Make Your Misery Your MInistry

Gloria Peacock Kimmel

December 14, 2016 · 

I heard this from a movie today. "Make your misery your ministry."

Amen to that!

All of us have things that we have overcome. Some of us had trying childhoods, marriages, troubles with family members and yet we are all here today.

I can't touch on most of the misery of my life but I plan to keep sharing when I feel led. Hopefully in that way, any of you that may be having a tough time of it will know that you can get through it. It may not feel like it today, but I can guarantee you that things will change and it will get better.

I am thankful that no matter what has happened in my life, I have been able to find a smile. What an incredible gift that has been all these years and I am eternally grateful for it.

Ghandi said.. " Be the change you seek." I believe that. We can complain about it or we can come up with a solution. Daddy taught me to never complain unless I had a way out of it or a way to try and fix it. I try to do that but I am human and often fail.

Thank you to all that have been reading these daily books I have been writing. Today it is going to be short to give you all a break. lol.

My prayer is for all of us to find solutions or at least have a good pair of boots.... Love to all, Kimmee

The Gift Of Life

Gloria Peacock Kimmel

December 11, 2012 · 

Sometimes early in the morning before I get my eyes adjusted to being awake, the geese look like statues. LOL.

I hope that this morning will be all that you wish it to be and that tomorrow will be as well!

I am counting my blessings this year. Among them are my family and friends. The road I have been on the past 8 years has taken me places I never thought it would. We have expectations of where we are going and then the road turns for us.

The road turned for me last year when I faced homelessness and again this year when I faced it again.

I had worked most of my adult life, buying my home in upstate NY, educating and taking care of my children, and then illness roared its ugly head into my life. My life changed so much I hardly had time to adjust but I tried not to let life defeat me.

It wasn't easy to wear a smile some of the time but I always remembered what Daddy said, when we complained of tough meat. He said, it would be tougher without, and he was right.

Life could have been easier if I had been able to continue working as a Nurse and retired like I had planned at 55.

But who wants something easily gained?

The life I was given was rewarding and challenging. It kept me always searching and seeking higher ground. It made me grow as a being and made me get rid of things that kept me bound.

It was hard to look at illness as a gift but it has turned out to be just that.

My friend Joan Schaublin gave me something a bit ago called "Sitting with Discomfort" by Jeff Foster and I realized that was what I have been doing most of my life. And I have gained the gifts of that for my life.

Don't run away from hardships. They create who we are. They did it for our parents, our grandparents, and great grandparents.

I just wanted to thank those friends that have walked with me, cried with me, and laughed with me the past few years. I could not have known I would need you; but when I did, you were there.

All my love, Kimmee

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The Turkey Dance

Gloria Peacock Kimmel

December 8, 2016 · 

My Thankfulness involves Nature today. A wonderful healing for my spirit always...

Back in 1982, I was looking around for a house to invest in for my old age and found an ad in the paper for one. I arranged to go back and stay in this little place for two weeks and I fell in love with the Amish, the area and the quaintness of the DePeyster Village where the house was.

I bought this house 3000 miles away from where I was living and by 1984 had sent money back to the renters for repairs and was looking forward to moving and getting settled in.

I am a Florida girl born and bred and had never experienced any REAL cold. LOL. I finally got a chance to move to my "dream" home a few years later in 1989. The 7.1 earthquake had happened in San Jose/San Francisco area where I had lived for a long time, and I thought there is not a better time to move on out of here. LOL.

We arrived after an eventful 8 day journey with a 24 foot truck, two other pulled vehicles and what looked like a convoy moving from California to Upstate NY. The truck broke down only 50 miles from our destination on a cold day in December, with 3 feet of snow on the ground. The house was cold, dark, and empty as the renters had moved out a month prior to our getting home and the house was full of rodents trying to escape the winter cold.

