Delaware Grammy

 

Love Bug had a big day.  Blue Play Doh (Who’da thunk that Grammy could make play doh???) and weeding in the garden with Grandpa.  Riding the Golf cart and cutting and pasting and coloring.  Watching the movie “Madeline” for the first time, and “Milo and Otis” twice in one weekend.  Taking a bath and making a glorious mess with the colors for the bath and the tablets to make the water a funny color.  A story and a prayer and the songs from Mommy’s childhood, “You’re Something Special” and “Jesus, I heard you had a Big House” and “Good-night, My Father, Put Thoughts of Jesus in My Head.” Torre, here to spend the night, listened from her mattress on the floor, while Grammy prayed that the words would sink into her hungry heart and take root.  Love Bug was asleep before the last song was done, and Torre turned her light out soon.  Two girlies, both so precious.

Oh, Lord Jesus.  “Put Angels all around all our beds.”

When our family got together for our reunion about a month ago, it was the first time I was even remotely aware that our nephew’s six month old daughter, Ariel, was possibly affected by SMA,(Spinal Muscular Atrophy) a genetic disorder that, in infants, is usually fatal within the first year.  I’ve watched the faith journey of Jeremy and Cheryl in the years since they began their relationship, and have come to realize that God has chosen to do extraordinary works of Grace in their hearts and lives.  They have yielded to Him in ways that speak of unusual trust in a God who makes no mistakes, but is always leading them on adventures that are challenging, scary to contemplate and volatile in nature.  And it seems to happen with such consistent regularity that it cannot be a coincidence.

It was with a heavy heart that I realized that this much desired, greatly loved and precious daughter of a much loved nephew and his incredible wife was in need of a miracle.  “A miracle of such magnitude,” I thought, but was immediately corrected in my spirit.  A miracle is by definition always “of magnitude” or it isn’t a miracle.  My thoughts were scrambling over themselves as I thought about this young family and their unwavering commitment to believe God for what seems (and is, by human standards) impossible. I decided that I would also pray for that miracle for Ariel.  And that when I pray for her by name, specifically, I would also pray for Jeremy and Cheryl, and Max and Boaz, Ariel’s devoted brothers.
I shed some hot tears that evening after the reunion, and that feeling of heaviness, that something just wasn’t right woke me and followed my steps in the morning.  I got my ladies ready for church, prepared lunch for family members who were passing through, and went to church.  Our talented and animated song leader, Abi, was in charge of the singing for worship that morning and she did her usual exceptional job.  We sang through several hymns, and then she announced #335 in the Mennonite Hymnal.  I flipped the pages and read the title.  “Children of the Heavenly Father”

My heart caught in my throat.  “What an appropriate song,” I thought, “for little Ariel. How like The Father to lead Abi to lead this song this morning.”

Children of the Heavenly Father
Safely in His bosom gather.

Suddenly, it was like the Spirit of the Lord spoke to my heart and said, “This song isn’t for Ariel.  It’s all about Jeremy and Cheryl.”  I began to listen more closely to the words.

Nestling bird nor star in Heaven
Such a refuge e’re was given

I suddenly got at picture of this young couple, gathered close to God’s heart as the storm raged around them. It was an incredibly safe place, and a refuge that was theirs alone.

We began the second verse:

Neither life not death shall ever
From the Lord His children sever —

The tears began to prickle behind my eyelids, and the words stuck in my throat.

Unto them, His Grace He showeth,
And their sorrows all He knoweth.

Although my voice was clouded and I could not sing, my heart was singing.  God is showing and will never stop showing and giving Grace.  And He knows their sorrows, and their sorrows that have become ours as a family.  “He knows!  He knows!  He knows!”  The words permeated my heart.

Our congregation moved quietly and reverently into the third verse.

Though He giveth, or He taketh
God His children ne’er forsaketh

Precious promise!  They (and those who love them) will never be forsaken.  I knew this in my head, but on this uncertain day, my heart needed to catch up.

His the loving purpose solely
To preserve them, pure and holy.

The tears were more than prickling now.  Coursing down my cheeks, but with no angst, no bitterness.  I bowed my heart before the Sovereign Lord.

I will continue to pray for the miracle.  I know that God does the impossible.  But the thing that is clear to me is that God is working in the lives of this young couple (and in our lives as a family) in ways that go far beyond the here and now.

Ariel’s family rejoices over her.  They celebrate who she is and what God is going to do through her.

This story is far from finished.

God is to be trusted.

My heart gives grateful praise.

 

Ariel Joy Yoder and Her Mommy, Cheryl Heatwole Yoder

I am attempting to familiarize myself with a new blog system.  

To say that this is out of my comfort zone is more than a little understated.

