Women of the Day

I recently went home to celebrate Magda McCormick Day.  Magda was the high school guidance counselor at a local school and the mother of one of my high school friends. She was also my mother's Sunday School teacher for many years.  For me, Magda was the friendly face that took me under her wing at my husband's family reunions. 

 My husband's mom's mom was a McCormick, so once a year at Labor Day we go to the legendary McCormick reunion - and let me say that there are a lot of McCormicks!!! Even though I knew many McCormicks, especially the ones my age, I was overwhelmed by the parent, grandparents, aunts and uncles at the reunion.  At the first few reunions as a newly wed, I must have look overwhelmed because Magda always ran to my rescue giving me someone to talk to and helping me make the intricate family connections involved in any reunion.

Anyway, October 12 was designated "Magda McCormick Day".  A standing room only reception was held in the First Baptist Church.   Magda's family and friends were all there to support her and she looked beautiful.  Her influence on all the people she knew was evident in the love and support of everyone attending.

But I didn't entitle this post "Magda McCormick Day" because there were other women there who I'd like to also recognize.  I'm thinking of the women who organized Magda's day. 

Not long ago, my mom and her friends were talking about how much everyone loved Magda and that it's a shame we often don't take the time to let people know how much they mean to us.  From this was born the idea for honoring Magda. I just have to say that women are great!!  They wear so many hats - wives, mothers, friends, homemakers, employees and employers, caregivers - and yet still they take time to recognize others. (In keeping with the theme of this blog, I should say that they have many branches in their trees.) So hats off to the planners of "Magda McCormick Day"!!

                

          

Now I can't write about anything that happens in my little hometown without mentioning the heartbeat of that town, Carolyn Gandy.  Mrs. Gandy was my eighth grade English teacher.  She retired several years ago from a wonderful teaching career where she didn't just teach, she loved, nurtured, and bolstered!!!!  She was the pulse of Many Junior High School, just as she is the pulse of Many.  Not an event takes place that Mrs. Gandy isn't there with her camera to capture it all, and while she is snapping your picture she is asking about your children, your husband, your vacation, and everything in between.  A person can't remember every detail of other people's lives and  be so connected with them without selfless love and concern for everyone around her.  She is .....well, she is just amazing and our little town is a better place for having her as a citizen.  One day I'll be driving home for "Carolyn Gandy Day".

Co-planner and photographer of "Magda McCormick Day", Carolyn Gandy.
 (All the photographs in this post are by Mrs. Gandy)

So here's to all the wonderful women in our little town and the examples they set for us!!!! May we all grow strong branches of support for each other.

Love ya'll, Shelli

Drinking From My Saucer

  In the garden you must add fertilizer to your plants if you want them to grow; adding nutrients for strength and vitality.  Our lives are no different, so I thought I'd write about an easy way to add nutrients to your life and grow the strong branches that this blog is about.

     How? 

 

 Count your blessings!!!! 

 

Counting our blessings helps us focus on what we have, not want we want.  Counting our blessings draws our minds away from our problems.  Counting our blessings floods our bodies with thankfulness washing out greed, envy, anxiety, and fear. 

 

My parents love a song entitled "Drinking From My Saucer 'Cause My Cup Has Overflowed" by Bill Anderson. They often start their day with this song playing in the kitchen.  What a great attitude to get you going. Here are some of the lyrics:

 

No, I'm not a man of riches,
No sir, and sometimes the going gets kinda' rough,
But I got me a good family, an old horse, and a dog;
They all love me, well that makes me rich enough.
I thank the Lord for all these, bless the mercies he has bestowed.
I'm drinking from my saucer cause my cup has overflowed.

 

The song is modern, but the sentiment isn't:

 

"My cup runneth over"

Psalm 23:5

 

 

Here are more thoughts on gratitude:

 

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ~G.K. Chesterton

 

The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings! ~Henry Ward Beecher

 

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder

 

The struggle ends when the gratitude begins. ~Neale Donald Walsch

 

All that we behold is full of blessings. ~William Wordsworth

Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don't unravel. ~Author Unknown

 

With arms outstretched I thank.
With heart beating gratefully I love.
With body in health I jump for joy.
With spirit full I live.
~Terri Guillemets

 

 

