Choose This Day!

Ater Rebecca called you went to church with me. I had to tear around pretty quickly so we could get there by 10:30. What a place! What a warm, welcome feeling we got as soon as we walked through the door. We knew almost everyone. It felt so good. Lee asked for prayer for 'our friend Bill from California'. Oh, to be prayed for like that by name! Later, when I asked you what you thought of the church service, you said, "I was humbled that they prayed for me". I'm so glad.

Steve spoke on the verse from Joshua, Choose this day whom you will serve.....as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. He delivered the message so powerfully, so tenderly, so lovingly full of conviction that I cried through most of it. I couldn't hide it from you. The occasional tear is easy to touch away with my hand but when tears are dripping off the end of my nose, all subtlety is gone. What power Joshua had in his dedication to God. Steve said that is the resolution we should have for this year. My words now cannot do justice to the message he gave. As he gave the benediction you leaned over and said, "I'm really crashing. I've got to go to bed". We went downstairs to 'finger food and linger longer'. I've decided that they use the word 'finger' as a verb there; it makes sense. We stayed a long time and when Luci invited us over to their house for soup I had to turn her down because I knew you were exhausted. A minute later I wanted to apologize for declining her sweet invitation. I walked over to her and suddenly tears were spilling out of my eyes again and all I could say was, "I'm having a tough time. I just wanted you to know what a blessing you and Lee are to all of us and how much we appreciate you being in our lives." Not anything at all what I had planned to say. She comforted me and spoke soothingly to me as I calmed back down. She truly is a blessing; I've even started thinking of her and Lee as angels. You were in no hurry to leave, as exhausted as you were. It's not often that you sit and talk with men like you did then. We ended up leaving with Pastor Steve and being almost the last ones out of the lot.

We cleaned some and ate leftovers for dinner. We tried to go up Farm-to-Market Road but the sun had already gone down. Back at the house we sat upstairs in the dark and watched the sky go from indigo to black. We packed and decided that, in the morning, we would take advantage of as much sunlight as we could. We'd go up behind the mercantile and down the road with the camera.

No more hunters darkened the doorstep. Maybe they're not allowed to hunt on Sundays.

Late at night, after the dryer finally stopped, I heard coyotes yipping. They called to each other for about an hour. What a wonderful but eerie sound.