However.  I have come to realize that I need to start somewhere, so I guess that this will be that start.  I really need to work at it, but it is summer time and life is crazy.

Welcome to Buckeyegirlie’s new blog site, DelawareGrammy.  The new name is a better fit, for both location and life stage.  I hope that we will share many happy moments here together.

I have started a new blog site:

https://maryannyutzy.wordpress.com

My user name is DelawareGrammy.  

(Which, to be honest, fits me far better than “Buckeyegirlie.”  I am hopeful that my new name might weed out a certain segment of society that I never considered when I took that name, whose attentions I am not seeking. . . but who persist with a tenacity that I wish they would use to seek Jesus!)

 

I don’t know if it will become my favorite or not — but I will admit to trepidation, anxiety and loyalty issues.

 

Feel free to visit me there and let me know what you think.  

 

It is by no means finished, but the evolution of this site will take some time.

Thank-you, dear friends, who have blessed me so often over these happy years with Xanga.  I’m not going away.  And for now, at least, I will try to post on both sites.  I suspect the time will shortly come when that will fall by the wayside.  Maybe more by the choices of the owners of this site than mine, but we shall see.

Happy Tuesday to you!

.  

 

My Xanga site won’t let me upload photos — So here are some of the first ones in my photo storage.

I don’t know what Xanga is going to do.  I haven’t been able to upload my other two sites.

Trouble is, I haven’t had time to decide or develop another site.

I guess time will tell what will happen.  To be honest, I’m disenchanted with Xanga.

But not these people from my long ago postings:

(The same could be said) 

 

Eldest Daughter and Beloved Son in Law at a supper with Lem’s Reach team at Suicide Bridge in 2005

Middle Daughter helps with potato salad Day in 2006

 

  

Oldest Son and His Ohio Heartthrob in one of the first pictures I had of the two of them.

 

The Girl with a Beautiful Heart and Youngest Son
two and a half years before they got married

 

My three girls  — what a long time ago!

 

And a four generation picture with our Love Bug!

It’s a good feeling to look at the old pictures.

It is a blessing to be able to do so.

 

I know that it has been quiet in Buckeyegirlie’s Corner.  I’ve been really, really busy, with many things demanding my attention.  Not the least of which is that I have been working hard on editing this book so that it can be printed in time for sale at our Anniversary Bash on August 24th. 

    

The published book will not look the same.  For one thing, we plan to publish in paperback, and I need to decide how many to run on the trial run — just to see if it actually sells or not.  But beyond that, I am enjoying the editing even though it is taking lion’s share of my time.    

 

It’s yard and garden time, too, and I am quite pleased with how the garden and flowers are growing.  Even the house plants are doing well. When Daniel had his knee replaced, the women’s group at our church, known as Women in Christian Service, gave him a gorgeous plant.  (I actually said that I thought that gift was one that I enjoyed as much as he did.  And he loved it very much — far better than cut flowers.)  It was on his bookshelf for most of those recuperating weeks, and if not there, then the middle of the kitchen table.  We both thought the birds on the planter it was in was so appropriate for our house.  It was just so cheery.

 

But it was crowded in that pot.  For some time, I’ve been casting about for a different planter for it, but never found one that really satisfied me.  Finally, yesterday, I found a pot that I thought I could live with, and I brought it home.  Last night I repotted it.  Daniel and I are so happy with the result.  It seems to have grown over night.  (I put the original pot beside it so that you can see the comparison.  It is just so, so beautiful.  Thanks, ladies.  It is a reminder of our church family and how lovingly they care for us.

 

It is just so, so beautiful. 
 Thanks, ladies!  
It is a reminder of our church family and how lovingly they care for us.

We are so blessed.

My heart gives grateful praise.

 

 

So, is everyone fleeing from Xanga in great hordes?

Or is it just that it’s the summertime and everyone is busy?

Or are we all frantically trying to preserve what we’ve written over the last decade (more or less?) and don’t feel like investing more energy and time into something the future of which we are uncertain.

Maybe it is just time to let this thing die.  I mean, who is getting that $60,000.00?  And if they do get it, why should we have to pay for ongoing usage?  (I’ve been a premium member for years for my main account.)  But beyond that, if Xanga isn’t worth $4.00 a month to us, doesn’t that say something about us?  I enjoy Xanga so much, find it a healthy outlet for expression for my soul, and $4.00 sounds pretty paltry to me for the opportunity to continue with the online blog that I am comfortable with.  For crying out loud, I pay more than $4.00 for a single woodpecker’s block for my birds.  And usually don’t complain too much about it.  But then there is the thing that some of us have more than one Xanga space.  I happen to have three.  I plan to archive two of them, and just keep this one that is my main one.  That is, if they let me keep it.  

What do the rest of you think?

It was a long hard day.  While the adults talked a little girlie conked out!

