How could anyone wish for snow on Mother's Day?! Yes, snow and so cold that I've taken my flower boxes filled with pansies and lobelias down off the porch rail and will bring them inside this evening. It's to be in the 20s for the next three nights! I've been scrolling through my flower photos -- the ones with dates -- to find the earliest dates that my favorite trails are likely to be surrounded with flowers. Just seeing the photographs makes me feel better! I also have a lovely bouquet from Mike and Margaret on my coffee table!
I won't need an excuse to drive to the mountains for a hike as soon as the weather warms up and dries out a tad, but knowing where to find flowers and aspens leafing out, making an umbrella of yellow-green on whitish limbs helps. These photos were taken on a hike that's easy this time of year--the one to Gem Lake--so I'm reminded that I can go toward the end of this week. And I'll need it to fortify me for training I'm leading on Saturday.
You would think that folks who sign up for a healing prayer ministry might be folks on a healing path themselves, but if you did--at least in the group I'm leading--you would find that for most of them, you were wrong! It's others who need healing!
It helps to remember that I'm not necessarily who others think I should be either--certainly I'm not the mother my daughter wanted. My co-leader of the healing prayer ministry said the group members all think they are the leaders, but we are the dogs pulling the sled. They feel free to toss bones and throw sticks! Hopefully it isn't quite that bad, and who said that thank yous are given for leadership! Leading this group is like walking a path where the blossoms are just coming out, being careful to find and admire each one, none more than another. Some have bloomed; most are in the budding stage. Thinking of them this way could be helpful.
I'm one who blossoms in one spot and is barely in the bud stage in another. As we embark, team and trainees, on a new individual project for inner healing, I'm wondering how I might provide an example that allows for that clarity? Perhaps the greatest gift we can each request from God is that of compassion for ourselves. As I decide which of my many more than five traits I'd like to have on my personal list for healing (five each is what our rector has requested), I'm finding that compassion for myself is important. I'm so likely to think of myself, "Why haven't you mastered that one already?" And then I think the same of others. So my list will be headed by compassion for myself. I know that compassion for others follows.
Today I have much for which to be thankful. Remembering that a warm condo, food in the pantry and refrigerator, a well-running car in the garage, and above all a relatively healthy body are gifts that I am fortunate to have is important. I am always grateful for a thoughtful and caring son and daughter-in-law, and grandsons who have taken time to call and share good wishes--and the others too! Also lovely to hear via Facebook from a couple of "girls" who will always be part of my heart family. Friends, especially those who are reading this, and Elizabeth, who joined me in a trip to the Denver and Clyfford Still Art Museums yesterday, I'm especially grateful for you!
Soon spring will flower in the mountains and summer will be quickly behind.
before the Dream Lake photo above, on a hike with friends who don't venture into mountain snowshoeing. My photo was taken by a tourist as it and the one below were taken from a roadside pull off after I left the snowshoe in RMNP--one where I had never before stopped!
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