Holy and happy and peaceful...

THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS

I question if Christmas can ever be "merry"
Except to the heart of an innocent child.
For when time has taught us the meaning of sorrow
And sobered the spirits that once were so wild,
When all the green graves that lie scattered behind us
Like milestones are marking the length of the way,
And echoes of voices that no more shall greet us
Have saddened the chimes of the bright Christmas Day,
We may not be merry, the long years forbid it,
The years that have brought us such manifold smarts,
But we may be happy, if only we carry
The Spirit of Christmas deep down in our hearts...

...Hence I shall not wish you the old "Merry Christmas,"
Since that is of shadowless childhood a part,
But one that is holy and happy and peaceful,
The Spirit of Christmas deep down in your heart.

--Annie Johnson Flint

I wish for you, my dear friends, a Christmas that is holy and happy and peaceful!

My Dad -- Part 4

My father first met my mother, Margaret, at the beginning of 1935 when he was 27 and she was 17. About a year earlier, she had accepted an invitation from her friend Iris to attend a service at the People's Church in Toronto, and she trusted Jesus as her Savior that night. A few months later, she and another friend decided to go and check out the nearby Sunday school they had heard about. They were warmly welcomed, and my mother was assigned to the teenage girls' class where Cecil Hodgson was the teacher. There were some mischief-makers in that class who loved to give the teacher a hard time, and one Sunday a girl named Florence asked him very deliberately, "Mr. Hodgson, don't you think Miss English is pretty?" (I wish I had been a little fly on the wall!)

Here she is around that time!

I remember once my father told us about his first impressions of my mother. She had been attending his Sunday school class, and one day she went to him and asked him when the church prayer meeting was held. And he said to himself, "That's the kind of question a girl should be asking!"

But lots of changes were going on. My mother began teaching a Sunday school class herself, my father was away at times in the city, and so they saw each other only infrequently at church. Then one day my mother and her friend Gladys met my father and his friend Fred on the street and stopped to chat awhile. My father invited the girls to go with him and Fred to the next meeting of the mission organization he was considering joining, and so they agreed and went in Fred's car -- the men in the front, and the girls in the back. Not really a date!

Time passed, and my father did indeed join that mission organization, planning to leave for Africa. In the book she made for her grandchildren, my mother wrote: "By this time, I knew he had an interest in me that I didn't feel I could return, and although I had thoughts of the mission field, they were at that time vague, not concrete. I was far from ready, and any thoughts I did have didn't include Grandpa!"

Here's a little story I love, because it tells so much about each of my parents! Soon after this, my father invited my mother to have supper with him at the Stoodleigh Restaurant downtown. This was a special event, because eating out was not an everyday thing then. She met him there, but after the usual greetings, he told her he was sorry but he could not take her to supper because he had nothing in his pocket! She knew she had enough money to pay for supper, but after a few quick thoughts decided it would not be the thing to do, so she did not offer. They walked round and round in the ample space in the nearby Union Station and finally went home! And it was just as she expected! Everyone wanted to know what she had for supper! But somehow, the incident made her think more highly of my father, not less. It was not until much later that she found out that he had money when he invited her, but a sudden need had come up at the Mission headquarters, and he felt the Lord wanted him to give what he had.

In her little book for the grandchildren, my mother wrote: "Later, one rainy evening, Grandpa walked home with me. We stopped by the lamppost in front of my house, and under a dripping umbrella, Grandpa asked me to marry him. And Grandma said, 'No.'"

(Oh, how I loved to hear my mother tell us these stories when we were sitting around the supper table so many years ago!)

(To be continued...)

Another Update...

Elmo giving Coral a good morning hug
(He sleeps all night in Coral's wheelchair parked by her bed)

Tonight I have been catching up on blogland happenings that I have been missing out on for a couple of weeks now, and how encouraging it has been for me! Thank you to all of you!

This is just to update you on us, and I'm glad to report that we may actually have turned the corner. For the last 2 weeks, I have kept Coral home because she was having so much discomfort in sitting. She would lean this way and that in her chair trying to get comfortable, and it was much better for her to lie in bed longer each morning than to sit in her wheelchair for such long hours every day.

Yesterday was the Christmas party for her day program, so I called up the transportation lady and asked to have a pickup for Coral, and off she went, all bundled up against the 14-degree weather. When she balked, I promised that it was only for one day, and then she would be staying home again until after Christmas. She came home happy and animated with a note that said that there had been no problems.

