine I discovered was nonnegotiable:  I wanted to attend a "puppy reunion" at the breeder's farm one Saturday not long after I found myself staying at Mom's.  Since my brother was coming to stay with my mom for the weekend, I told my husband that I would REALLY like to go to the farm as we had planned.

We tied a blue scarf around Evie's neck and drove north for an hour or two before we found ourselves at our breeder Julie Cook's home.  If you've never found yourself in a sea of golden retrievers, let me just say that the place was aptly named "Tranquility Farm!"  We were so happy to meet Carrie, the girl who owned Evie's father and helped to raise the litter.  The other dog owners from many different pairings from Golden Rose Kennel were just as relaxed and nice to be with as our favorite breed.  

Many thanks to my husband Jim for packing us up and helping to make that special day for us happen!!

Unexpected Grace: Part V

It's not EVERY day that you get to move back into your childhood home, and there are many pleasures associated with it.  First of all, you appreciate many things that you took for granted when you were small, like your very own mother for instance!   

After staying with her in the house for a week, I admired how nicely she had appointed our family's home, and how carefully she had maintained it.  She had expanded the kitchen and enlarged the deck, smoothed the popcorn ceilings and refurbished the bathrooms. And the neighborhood lake at the bottom of our sloping backyard was full of interest for me, not so much to swim in now, but rather as a nature preserve and a thing of natural beauty.  On mornings when I rose early enough, I hurried to the kitchen to try to catch the sun as it rose.  One time I made it out to the deck in the morning dawn when five deer came into focus as they grazed and played.  

On days when I went to the grocery store with a list from Mom, I marveled at how we bought many of the same foods. One thing she splurges on which I'd like to too is fresh flowers which she arranges and places in her kitchen.  As the days passed and we talked more and more,  I realized how much we had in common and how we looked at many things in much the same way.  

Movies, for instance.  To pass time in the evenings we decided to watch a Netflix movie on TV.  "How about Raising Ned Divine?" she suggested.  Indeed the story of a dead man in Ireland winning the lottery--and his friends doing all that they could to cash in-- is one of my own favorites too.  Taste like ours in movies is probably an inherited trait. :)

As mom slowly recuperated, we found our days largely filled with the business of living: making and enjoying our daily meals, talking and sharing the things in our lives, making executive decisions in tandem as we discussed the issues and concerns affecting us and the people whom we love, and greeting the thoughtful friends who came by for visits and to wish her well in her recovery.

I am truly humbled at the kindnesses offered by so many to Mom and to me as we waited for her knee to heal.  Friends came over bearing bowls of homemade soup, bouquets of flowers, get well cards, and even the daily newspaper.  One neighbor offered to witness and sign mom's absentee vote and take it to the post office before election day!  

Now that is above and beyond.

When my sister and her husband offered to fly in for a week to stay with mom and give me a rest, we happily agreed. While with mom they not only cooked and cleaned, but also bought all kinds of things to make home health care easier for us both.  They put rails on the toilet, a portable potty by the bed, a bench in the bathtub, arm pillows on the crutches, and tennis balls on the walker.  When I returned to duty after they went home, I found that mom could take care of most of her daily bathing and sanitary needs with the help of the new devices.  

Home health care is a growing need in our country and there are so many wonderful products on the shelves to make it easier!  I am most grateful of all for the portable potty liners which make emptying the potty a pretty painless process...

I may even buy some for my camper! (Which I took to the beach with Evie while my sister was here!)

Unexpected Grace: Part IV

Looking around the room we were gathered in, I realized I was standing in my family's former church building.  It was here in 1988 that we had said goodbye to Dad at his funeral in September before burying him in a veteran's cemetery called Raleigh National Cemetery downtown.  

Walking over to look more closely at the Founder's Wall, I saw my parents' names "Ronald and Lynne Troy" listed among their friends and fellow parishioners who had help to establish the church in 1983.   

