Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Loss   The dash up I-95 became a crawl. All four lanes going our direction closed as the result of a high-speed chase. In spite of the delays and the concerns about arriving too late, we reached the New Jersey hospice in time to say our goodbyes to a

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Starlings and Doves A large number of brassy Starlings descended on our bird feeders, chasing off the finches and intimidating the doves who pecked on the ground, gleaning the seeds that fell on the snow. The black birds were so large they struggled to perch on the feeder’s small

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Get Along Children are born with a resilience that we adults would do well to emulate. A playground squabble that results in tears and anger can be put aside, and the children come together to enjoy one another without giving it another thought. It’s fun to see how excited

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Apple Picking Rows and rows of trees were loaded with luscious looking red apples ready to be plucked. Underneath, the ground was littered with apples which had either fallen or been knocked off by previous pickers. Cut off from the source of nourishment they were in different stages of

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Tea Party What fun to hold a tea party with children! We use the opportunity to enter the enchanting land of imagination. We assume new names, the more exotic the better. We dress up with hats, scarves, and sometimes costumes. The boys pretend to act as our protectors. This

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Building Blocks Most of us have built towers and attempted to build houses or castles from a set of building blocks. As a mother, I remember children’s tears when the tower fell, my annoyance when the box of blocks was dumped on the floor but never played with, the

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement In the Past The horse and his rider both were outfitted to look as if they had stepped through a time machine straight from Germany in World War One onto the field near Pungo, Virginia. All around us, tents housed emergency cots with costumed people clothed the way doctors

Mary’s Monday Musings Prayer Party Funny how we never leave right away when our prayer meeting is over. We can hardly wait to attend our weekly prayer meeting and feel cheated when we must miss.  The privilege to pray together for needs satisfies our hearts. The encouraging testimonies of God’s response to prayer draws us

  Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Anticipation Excitement was running high in my house. We were anticipating the visit of our out-of-state son and some of his family including his twin grandbabies. Delighted at the prospect of a visit, we stocked our cupboards with snacks. The beds sported fresh linens. With wide smiles we

Mary’s Monday Musing to Quilt Encouragement Life is Precious She didn’t invent a marvelous gadget. She didn’t hold an office. She didn’t compose a remarkable creative piece of art. She wasn’t famous nor did she know a large number of people, but her funeral was sweet. We reflected on how wonderfully purposeful her life was.