By Winnie Bolton
Looking back on the wonderful memories I’ve had and being grateful for each and every blessing reminds me of a song on a Clint Black CD. He sings of the meaning of love.
It goes something like this, “Love isn’t something we have nor something we find, and it isn’t a place that we were or something we said. Love is something that we do.”
We can find our strengths and inspirations independently, but it’s love that keeps us in touch – working things out – working together.
When you’re secure in the people you love and who love you back, you can let your strongest – and weakest – feelings show.
People say to me it must be lonesome not having my family around me, but I don’t experience those feelings because family is always around me.
They are in my heart and thoughts no matter what I do or wherever I am.
I am happiest when my family members are doing what they want to do, adjusting to their environments, making sense out of their life’s journey.
And if our kids have learned anything from Tom and me, it’s to grow graciously wherever they’re planted, forever how short or long the stay and to serve people in community life.
Visiting our kids with their own kids and individual lifestyles tugs and pulls us into more growth ourselves.
“Enough growth is enough,” I found myself saying at times, but then I’d miss all the nonsense and chaos – the ability to reinvent myself if I believed enough is enough.
Throughout my lifetime I’ve pursued courses in comparative religion and so when Tom and I were free of college expenses for all five of our kids, we went to experience the East.
We went to India and lived in an ashram for a month among people from various countries speaking different languages, assorted faiths all praying together, longing for God.
There were no phones, we had a vegetarian, healthy diet; slept in simple cots, got up at 5 a.m. to pray in silence and talked of God’s miracles from morning to night.
Sounds boring?
It was just the opposite – exhilarating!
I was beginning to realize how much more God loves us than I ever thought possible.
It deepened and expanded my vision of His world with all the varieties of people, not just my own narrow viewpoint and culture.
Living in rapidly changing times, rubbing elbows with multi-cultured differences worldwide, it is we who must help ourselves by bringing peace and understanding, patience with acts of kindness to our own communities by deep respect of the God that resides in each one of us no matter what the differences – spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally…
With humorous insight one of our granddaughters said it best while she and I were having a discussion of love while doing her social science project.
“Love is wide and long, deep and strong,” I said.
Responding with a teenager’s grin, she said, “Why it reminds me of homework. It never ends, but when you get it right, it makes you feel so good about yourself.”
It’s all in the doing.
