IT'S A HEART THING

By Lori Carmody

Sept. 8, 2009

Today I sat with a spiritual directee who has had a difficult relationship with her mother most of her life. However, over the past few years, since the diagnosis of dementia and the realities of the disease have set in, that has changed. With tears in her eyes, I heard of the gratitude she feels for these years where the roles have been reversed for mother and daughter and the sweet way a new relationship has emerged for the two of them.

This week a baby doll for the one with dementia was given as a gift of love. The doll has been cradled, loved, and treasured as if it were a child. And the giver has seen God in these precious moments as she witnesses the reshaping of a relationship so bitter in years gone by now as tender as a doll's soft skin.

It's a heart thing. Ezekiel 11:19 I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

FRESH START

By Lori Carmody

April 23, 2009

I am a writer and I love to journal. I have kept a journal since I was a teenager. I pray with my journal. I express my emotions, both highs and lows and everything in between on the sheets of white paper in everyday notebooks that I find on sale throughout the year. Each day I find time to visit my dining room to reflect in written word how and where I have experienced God in my ordinary life.

I go through many notebooks. With the end of each one there is a sense of gratitude for the life that I have been privileged to delve fully into. I leaf through the pages, pausing at the mantras, reminiscing at some of the mandalas I have drawn, sometimes tearing up with sad moments I have experienced and rejoicing again with the times prayers have been answered. Then I close the notebook, put a closing date on it and off it goes to the attic.

A wonderful moment comes next ....... I sit quietly holding a brand new journal. Nothing but clean fresh white pages. No regrets. No expectations. No prayers. No successes or failures. Not even any hopes or dreams. Just a notebook that is waiting for what will become my life in the days ahead and where God will show up in those everyday moments.

I pause to thank God for what I can't imagine but know in the depths of my being; presence of the holy that will soon fill not only this new journal but the moments of my life. I am blessed.

A WIDOW'S MITE

By Lori Carmody

DECEMBER 2001

Danielle came home from the hospital today. Kaitlyn gave Danielle the half of her candy bar that she hadn't eaten. She taped it on a piece of construction paper and then taped and taped some more. Tape is irresistible to a 5 year old! Kaitlyn also drew a picture on both sides of the paper and her final gift ~ her initials.

To you and me, a widow's mite of a gift, to be sure. But to a 5 year old little girl, she gave her most prized possessions to her special neighbor ~ half of all her candy, a picture and her newly learned printed initials. Would that we all may be so generous in the coming year with our neighbors near and far.