At bedtime, she told me her foot (her weight-bearing foot) was hurting, and it looked all funny and cramped up again to me. I think that might have been due to having to use her abdominal muscles in the evening. Something happens in her back or hip that goes all the way down her leg. I was worried about her and checked several times during the night, but all seemed to be okay.

But then this morning as soon as I saw her face, I knew she was having tummy trouble. We began several hours of some nasty heaving from an empty stomach. What was that about? I thought maybe she did not get enough to eat yesterday, and it seems I was right, as just a few sips of weak Jello water put an end to that. As it turned out, she had a very fun day watching her TV programs with Mom sitting beside her doing fun stuff on her laptop. Lots of kissing and talking about how cute Elmo is!!

I have been feeling so thankful today. Coral is feeling better every day. The heave-ho episode was over so quickly. Even more wonderful, it did not happen overnight when she might have choked and aspirated fluid. And a little (actually, not so little) glitch in someone else's day made it so that I could just sit and have fun with Coral. Last night, much to my surprise, there were no dictation files from the doctor. He usually uploads them to me at the end of his workday.

So I called his office this morning... "Did the doctor work yesterday? ... He did?? ... Yes, I'll wait to talk to him." Oh, no! This could not be good! He told me that when he tried to send me the work, he got a nasty error message on his computer -- a message that included words like "corrupted" and "reformat"... Arghh! He had worried over it all night. I don't know how he will handle the redoing of the records for those 26 patients he saw, but I do know that today I was free to do what was good for both Coral and me. And for that I am so thankful!

Right now, we are all sitting companionably in the office, Barry at his computer and me at mine. Barry has records (yes, the old vinyl discs) going on the player by his computer. Coral is happy in her wheelchair with her headphones plugged into the amp. Elmo is overjoyed to be sitting on the trashcan looking at Coral! Every now and then she leans toward me for a kiss. She tells us to look at Elmo so we can see how cute he is! She sees Najee lying on the floor and says, "Mom!" in that voice that I know means "Look at Najee!" I tell her what a good job of looking at things she is doing! And she beams at me!

Yes, today I am very, very thankful!

UPDATE: Saturday afternoon -- Well, it was a short reprieve, but it came just when I needed it! Last night the doc uploaded Friday's dictation (19 patients) and this morning he has sent me Thursday's which he had to do all over again (26 patients). Guess what I am spending my weekend doing! But Coral is giggling and happy in her room watching all of her favorite stuff, so we are getting back to normal just in time for Christmas!

It is SO cold...

Trent took this picture the other night as it was beginning to snow.
This is a building very close to our house.

For several days now, our temperatures have been in the single digits. The thermometer outside our dining room window says -0.9 degrees. Last night it was down to about -8. I think that might be about -20 Celsius. Everything is covered with snow, and it is definitely not melting! More snow is predicted later this week, so maybe we will be having a white Christmas this year!

This is just a quick post on my way to bed. I just finished the work that had to be back to the doctor in the morning, but I am still not caught up with other things. Maybe soon...

To explain...

This will be just a short note to explain why I have not been able to post Part 4 about my Dad today.

Things have been a bit hectic here, what with all the normal stuff plus Warren's problems to work on. Then on Monday Coral somehow got hurt and is having quite a bit of discomfort sitting, which is something she has to do all the time. She also had symptoms in her left foot with it being all cramped up and trembly. That is her weightbearing foot, and I began to be concerned that she might not be able to help me by bearing weight, which would mean I might not be physically able to do what I have to do, which would mean...

So I took her to the chiropractor on Tuesday who found a sacroiliac joint that was pretty compacted and unmoving on the left side. It looked to her as if Coral maybe had been "bounced" too hard on that side. She worked with that and got it pretty mobile by the time we left which was a help, as Coral seems to be able to bear her weight again. But she continued to have a lot of soft-tissue pain when sitting on the padded part we are supposed to sit on. (She is not very well padded there to begin with!) Since nothing amiss can be seen on the outside, I began to worry about possible internal soft-tissue damage from chronic constipation, so we took her to her general practitioner yesterday. The internal exam did not give her any discomfort, and the doc could not feel anything wrong, so I guess we are just going to have to wait it out. I do think she is doing better than she was.

All this long story to say that I am a big chicken when it comes to enduring the pain of my loved ones. Anything wrong with Coral is doubly bad for my innards because she can't tell me what is wrong, and so I am constantly trying to guess and wondering what I should be doing. I do try not to cross any rickety bridges before I have to, but there is a fine line between foolish worry and realistic concern sometimes!