We had such a hard start to our life there but my children were little troopers. The furnace blew up and black smoke invaded the home within a week of our arrival. The mice had to be extracted and they were hesitant to leave. LOL. The furnishings arrived a few days later and we were in!

Little did I know that the next 18 winters would be one of survival, many hardships, and tragedy as my marriage fell apart.
I have written these things down for my children but I don't think they will ever want to read about them. We lived them...

One upside to the move was the cemetery.. I have told you all what a nut I am about History and Genealogy and within a short time I discovered that my Kith and Kin were buried 1/4 mile from the very home I purchased. It was a discovery that made me sure I was in the right place at the right time.

I could write all day long about all the things I found while digging in the garden that made me know I was home. The dolls, the toys which included marbles, little metal trucks, a large 1900's wagon, and many medical bottles and such. Since I was a doll collector, a Nurse and loved old things, it made my day!

In the early crisp mornings before winter, I would go out to my picnic table and drink my coffee. I would have to bundle up because Thanksgiving was approaching and it was pretty nippy, but I wanted to see what ever nature wanted to show me.
One morning as I was sipping my coffee, out of the woods came a magnificent wild turkey followed by two females. He has his feather extended fully and was prancing around trying to attract one of both of the females. He danced and wiggled, flapped his majestic wings, and the females avoided him like he was the plague. I said to him, you are going to have to do better than that to get their attention and just then he did.
He started moving his head up and down in a ballet type move. At least it was as graceful and his wings seemed to sway up and down. It seemed like slow motion, it was so incredibly beautiful. I could not take my eyes off this amazing dance he performed for me and for the two other females of whom, he finally had their complete attention. My coffee grew cold as I and they wallowed in this magic moment. I have thought of this so many times over the years and have always prayed to be worthy of such a gift.

This was but one of the many magic moments that started my day as I sat at the picnic table or my thinking rock.

The house still stands today and a new family lives within its walls, but my spirit will linger I know, as long as it is there. I put down roots in those early mornings, in the rocks, in the trees and the over 200 bulbs that I planted around that place and it brings me comfort knowing that it lives somewhere..

I love you all so much and pray that thankfulness of Nature will heal and nourish you as it does me.... Always, Kimmee

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A Boy Named Joe

July 22 ·

I couldn't sleep tonight. Too much pain and too many words in my head. I was thinking about this boy that my sister and I knew really well growing up. He lived on the outskirts of Jay with his Mom and Dad even though he was grown and had a job. He was so kind to me and Donna and we loved him. He was like an older brother to us, but looking back I think he was sweet on either one or both of us.

He did not seem to have a lot of friends and I think it was because he was bullied and made fun of as a child. He had what everyone called a "Harelip" back in those days but later I came to know it was called a Cleft Palate.

These are regularly taken care of today so that you almost never see one in our country, although we still hear of them in other ones. We have whole teams of doctors and nurses that go there to fix them free of charge to the families that can not afford them. Some of them are so bad that it is a wonder they survive at all and yet they do.

His mother talked about how she had to feed him so carefully when he was little and she did a good job, because he made it

Joe was a handsome boy about 5 years older than me and he had a brand new baby blue 66 Chevy Camaro and it was beautiful. He would pick us up in his car and we would go skating in Milton, or to Flomaton to eat and sometimes to the drive-in that was in Century.

I wish I could remember the name of that little diner where we would hang out in Flomaton. It was on the left side of the road past where the Credit union is now and it was a hot spot for teens. Donna will remember the name of it. It had a juke box and we would play a quarters worth of tunes. The owners let us blast it so loud that you could be outside and hear it. I don't remember a cop ever coming to break it up while we were there. We were just kids enjoying music, sitting in our cars eating french fries and a burger. My favorite one to put on was "Wooly Bully" by Sam The Sham and the Pharoahs. Their second hit was another favorite of mine too. " Hey there little red riding hood. You sure are looking good."