Thinking back to those days, I remembered returning just two months later with family and friends to celebrate my Thanksgiving weekend wedding with Jim.  We had met in New York City and decided to marry and live in Raleigh, NC.  We married at 11 O'clock on a Saturday morning as the sun came streaming in through the glass wall behind the altar on that unseasonably warm November day.  

Just two days later we were off for our honeymoon to Mexico,  when a tornado came screaming through town, through our new apartment, through our car's windshield, and through many other homes and places where all had seemed normal just hours before.  The disaster was big enough to warrant a paragraph in the Acapulco Times which was promptly handed to us by our new friends at the hotel pool.

Twenty eight years have passed since then, and St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church has grown and expanded so much that this sacred place for many families has become just another multipurpose room with many new and larger buildings to replace it.  

When I looked around me in that repurposed room, I felt the memories of those former days press upon me.   

Unexpected Grace: Part III

"I never really had faith" my mother's friend said to me at a memorial service for a dear neighbor the week before.   

The woman who was speaking was in her late seventies, a founding member of the church in which we now gathered.  She had been a light for me when she wished me "God Speed" as I headed off to college thirty five years before. 

How could it be that a pillar of our community in Northwestern Raleigh--who petitioned the Catholic Church's bishop to build his new church in our backyards--had only found Jesus years after raising her family and sending them off to live lives of their own.  How could it be that she had found God not in the community in which she worshiped, but in the ecumenical bible study held down the street?

"Do YOU have faith?" she asked me as she turned to me with interest.

"Yes, I have faith!" I answered with a force born out of conviction. In my mind I recalled how my father's Melanoma diagnosis and early death five years later had compelled me to seek answers to the most important questions in life when I was only nineteen and a sophomore in college.  

What is the point of loving someone so much that losing them would mean my own near demise? I was the apple of my father's eye and he was all that I strived to be.  Losing him shook my sense of safety in the world, my confidence in a God who cares about what happens to us, and my faith in being able to provide for my own children should I be given them one day.   How can a good and loving God allow us to die one by one when we need each other so much to survive and to thrive?  Why would God give us the ability to love one another even beyond the bonds of life if He did not also plan to reunite us one day?

After years of experiencing a searing grief as I searched for what had become of my father, I had an intense experience of the God who made us and loves us and brings us home.  At a simple request for healing from the grief of losing my dad, I had a sudden infilling of the Holy Spirit, my head became hot, my hands shook, and tears streamed down my face as two fellow Catholics and I held hands and prayed for my Baptism in the Holy Spirit. (There is a stained glass window in St. Peter's Basilica that depicts this pretty well:)

With a sudden and powerful physical manifestation of God, I suddenly KNEW, without any doubt at all, that God is Real.  He Lives.  And He Cares. And He wants to bring us home. 

When that realization was mine, I became flooded with Joy.  I suddenly had Hope in the resurrection of Christ and true relief in knowing that the death of my father was not the final word.   And immediately I was healed of the agonizing grief that had been with me since the illness and death of my dad.     

Yes, it was true, I had the gift of faith.

Unexpected Grace: Part II

In the ER they xrayed, wrapped, and braced my mother's leg and asked us to make an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon for the following week.

Mom's diagnosis:  A fracture in her leg, just below the knee.   

The course of action:  No surgery required IF she could avoid putting weight on her foot for the next six to eight weeks. 

And so we began...!

Unexpected Grace: Part I

It really is true that life can change in an instant.  

In late October my mother was clipping flowers in her yard, when she stepped backward and suddenly felt her left foot go down, down, down, into a deep and narrow hole hidden beneath the autumn leaves.   Her body twisted as she fell and snapped her leg.

My phone rang a little while later and I texted my sister as our mom told us what had happened. 

"Get her to the emergency room, pronto!" was my younger sister's medical advice from several states away.   Trained as a Registered Nurse, my sister is always at the ready to help us deal with various and sundry family emergencies. 

"I don't like the sounds of this, so I am heading over to Mom's now!" said my brother when I texted him at his office in Research Triangle Park.   

"Courtney, can you watch the puppy while I get dressed and head over to Mom's?" I called out to my recent college graduate who is applying to schools with doctorates in Medieval Literature.

