Imagine a place so beautiful that you would travel hundreds of miles just to see it. Just to circle through the area in hopes of not missing a single beautiful angle. Just to let the scenes wash over you. A place to stop and have a long look, just to “drink it all in”. First, let’s start with a few simple pictures from my phone. These were taken in New Brunswick, Canada.
For me there is still a place where I can visit, a place where life does slow down just a little bit. Carleton County, New Brunswick, Canada. Driving around the hills of Knoxford and the…
Sometimes the sky is freedom, other times it presses like a heavy load. Either way, you can’t go wrong with the view from the old Dryer Road.
Thank you to my Mom, my aunts and my cousins for a wonderful visit, and overnight in Woodstock, New Brunswick. It was a short visit, but enjoyable. Thank you.
Yesterday my Uncle Dean passed away. This world lost another good man. I know he suffers no more, and for that I am grateful. I look forward to seeing him again one day, Lord-side. When…
Sometimes when I least expect it a moment is pulled from the normal and sets itself apart. That happened to me last Thursday when I ran into some old friends. It was an impromptu meeting that left me overjoyed to have a few minutes of interaction with them again after many years of being caught up in our own lives and the places our lives take us. I am thankful for those minutes, for those people, and for the mutual feelings we have for one another that were quite apparent last Thursday. It was a sweet reunion of sorts for certain.
Then there are my trips to Canada, to New Brunswick. Those trips always include sweet reunions, usually several. This trip certainly didn’t disappoint.
I find myself staring into the beautiful spaces that God created and letting my mind wander over the hills, through the valleys, and along the streams. In my mind all of it is wild, all of it is untouched, and all of it is revered by mankind. From the path my mind wanders along, I see the people who now walk the streets of gold, the ones we loved here on earth. I long to sit and visit with them again. I long to hear the familiar laughter that each of them often contributed to our family gatherings. I ache to look into the eyes of those heroes who have gone before me. In those eyes, there are windows to all-time, the windows dressed in love are unmistakable. The eyes invite you in to sit and stay for awhile, they exude love, and portray a confidence that all will be just fine, for where we are gathered, He is there also. Try looking into the eyes of a loved one, maybe an older one, but one who has assured their eternal salvation by giving their life to Christ, and tell me you don’t see all I have described here, and more.
I wrote this piece two years ago, and this morning, I honor my aunt’s life by posting the original words I wrote.
Somewhere around the world today there was another selfless soul born, of that I am pretty sure. And even with all the newborns today, there’ll never another Marjorie be.
I ended the phone call with …”my thoughts and prayers are with all of you.” As I promised I would, I dialed the number to my parents house and waited for Mom to answer. Usually, it’s been her making those dreaded calls to me, but tonight I had a message to pass on and an inkling that she already knew what I had just confirmed. She answered the phone and both of us seemed a bit scared to say the first words, knowing why each of us was on the line. I passed on the message I had promised to share and we talked about what we feared to be the case. Our dear, sweet Marjorie had passed, no more than an hour before.
Somewhere around the world today there was another selfless soul born, of that I am pretty sure. And even with all the newborns today, there’ll never another Marjorie be.
I ended the phone call with …”my thoughts and prayers are with all of you.” As I promised I would, I dialed the number to my parents house and waited for Mom to answer. Usually, it’s been her making those dreaded calls to me, but tonight I had a message to pass on and an inkling that she already knew what I had just confirmed. She answered the phone and both of us seemed a bit scared to say the first words, knowing why each of us was on the line. I passed on the message I had promised to share and we talked about what we feared to be the case. Our dear, sweet Marjorie had passed, no more than an hour before.
Hand Held Honestly, I planned to be asleep by now. Before I went upstairs to turn in for the night, I looked back. I looked back on some poems I had written over the last…
Tuesday morning, May 21, 2013, I was in New Brunswick, Canada to say good-bye to my Aunt Janette one last time. Since I was staying within 20 miles of the old homestead, I took a…
The Day After The day after; it’s been just a day, a single day. I went to bed early this evening because I was completely wiped out. Exhausted. All I wanted to do was to…
After getting through emotionally packed calling hours, a tearfully blessed funeral service, and more than 800 miles on the road in just 38 hours, I woke up a little bit mentally fatigued today. I’m so…
My Aunt Janette – Facebook says that we are friends.
It’s a bright, beautiful Saturday morning, but suddenly time has lost its grip on the day. I sat down and wrote most of this over the last two weeks, in the present tense, about my Aunt Janette, a remembrance and tribute to her. Last night, just before 9pm (Eastern) God called her home. My Mom called to give me the news that I had been waiting to hear but hoped I would never actually receive. We talked for a moment or two and then I prayed. I prayed for Lloyd and Janette’s family, all of them, in every direction. I prayed and I prayed. I prayed for me and for my family too. So that we can be and will be the strength, support, love, voice, or shoulder to lean on for any who might need it. This certainly includes me too. I prayed for all of us, any of us related to the Peterson family one way or another.
Mother’s Day 2013. It’s that day again. A day when I look in the mirror and search for the greatest things about my mother. I look for those attributes in the reflection I see,…
April, 2013 ~
This weekend I drove my parents to New Brunswick, Canada, where my mom was born and raised. The trip was planned, and made, to visit with my Aunt Janette who is currently sick with cancer, in the hospital. We arrived in Woodstock late Friday afternoon and visited with family throughout the evening and even into the wee hours of the morning. Another aunt of mine, a second double cousin, and I stayed at one of my mother’s double cousin’s house. My parents stayed with another of her double cousins. If you are not familiar with the term ‘double cousin’, it goes something like this. A long time ago three brothers married three sisters … the definition: A set of brothers from one family married a set of sisters from another family, so their children will be double cousins (meaning they’ll be cousins with the same people on both their mother and father’s sides). Not only that, two of the families actually lived on the same farm for a while, but that’s a story for another time.
Inspired by the Super Bowl farmer ad, I am sharing this quick note.
This commercial was not only my favorite ad from the advertising blitz that is the Super Bowl, but it may also have been my favorite part of the entire game.
See, to me it wasn’t an ad about a company, but a cognitive visit to times and places I don’t visit often enough.
Paul Harvey was a standard at my grandparents home. Breakfast, lunch and Saturday’s always were accompanied by the sound of Paul Harvey’s voice booming over the radio.
The highways weren’t what they are now. The drive times were longer and the family car was crowded. The days were most definitely simpler then. There weren’t electronic games to play, options for isolating ourselves within the car, but games we played involving us all. I knew the make and model of almost every vehicle we saw along the way, we all did.
I sat behind my dad in the car and I tried to take in everything he saw. I learned the landmarks and the places along the way where we stopped or where some historical thing had happened. We brought our own water and food. Fast food was a homemade sandwich that mom pulled from her bag of prepared trip fare.
Beginning with trips, visits, and times before they ever registered with my conscious memory, I had many friends. These friends weren’t from my neighborhood or from our church, and I wasn’t even old enough to be…
If you have read my blog at all you know that I enjoy taking pictures. I enjoy photographs taken by others. I love what pictures have to say without a single written or spoken word.…
Over the last few weeks I have been thinking about the North Country of New Hampshire and Maine while missing the hundreds of hours I have spent with my favorite animals, Moose. These are just a few of the hundreds of moose pictures I have taken over the years. The majority were taken with my 35mm camera so I have the prints and negatives and not nearly as many on my digital camera.
I don’t know how valuable $50 million is, but I do know that it wouldn’t have bought any more of the stuff I have been writing about. I would take the extra 50 years.