Whatever be the depth of woe
Along the path that I must go,
I'll sing my song—
My song of joy for all the love
That's lavished on us from above,
And count no loss of treasure-trove
When things go wrong.
I'll sing the sunlight, and the bright
Soft smiling stars that gem the night;
For gifts of good
That God hath spread along my way,
The lilt of birds in tuneful play,
The harvests full and flowers gay,
The whole day long
I'll sing my song
Of gratitude!
~John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922), "My Song" (October Twenty-sixth), The Cheery Way: A Bit of Verse For Every Day, 1920

Love ya'll, Shelli

 

 



C. S. Lewis, Branches, and Trees

     Are you familiar with C. S. Lewis?  I love The Chronicles of Narnia and used to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to my students when I taught younger grades. I especially love his book Mere Christianity. Recently I was surprised to find this excerpt he wrote in The Great Divorce about branches and trees:

"We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision.  Even on the biological level life is not like a river but like a tree.  It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection.  Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good."

I hope you have a great day today and realize that the "ripe goodness" in you is unique and therefore needs to be nurtured and shared with confidence!

                                                                                                    Love ya'll, Shelli

Hard, Unwanted Branches

     Growing branches...?  My cousin's husband died on July 3.  He had been diagnosed with cancer in February.  Our family gathered for the funeral and I felt like a self absorbed idiot!!

     I started this blog because I retired and needed to grow "new branches" due to that change in my life. What a whimp I am! My change was an easy, happy one.  What about people who have catastrophic change thrust upon them? What about the branches they are forced to grow; branches they never wanted? 

     When I write, I sit in our office looking out onto the back yard filled with trees, towering pines, delicate dogwoods, and tenacious sweetgums.  They shade our yard and every shrub or flower I have planted beneath them depends on this shade. When particularly nasty thunderstorms blow through, I always fret that lightning or wind will take out some of the trees changing the complexion of the whole yard and endangering every plant in it.

     How similar to the life of a family stricken by disease, death, divorce, or any other disaster, forcing upon them changes in the whole complexion of their lives.  I want to acknowledge families and individuals who grow new branches under the direst of circumstances.  Thank you for setting examples of courage and resilience!  Thank you for showing us how it is done and thereby giving us hope for when it is our turn.

Love ya'll, 

Shelli

       Come, ye disconsolate, where'er you languish,

 Come at the shrine of God fervently kneel;

                             Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish—

           Earth has no sorrow that Heaven  cannot  heal.

                                                        

                                                      ~ Thomas Moore, c.1813, published in Sacred Songs, 1816

    

The Tree I Want To Be

     There is a sweet bay magnolia outside our office window at home.  This time of year it is filled with new baby birds being taught by their parents how to fly and what to eat .  At first the babies just sit in the tree and their parents bring seeds to them from the nearby feeders, but eventually the babies try to go to the feeder by themselves and that's when the fun begins! They fly to the feeder but aren't sure how to perch so they flap, and hover, and flap some more, ultimately returning to the tree with nothing to eat. It is great fun to watch!! But my point is, after every trial run they return to the tree. It is their shelter and support; their refuge.

     That's the kind of tree I want to be for the people in my life - a refuge.  So today I am thinking about the branches in my tree that I need to prune or nurture in order to be a loving shelter.

     Pruning first.....I am bossy and I think I know it all.  Let me just put that out there.  In self-defense, I think that comes from my years in the classroom when I was the boss and it was my job to know it all.  But now that I am retired it is time to prune that branch!  No one likes a know-it-all.  I also want to prune my branches of judgment and criticism.  I don't want to be limited or confined by judgments rooted in "my way" of doing things. We have so many wonderful young people in our family.  They see the world differently than the old guard does. I want to respect, not judge, their points of view.

                    "If you judge people you have no time to love them."  Mother Teresa

     Once these branches have been cut away, I want to nurture the branches of love and acceptance.  My grandmother called us her "precious darlings". If we misbehaved she would switch us with a bridal's wreath switch and still call us "precious darlings". It was awesome!!! Later when I was in my teens and being judged by peers about everything I did , said, or wore, being someone's "precious darling" was balm to my soul - a loving branch to perch on.  My great aunt, Hittie, also provided a tree of love and support.  Just walking into her house surrounded you with acceptance.  While you were there, she kept up a constant barrage of reinforcing comments such as, "I'm so proud of you!", "You are so smart!", or "That is wonderful!".  It was nurturing at its best and I was lucky to have it in my life!  That is why it is so very important for me to provide this tree, these branches, for the people in my life. 

        "Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."  Peter Ustinov

                                                                                                              Love ya'll,  Shelli