We adopted our golden retriever pup Evie just three months ago.   After the loss of our beloved Standard Poodle/Doodle dogs during the past year, she has brought much needed sunshine and beauty, snuggliness and awe into our lives.  

Here she is, in a photo taken just two days before I received my mother's call:

After the Fire, We are Sent Out!

I woke this morning to dense fog shrouding my little Poustinia in quiet. 

"Poustinia" means desert place or hermitage in Russian, and it's what I put on my camper's license plate when I bought and registered it.



Looking out of the skylight above my bed at the mist-covered trees and listening to the plopping rain, I laid there for a while before rolling out and lighting my propane stove.

I turned the knob to get the propane flowing and then clicked a lighter to light the flame.  No dice.

Oh well, I thought, no big deal.  I'll forgo the hot cup of coffee I was imagining and have something cold instead.

Could the fire we generated so powerfully at the tent revival and FIRE Mass really be out so soon?!

 I decided to stay another day, though not going to the top of Sharp Top Mountain as I had planned.  (Notice I said "going" and not "hiking"!   I had been debating over and over about how to go up there to see the view:   I could hike 1.5 miles up (and 1600 feet altitude gain) followed by 1.5 miles down, take a shuttle up and back for $10, or take the shuttle up and hike down for $6.)  And as the weekend wore on, option number two was looking pretty good.   However the fog made it impossible to do.

So, I ended up making Sunday a day of prayer and reflection and keeping still in my little hermitage in the woods.   Not easy for me!  But it was nice.   And then on Monday morning I woke up once more to the sound of dripping rain.

As I packed up my things and began to pop down the camper so that I could hitch it to my car, a woman approached me and asked, "Are you alone?"

"Yes," I replied and smiled.

"You and I have the only two campers in this whole campground today and I felt better knowing you were nearby.  I had hoped you might have your husband with you and he could come over to help us.   Our camper broke down and my husband, who is a former mechanic, has been working on it for a day and a half!"

I had noticed them earlier: they had a very large camper and a car that they towed behind.   The bumper stickers on the back said, "Semper Fi!" so I gathered that her husband was also a Marine. 
  
And I thought how ironic that she was out here with all of those things to make her feel safe:  her husband, a mechanic, a Marine, a motorhome, and a car.....and she was saying how I, in my little popup camper with no electricity or propane, somehow made her feel safer!!  

I replied that though I didn't have a husband with me to help her, I did have some tools she could borrow.   When she declined I told her I had just come from a Tent Revival and was full of the Holy Spirit and so I would also pray for them.

Perhaps that is why God sent a little Franciscan monk in a brown robe and Birkinstock sandals to a big white tent in Bedford,VA....to remind all the people gathered there that God is with us, He loves us, and He desires to bring us home.  Our part is to repent and believe. 

She said, "Oh, you're a Christian?  I'm a Christian too."

"You've got to make due with what God has provided!" I said, realizing it's true that no matter how much material wealth we have, we cannot count on it to make us feel safe in this world.

About an hour later I was riding down the mountain with my little camper in tow, when I received a photo texted from home:

With all of my heart I replied, "Can't wait to be there!   See you soon!!! "

❤️ Ronda

Written Sunday Sept. 26, 2016 8:30 PM  

(I do not know what is wrong with these fonts....but am posting as it is....!)

The Holy Spirit Did Not Disappoint!!

Then next morning we came together to fill the tent once again.  People sang with the worship band, listened to testimonies of the workings of God in people's lives, we laughed and cried and stretched out our hands and prayed.  We experienced unity in the Holy Spirit, His Fire, and His Life.

And then in the evening we gathered for the last time...for a FIRE Mass not in the tent, but in the Holy Name of Mary church in Bedford, VA, and wouldn't you know that the sky was light blue right over the church as the sun set and Mass began?

In His Love,
Ronda

A Very Good Night's Sleep: Zzzzzzzzz

There's nothing quite like a rousing tent revival followed by a bear free night to make for a good night's sleep.  I am waking up feeling rested and ready to go for the full day of preaching, singing, praying, sharing, listening, and loving that lies ahead.

