This song always brings me hope. I think it is all those wonderful photos of places that God's hand has touched. This is a story about a person that had the faith of the Angels....
I had a special cousin named Glenda and she is on my mind this morning. I think because my heart is aching this week by events in the world and God wanted me to know that we can experience all those things and maybe more, but we can't give up.
We still need to get up the next morning, pull up our boot straps as the ole timers say, and make it the best way that we can. Glenda did that. Here is something I wrote about her a little while ago. I think I am just trying to find my way today to the light of our Creator and the warmth that I need to feel each day.
"I am sitting here with tears in my eyes because I am thinking of Glenda. She is my 1st cousin, Uncle Robert's youngest daughter. She and my sister Donna Gail are the same age and we spent many hours playing with her and the sister that was my age named Diann, when we were children. They lived in the house next to us. Back then, there were not any trailers by daddy's, and no homes either. It was Daddy's and Uncle Robert's land and there were not any homes til you got to Dykestown curve. ( I think) We played in the road, we ran down to Diann's house running backwards and we played with Glenda.
She was a late baby for Aunt Jody but she was so loved. She was always clean and dressed in beautiful little day dresses. Aunt Jody played a beautiful steel topped guitar and would sing gospel songs while Glenda rocked to the music. She only said a few words and one of them was "Donnnaaaa Gaaaailllll." She drew it out like that in a squeal when she would hear us coming cause she loved Donna. They would play hand games and she would walk Glenda around the house and outside. They would sit and draw in the sand and Donna was so patient with her. She was kind and loving and it was an omen of how many times I would be proud of my Sister as time went on. Glenda did not get out a lot or go to school. The things she could have learned, had we only known or if they had programs back then, like they do now. She was and is precious. She lives with my cousin Patricia since Aunt Jody died and she was an Angel if I ever saw one."
Since that time Glenda has passed onto heaven. She never went to school and she did not go out much. Children born with Down's Syndrome back then weren't in the community like they are now. It wasn't that the parents were ashamed of their babies, It was that the world wasn't kind to their babies. Thank God we have come a long way from that today.
I was listening to A song at the opening of the Special Olympics in Austria by Jason Mraz and it said to never give up and I never will. I want to be like Glenda greeting each new day with a joy in my heart, rocking to the tunes that My Mama Sang and feeling safe in my world.
It is reality that we don't always feel safe but we don't have to live in fear. I refuse to live my life that way. I hope that each of you will find a little faith of the heart that will keep bringing us closer, rather than pushing us apart. I love you and wish you a blessed day, Kimmee
(the pictures are some that I have taken that remind me of how precious our world is and what grace we experience everyday. Our world make seem bleak but we have only to look at the color that surrounds us to know that will pass. The last photo is one taken by my friend Irene of my sister Donna and I sitting on the dock overlooking the St Lawrence River across to Canada)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1sYjDc8i4I&index=130&list=PLD1AAEF7C2656D