I could get 5 tunes for a quarter and those two were always on the list
.
There were such great names for groups back then. Herman's Hermits, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Monkee's, The Animals, Tommy James and the Shondells and so many others. Some of the song titles were kind of funny too. "One eyed One horned flying purple people eater" is one that comes to mind and it was still hugely popular in 1966.

I could talk all day about the music of the 50's and 60's. Real music.. lol. But I am getting off the topic of our friend Joe.

I remember so many things about him. How shy he was. His laugh, the way he talked because of his cleft palate and the way that he always smelled so good. I think he took extra care because he had two girls in the car with him and it made it feel good. I know that other guys would look at us when we were out and he would puff out his chest a little because he had two home grown farm girls in his car and they didn't. lol

He drove us everywhere and often paid for us to have extra things if we didn't have the money. He had an 8 track in his car and kept a variety of tapes in there for us to sing too. He loved to hear us sing. Donna and I regularly sang in churches in the area but when we were out of church, we loved country music. Joe used to tell me that I sounded just like Dolly Parton and he thought I should go to Nashville and try to make it. We did go to Nashville later on one of our trips with Daddy but I never pursued a singing career and neither did Donna, although she could have.

We loved going skating and Daddy would let me drive his big ole black Chevy if I wanted to go to Milton even though I only had a learner's permit. Kids drove back in those days. Usually a tractor first and then what ever car or truck your daddy had.

We weren't molly coddled kids back then. We drove, we swam in snake infested creeks, sometimes there was an alligator or two and we did dangerous stuff. We got hurt, we healed and did some more dangerous stuff and sometimes we got in wrecks.

We had a little wreck in Flomaton near Nall's Store one night and instead of worrying about his beautiful car, he was worried about me being in the front seat and being hurt. Donna and I took turns riding shotgun and I was in front that night. It hardly made a scratch on his car cause we were only going about 30 mph and he had hit the brakes pretty good when the car stopped in front of him. We were not wearing seat belts as they didn't require them back then, but the car was made of Good ole American steel. A car could take a lickin and come out none the worse for wear in small fender benders, unlike today. You sit on a car now and you would dent it. lol

I wish that you all could have known Joe Kelley. Donna told me sometime ago that he had tragically died and I was so sad but I am happy that we had spent many Saturday nights together tooling around Jay, Milton, Flomaton and Brewton.

When I got my Mustang a couple years later, we did not see him as much as before. My attention turned to boys and I thought of Joe as a brother so I started dating and we started seeing him less.

I am so thankful for Joe. He was a perfect gentleman at all times, respectful and kind. When I look back on those times now with my memory eyes, I can see how mean some people were to him. They snickered, just like they do today at someone who is different. We think we have gotten worse today with bullying and maybe we have, but there were bullies back then too. Maybe not as overt or as many because parents would wail the tar out of you if you treated someone badly or made fun of someone within earshot of an adult. It didn't matter which adult it was. You were as likely to be cuffed by your older brother or your Aunt as you were your Daddy.

Joe deserved all the best in life and I hope that he got it. I seem to remember that he had a bad marriage but I don't know if he ever had any kids. If he did, I hope that they know what a special man he was.

I miss him and am so thankful that he took care of us for a couple of years. He made sure we were safe when we went out and he enjoyed himself also. I don't know if there are guys like him around today and if there are, if anyone would notice them, but I hope there are.

He was the best. RIP Joe Kelley. Two little girls from Jay will never forget your kindness and charm.
Love, Kimmee

I couldn't find a google image of a baby blue 66 Camaro but this is a 67 in a little darker blue, so people can kind of get an idea of what we were riding around in.

(Addendum: my friend Maria knew the name of that little one room dive that we went to all the time. It was the Telstar! Thank you so much)

Gloria at 17 with her Bishop In laws

Gloria in Indiana at age 16 on a trip with Daddy and Donna

Daddy and Donna in Holland Michigan 

Joe and his family. Photo courtesy of Dana Lashell