I have kept her home every day and will continue to do that until she is better, so my work is getting done into the wee hours of the morning. I have a pile waiting for me. I haven't been able to visit your blogs or make comments or make a new post about my Dad. I will continue as soon as I can, and maybe I will stretch this series out over a little more time. Thanks so much for coming over here to visit and for leaving such wonderful comments!

My Dad -- Part 3

As far back as I can remember, my father had to be careful about his health. Any little cold quickly became a deep bronchitis, and I remember that he often had what he called "hard indigestion." These problems were not new, and even as a young man, his health was fragile. Now that my Dad was planning to be a missionary, his family and friends were greatly concerned about how terrible this would be for his health. He had a promising career as an architect, and many of them just could not see any human wisdom at all in leaving North America to go far away to die young of a terrible disease in a foreign country! I'm sure there were many attempts to talk him out of it! (Believe it or not, in his late 20s he was considered to be a little too old to be going as a foreign missionary!)

And my Dad, being the kind of man he was, expected God to give him a verse in his normal everyday Bible reading that would answer that concern and give him clear guidance, and he was not disappointed! This is what he wrote:

"After study and preparation, I considered the advisability of seeking, at my age, a field of service which might be easier on the health than West Africa. I was reading at the time in Jeremiah where the children of Israel were commanded by the Lord to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, but they sought a way of escape into Egypt. The Lord spoke to them, saying that the sword that they feared in Babylon would take them in Egypt. I said, "Yes, Lord," and set my face steadfastly toward Liberia."

Early in 1941, my Dad was ready to set sail for Liberia. It had been 10 years since Meryl had been born, and she was being cared for by her grandparents, Madeleine's mother and father. It must have been very, very hard to leave her and go so far away, all alone, with very little ability to communicate -- no telephones, no email, none of the immediacy we expect now. I remember meeting Meryl's grandmother when I was a little girl, and I don't remember much about her except that she was elderly and very busy whenever I saw her. But I think about how terribly hard it must have been for her to lose her daughter so young, and I hope that having Meryl was a comfort to her. Meryl's grandparents will forever have my respect for the way they raised their little granddaughter to love and adore her father who had gone so far away.

What had my father been doing in the 10 years between Madeleine's death and the day he got on that ship?

For one thing, he was working. He had completed his 4-year course in architectural drafting and was immediately employed as a draftsman, work he loved. He also began studying at Toronto Baptist Seminary in preparation for going to Africa as a missionary.

I have just one picture to show you today, and that is of my father and his bicycle with the specially made sidecar container on the back. He wanted to win others in his profession to Christ, and so he cycled through Ontario visiting architects' offices, witnessing and leaving "tracts" that he had made. They were emery sticks for sharpening drafting pencils, and he had carefully printed a Scripture verse on one side.My father became a Christian when he was a teenager. He listened as his cousin, Ted, talked to his brothers about the Lord. Then one day he stopped to listen to some men who were preaching on the street corner. After the sermon, one of them asked if he had trusted Jesus as his Savior. My father knew that he believed in Jesus, but he was not sure he was saved, so that man showed him God's promise in the Bible that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but has everlasting life. From then on, he was sure of his salvation.

A few years ago, my mother wrote a special book for her grandchildren in which she tells so many interesting things about her life and my father's, so I am depending heavily on that for writing about my Dad today. Here's something she added to this part of the story:
"Someone has said that opportunities do not come with their ultimate value stamped upon them. That servant of the Lord, whoever he was, didn't know that the teenage boy to whom he was speaking that day would one day be a missionary to Africa."

My father also didn't know the end result of those little emery boards that he rode so many, many miles on his special bicycle to personally deliver...

Then in 1935, he met my mother!

(To be continued...)

My Dad -- Part 2

(When he was in his 80s, my father wrote a short biography of his life -- 5 pages, double-spaced, typed on the typewriter by my mother. I will include some quotes from that so you will have it straight from him.)

Now, to continue...

My father and Madeleine had been married for about a year and a half, and they were expecting a baby. On January 27th, Meryl was born! She was beautiful and healthy, but Madeleine became very, very ill. I cannot begin to imagine what this must have been like for my father who was still such a very young man. All those many years later, he wrote just two short sentences, "[The] pastor was called and together we stood at the bedside as that dear one was committed to the keeping of Him Who sits upon the throne. She gave me a little daughter, but she herself went to be with the Lord."