That is saying quite a lot, but there was such a spirit of unity that gathered the many people from all walks of life together under that huge white tent in Bedford, VA last night.

Colleen Criste, the woman who made it happen, began with a vision that she received in her sleep last December of a tent, the word "revival", the idea of ecumenism, the number 500, and the speaker "Fr. Dave" whom she had heard at Steubenville Youth Conferences, though had never met personally.   

As she gazed out at the crowd from the stage in the front of the tent, she was overcome by the fruition of that dream (exactly nine months later to the day) that we were all participating in.   God had foreseen and ordained it and through many mysterious circumstances, had brought each and every one of us together for this night of praise.

Tonight as I think back over the day and the message that God has for me, I am sure it is about His unstoppable love.

So many times in our lives we feel rejected, uncertain, reluctant, and dismayed.  These feelings are the result of wounds we receive when we encounter something other than the Love of God.   

Two days ago a woman who read my blog wrote, "I love you and am praying for you " as you attend this revival with Fr. Dave, whom I so admire too!  

And then last night as our revival was coming to a crescendo, the woman I had been sitting next to all evening suddenly grabbed my hand in praise and worship, smiled at me as she warmly squeezed it, and even kissed it before she let go....

How is it that these two women were able to be such channels of love for me at a time when I felt somewhat awkward and alone in this gathering of strangers in such a faraway place from home?  

These women were tapped into God's love and able to let it flow out of themselves and into me!

When I returned to my little camper in the woods I turned to my bible and read 1 John.  

"My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.  Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love."

Let us pray for those who hurt us or make us feel unwelcome and unloved.   

Let us turn not to them, but to God, the Source and Giver of all good things, especially life itself, to find our value and our place.  

It is in Him that we live, and move, and have our being, and indeed our very identity: Beloved Children of God.

Amen!

❤️ Ronda
Posted Sat. Sept. 24, 2016 7:30 AM

Perhaps It's All in my Head

When a park ranger stopped by my campsite this morning, I asked him what could have made my camper rock in the night.  

"Well, I don't know.  I wasn't out here," he so comfortingly replied.

Telling him what I feared it was, he offered that perhaps I have an overly active imagination.  

"No bears have been seen in the campground," he said, "but they have been a bit of a nuisance in the picnic area."

Well, I'm not the one who posted all of the bear warning signs...

With that reassurance, I asked him where I might go hiking today, saying that I did not want to be alone on the trail.

He suggested hiking to the top of Sharp Top, with a 1600 foot gain.  That seemed s little much to me, so I drove down to a visitor's station to ask about something easier and saw several school buses parked outside. 

"You might want to go a little later in the day," the volunteer offered.  

But to me, I was in luck!  Here was a group of eager first graders up here for a hike and a learning experience at the restored Johnson Family Farm.

So, I found the trail and headed off into the woods for a mile long uphill walk....with absolutely no one in sight.  Had they come and gone already?  Was I on the right trail?  Where was everybody....anybody?

After a while of climbing up while looking down the steep and wooded ravine, I tried to convince myself that surely I have my guardian angel with me, as I have learned that everyone does.

Before too much longer, this welcomed sight came into view:   

And soon I was walking back down the mountain, with a gaggle of six year olds chirping and chatting and meowing too, aaaallllll the waaaayyyyy home!    

Near the bottom I stopped to take a photo as the class began to pass me by, the teacher calling out, "Can't stand it anymore?!"

If only she knew...their noisy passage was music to my ears!

Next I returned to the campground, where this morning's ranger was joined by another who when I asked whether she had heard my news, looked into my face and excitedly said, "You were awakened by your camper being rocked in the night? Don't tell me that!!!"

She had been doing research on bear behavior, and found that one of the things they do when looking for food is stand on their hind legs and ....PUSH!

Oh.  

At that, the first ranger lowered his head down over his paperwork....and smiled.

😭 Ronda
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