The ottoman for the easy chair in Grandpa’s living room was 
available and comfy.  She was sound asleep before she knew it
and she never even found out when 
her Daddy picked her up in his strong arms and carried her safely home.
A big weekend, lots of things things to do finally caught up with her.

 

This morning, I look at these pictures of this little girl we love
so much, and think about falling asleep and being picked up and
carried home by a Father
who loves me and protects me and has a place prepared for me.

I’ve been tempted to be weary of the race.
Every day the things of this old world
disappoint, dismay and discourage.
I’ve given my life to not focusing on the negative.
But sometimes it seems like a tsunami.

However.

When the day gets too long.
When the strength is all gone.
When courage fails
And it seems that evil wins —

It is comforting to remember that I can rest in quiet peace
fearing nothing, worrying about nothing.
That I will wake up in the morning.
HOME.
The people I love will be there.
And I will see the face of the one who carried me safely there.

This is love at its truest.
Hope at its purest.
Joy at its fullest.

My heart gives grateful praise.

 

The wind was blowing straight out on Saturday.

I wrestled the sheets and towels as I doubled pinned them into place.  A chance gust of wind snapped the double pins and a fitted sheet flew wild against my frantic fingers.  I laughed at the sheer joy of the unpredictable energy, and grabbed it before it trailed into the damp lawn.  A thin, long strand of white hair stood soft against the red sheet.  It stopped my laughter mid-chuckle as I looked at it curiously.  Where would such a strand of hair –?   Oh.  Never mind.  I realized with a sudden pang that it had to be mine.  There was no one else’s for it to be.  It was so, well, silver.  

I went back to struggling with the sheets.  Find the middle, pin it tight, find the other side’s middle, tuck the elasticized end of one sheet into the other.   And then I suddenly had to smile again.  Several years ago, a favorite writer of mine was writing about laundry and the proper way to do hang it on the line.  Dorcas Smucker, raised Amish and certainly knowing a whole lot more about the right way to do things, happened to mention that the right way to hang sheets on the line was to hang them longways.  (At least that was what I understood her to say.)  So, for months and months, whenever I was hanging sheets on the line, I hung them long ways.  It didn’t matter that it wasn’t the way I folded them once they were dry.  It didn’t matter that it took up a whole lot more wash line space and clothes pins.  No, no.  If Dorcas Smucker said it was better to hang them long ways, for crying out loud, I was going to do it that way.  But then, after being inconvenienced and never really discovering why it was better that way, I got really, really tired of it.  So I went back to folding them in half and hanging them up the way I was used to.  And the way that made it easiest for me.  

On this day, there would have been no use in hanging them any special way, they were going to come loose!

Our Girl Nettie was antsy to be out.  She had cleaned her room and got antsy to be outside with Torreanna and me, so she decided to clean the birdbath– which she pretty much does every day, anyhow!

Certain Man was busy fixing his fence:

This fence is dear to Mr. Yutzy’s heart.  When we moved here almost 24 years ago, the neighbor next to us was wary of us, and from the very beginning, Daniel sought to make peace.  The fence between the properties was barbed wire, and in poor repair.  However, it was a reference point for this neighbor, because he would sit beside it at the road end while chickens were going out and woe betide any trespasser upon his property. There was more than one occasion when he would call the police on the catching crew.  The very first time chickens went out after we owned the farm, his wife called and asked to speak to Mr. Yutzy.

“I’m sorry, he isn’t in right now,” I told her.  “May I ask who is calling?”  (We hadn’t met this neighbor yet)

“This is Mrs. —,” she said in a most assertive voice.  “We live  at the corner.”

“Is there a problem?”  I asked, with my heart sinking.  I knew there probably was.  A chicken truck had backed into their fence.  Daniel had told me about it earlier in the morning, but I hadn’t personally assessed the damages.  

“Yes, there is.  When they were catching chickens this morning, someone damaged our fence!”

“Mrs. —,” I said as kindly as my quavering heart could muster, “we are so sorry.  Daniel saw that the fence was damaged and he intends to fix it as soon as possible.  He needs to get into town to get some stuff, but he does not intend to have our chicken catchers damage your fence and do nothing about it.  That wouldn’t be for the making of good feelings in the neighborhood.  We would like to be on good terms with our neighbors!”

“Oh,” she said in a very quiet voice.  “Okay, then.”

“Can I have Mr. Yutzy call you?”  I asked.  “He should be in the house shortly.”

“No, that’s alright,” she said pleasantly.  “If you are going to take care of it, that’s all we wanted.”

