© Patty Fitts. All Rights Reserved.
The following Grace Drop was written in 2009:
Last Wednesday, the day before her surgery, Patty happened to look at the first volume of Grace Drops, since I had just printed a new batch and the color had been enhanced. As she handled the book it fell open to this story. Considering the recent course our lives had taken and what she faced the next day, she was overwhelmed at the seeming coincidence and import of these words. We both read the story again with new insight and meaning:
For most of our lives we are consumed with preparation and thoughts and dreams about what we will become. At a young age we start seeking answers to the question, "What are you going to be when you grow up?" Education and experience come in stages, each getting us ready for the next phase. By middle age many have still not found an adequate answer.
Last year I read a book by Lisa Wingate that profoundly influenced my life. Entitled Tending Roses, it is not a book that normally would grab my attention. But at the suggestion of my wife, who knows me so well, I opened it and was captured. The opening paragraph hooked me.
"Indian wisdom says our lives are rivers. We are born somewhere small and quiet and we move toward a place we cannot see, but only imagine. Along our journey, people and events flow into us, and we are created of everywhere and everyone we have passed. Each event, each person, changes us in some way. Even in times of drought we are still moving and growing, but it is during seasons of rain that we expand the most—when water flows from all directions, sweeping at terrifying speed, chasing against rocks, spilling over boundaries. These are painful times, but they enable us to carry burdens we could never have thought possible . . . Floods are painful, but they are necessary. They keep us clear and strong. They move our lives onto new paths."
Patty was encouraged by reading that the days ahead may be difficult and even painful, but they will not be without purpose
© 2009, John C. Fitts, III. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted from Grace Drops, Volume 7 (2009).
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