There are four generations in this picture...William (my father's grandfather), Meryl (my sister), Cecil (my father), and Clarence (my father's father)

My father was an architectural draftsman; in fact, an office building for which he drew the plans stood for years in downtown Toronto and might still be there. He did beautiful printing and drawing.
Madeleine was buried early in February, and when Valentine's Day came, my Dad made this card for his little daughter...
Here he is with Meryl quite a few years later...

When I was growing up, I rarely heard my father speak about Madeleine. I do remember one time, though. When he first thought about being a foreign missionary, it seems that it was either marriage or missionary, not both. Many missionary societies at that time were not sending women to foreign countries because of the serious health risks from malaria and other illnesses. He told us about hearing a missionary speaker at a meeting he attended with Madeleine before they were married. After it was over, she said, "My, your heart was beating loudly tonight!" Deep down, he knew that God wanted him to be a missionary, but he told us, "I allowed my heart to beat in another direction." And so he married Madeleine.

He added this to his little biography:
"Standing in a bitter February blizzard, I saw the casket lowered into the grave - finally convinced that God had called me to be a missionary."

One little sentence sums up how my father chose to live --
"We stood at the bedside as that dear one was committed to the keeping of Him Who sits upon the throne."
...to the keeping of Him Who sits upon the throne.
My father committed everything to His keeping.

It is amazing to see how God weaves our lives together faithfully to make the sad and the happy into something that brings honor and glory to His name!
How thankful I am that His weaving brought me my sister Meryl and all her family!


(To be continued tomorrow...)

My Dad -- Part 1

Today would have been my father's 101st birthday, so this week I am remembering him, and while I'm doing that, I am going to share a little bit of his life with you, too.

The older I get, the more clearly I see what an unusual and amazing man he was!

These are my grandparents who died before I was born...

Charlotte and Clarence Hodgson

Their third son was my father, Cecil, who was born on December 8, 1907.
Clare and Frank were older, and Norman and Arthur were younger, so my Dad was right in the middle. However, Norman died before he was a year old.

I don't know much about my father's growing up years, and I don't have any pictures of when he was a boy. I wonder about that sometimes. What was his home like? I'm sure there were some very lively times with so many boys in the house! And from what I saw when they all were older, they must have been a very intelligent and opinionated bunch of teenagers!

My father accepted Jesus as His Savior as a young man. He never did anything by halves. It was all or nothing, and this decision meant his all. He wrote, "Shortly after the Lord saved me, I dedicated myself, as I thought, to the ministry, but I did not think that God had called me to be a missionary." He heard many stirring speakers who urged him to take the good news about Jesus to another part of the world, but he needed more than to be told by others what to do. He did not believe that God had called him to be a missionary.

Soon after that, in 1929 when my Dad was 21 years old, he married a lovely Christian girl...Cecil and Madeleine Hodgson
He looks so happy!

(To be continued tomorrow...)

One More In Heaven...

Yesterday we got the sad/glad news that my brother-in-law, Nori, went home to heaven early in the morning. He is the husband of my older sister, Meryl. Here he is in 1949 before he married my sister...

And here is a more recent picture of him.

Nori has not been very well for quite a while now, but this last illness was unexpected, and so this is a shock for everyone.

For most of my life, I have lived far away from Meryl and her family, but the times we have visited each other briefly have always been happy ones. I remember Nori as a quiet faithful man with a wonderful sense of humor. I loved to hear him tell a story, because his whole face sparkled with fun! He loved his family, and he loved the Lord.

December 8 would be my father's 101st birthday if he were still with us. He was the first of my immediate family circle to get to heaven, and now Nori has joined him. I'm so thankful that God blessed both of them with a very short trip from here to there.

My posts this coming week are going to be about my Dad in honor of his birthday,
so you will hear more about Meryl very soon!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 12/05/2008

Winter has come again to the Rockies...

Our back yard is blanketed in white...

The bushes by the front porch are bending under the beautiful mounds of snow...

And LC knows where he would rather be!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 12/02/2008

Snowed under, that's me... so here is a quick post just so you know I'm still here!

When Barry went to visit his mom last month, he called us every night. Of course, Coral talked to him, too, and that first evening her face was so alive and lit up with excitement that I told myself to have the camera ready the next time.

Wouldn't you know it, I had battery issues, so it was actually the third call before I was ready --
one hand holding the phone... the other one taking a picture... knowing she was not going to like the flash...
This is just a little reflection of what I saw the first night!
Total excitement and thrill in talking to her beloved Daddy!

(I wish I had counted how many times Coral said, "I miss my Daddy. I need him.")