So, Daniel fixed the barbed wire fence, made an arrangement with the chicken company to catch chickens out of the other end of the chicken house where there was a little more room, and life in the neighborhood took on a less hostile air.  But Certain Man just didn’t like that barbed wire fence.  It was usually in disrepair, it was hard to mow around, and he has Standards of Fencing by which he lives.  This barbed wire fence was so substandard, that it barely rated.  So, as time went on, and he learned to know our neighbor a little better, he began to ask about replacing the fence with a better one.  For a long time, he got nowhere,  “No, Siree! Not a happening thing!  Nope, ain’t a’gonna do it, just not interested.”  

Then Daniel found out that the real reason that Mr. — didn’t want a new fence was that he thought that he would have to pay “halfies” for any fence that went down the property line.  When Daniel reassured him that we would cover the total cost of a new fence, he was finally granted permission to do it.  Sometime.  So the time came when our neighbors went on an extended vacation, and Daniel, with the help of his friend. Allen Beachy, tore out the old fence and put in a new, three wire high tensile fence with proper posts and just as straight as an arrow.  Ir was just a few feet inside our property line so that Mr. — wouldn’t have to even worry about cost, maintenance or anything.  It was finished before Mr. — returned home.  And all was peaceful in the neighborhood.

Then one day, while Daniel was out doing chores he heard hammering.  Upon investigation, he discovered Mr. — making fence on the neighboring side of the property line.  

“Mr. —, what in the world are you doing?”

“I’m making a fence.  I want to run an electric fence down through here so I can run some steers through the woods and along this side.”

“You don’t have to dig in post holes for that,” Daniel told him.  “Just hang those insulators on my fence and run your wire.  I don’t mind at all!”

“You sure?” asked a very contrite Mr. —.

“I’m sure,” Daniel reassured him.  “I don’t mind at all.  It’s a whole lot easier to just run that electric fence along these posts that are already here than it is to dig in new post holes.  Besides, it will be a whole lot easier mowing.”

And so, for a long number of years, that is how it went.  Daniel maintained the fence on the property line, and Mr. — maintained the electric wire that he had run along the inside of it.  I watched my husband cultivate a friendship with this man that was warm and rewarding. Mr.— a war veteran, and Mr. Yutzy, a Mennonite Deacon found lots of common ground in farming, trees, and life in general.  When Mr. — passed away a few years back, we all felt like we had truly lost a valuable friend.

Friday night, around Midnight, just when we were almost asleep, there was a great squealing of tires and a sickening thud.  I said, “Daniel!  There has been a wreck!”

“It sounds serious, too!”  He said, as we both leaped out of bed and scrambled for some day wear.  We clambered down the stairs and out into the cold, dark night.  From the deck, we could see that someone was into the woods just beyond the fence.  Daniel wanted to just get into the van and run down there.  I thought we should call 911.  Finally, I called 911 while he waited to hear what they would say.  They wanted to know if anyone was hurt.  (I don’t know.)  Is it serious?  (It sounded really serious!)  Could someone go down there and check to see if anyone is hurt? (Well, we aren’t sure of how deeply they are in the woods, but my husband is going down there and we can call you back.)  They finally decided to send someone out and Daniel got into the van and started down the road.  When he got up there and shone his headlights into the woods, a young man came out.  

“Is everything alright?”  Daniel asked.  “Is anybody hurt?”

“Yeah, we’re alright.  My girlfriend and I were fighting and she grabbed the wheel and I lost control and ended up in the woods.”

“Where’s your girlfriend?”

“She’s back there in the woods.”

Daniel didn’t argue with him, but he was pretty sure that judging from how there was some pretty sturdy brush up against the passenger door, that the girlfriend was still inside the car.

“We’re alright,” he repeated.  “We are just going to pull the car out.  We are okay.”  Daniel didn’t say anything but he thought that it would be good for the police and the EMT’s to come.  He called me and said that he was going to sit at the end of the lane because the car was so far into the woods that he was sure anyone passing on the road would never see the card.

And he was right.  It wasn’t too long before an emergency squad came barreling down the road, past the place where the car had entered the woods and pulled up to our driveway.  When Daniel told them they had passed it, they were not sure he was telling the truth, but once they headed back and met the young man coming in their direction, they were convinced.  Coming in their direction.  Yes.  I guess he decided that he needed some help after all.  And things really got moving then:

The next morning, I went out to see what I could see, and there was not all that much:

But the problem was that he had taken out Daniel’s fence at the very end, and everything was dangling in great disarray.

So the very next morning, Daniel got busy and repaired that fence as good as new.

And the wind blew straight all day Saturday and most of the day on Sunday.

One of my favorite young families decided to fly kite on Sunday night:

It dipped and soared like a great flying bird, gorgeous against the sunny sky:

And then they reeled it it, from 200 feet up, and brought it safely down.

What a busy, happy weekend!  (except for that car accident business!)

My heart gives grateful praise!