Three Gifts

Three shopping days before Christmas. I’m leaving for one last excursion to the mall, but before I go, I need to put down some thoughts to share with you...thoughts about three gifts I’ve received in the past two days that thrill my heart. They’re gifts that have eternal value.

One of the gifts came yesterday as a phone call from my Minnesota “sister,” Donna. We met in registration line at Seattle Pacific College (now University) many years ago and became lifelong friends within five minutes. Donna, an only child, lost both her parents when she was ten years old. My big, boisterous family welcomed her and helped release the lively personality that had been so long suppressed. Today Donna’s body is twisted with osteoporosis, and she lives with constant pain, but her positive attitude still sizzles across the miles whenever we talk. Her gift to me yesterday was to remind me of my godly parentage. Some of those memories had been obscured when the process of aging ravaged Mom’s life, and Dad’s. Donna reminded me of Mom’s heart for God in earlier years and that God does not hold it against us when our mind gets broken. She also said that Dad, although very private about his spirituality, was one of the most godly men she’d known. Her gift to me was a new gratitude for my parents...and what a long-term gift our friendship has been!

The second gift came early this morning when I clicked on an e-mail from daughter Lenora in Tucson. She and Steve had sent a gift in our name to World Vision to clothe many children in poverty-stricken parts of the world. Jesus tells us in Matthew 25: 34-36 that when He returns to earth, He will say to those who have obeyed him: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was...naked, and ye clothed me....”

Our gift from Lenora and Steve helps us to obey the command of Jesus. What an eternal reward is ours--and theirs.

The third gift came by phone just minutes ago from a good friend, Dr. Jerry Rusher, who is spending his second Christmas without his dear wife. On Sunday he confessed that he felt sad and depressed and asked for prayer. Several of us gathered around, and I prayed out loud for him.

He called this morning to thank me for that prayer. I don’t even remember what I said, but God heard. He lifted the sadness and restored Jerry’s energy. He is excited about his children coming on Christmas morning. He’s eagerly anticipating upcoming mission trips to Africa and Haiti, where he will help native doctors and patients. Most exciting of all to him was finding that he could carry some much-needed medical tests with him to Haiti. The tests will cost one dollar apiece and will help who knows how many people who otherwise would suffer needlessly.

I am thrilled for our friend, but I am more thrilled for the gift: the opportunity to see God at work, once again, in response to our prayers.

And now I’m headed for the mall. But I already know that anything I buy there will disappoint or eventually wear out. The gifts that make me truly happy are gifts like these three I’ve already received.

My wish for you is that your Christmas too will be blessed by the intangible gifts of friendship, peace, and helping others.

My sister Patty's daughter, Tami Wheatley Nichols, lost her battle with cancer yesterday. She leaves her husband Bert and almost 13-yr.-old daughter Delaney, as well as brother Eric and sister-in-law Dayna and her parents. Please continue to pray for all of them. Tami had hoped to hold out until after Delaney's birthday on Dec. 26, but was just too sick.

We will continue to build the benefit fund. The medical expenses have been overwhelming for this little family.

Please click for a clearer image.
l. to r.:Tami and Bert Nichols, daughter Delaney, Tami's mom Patty Rawlins Wheatley,
sister-in-law and brother Dayna and Eric Wheatley

In my previous post, I mentioned my friend Hazel's comforting advice in the devastating loss of our nephew Byron in a plane crash. Now, many years later, Byron's sister Tami is fighting an aggressive cancer that is overwhelming her strength, the family's spirits, and their finances. If you don't already know, we have undertaken an exciting pre-Christmas fund raising project to help her. Anyone wishing to make a donation to the Tami Nichols Benefit Fund can receive a copy of my book, "A Logger's Daughter: Growing Up in Washington's Woods." All proceeds go directly to the family. You can find out more about the book on my website, www.rainsongpress.blogspot.com . You can order it there through PayPal, or contact me directly at rainsongpress@verizon.net.

Some Great Advice

“HOLD LOOSELY EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT ETERNAL.”

My dear friend Hazel went home to heaven a few years ago, but as I sorted through a pile of papers recently I found a quote she’d sent in 1987, after my young nephew Byron Wheatley died in a plane crash. It seemed to summarize her life’s philosophy. “Hold loosely everything that is not eternal.” Her letter ended with characteristic enthusiasm, “What a beautiful morning! Lets go somewhere and celebrate!”

We were of different generations and spent most of our lives widely separated by geography, but we were connected in ways I can only explain as God's. Often Hazel called or wrote to say she'd been impressed to pray for us. Invariably, we been in some crisis and needed those prayers. Sometimes it was her or her family needing prayer.

Hazel held loosely the things of this world, though we shared an intense joy in the beauty it offers. We loved to go exploring, and wherever we might be living, we managed to get together for a couple of weeks every year.

When we moved to Alaska, she was thrilled to visit. We went for walks through the woods at midnight, enjoying the flaming sky as the sun dipped below the horizon, then came right back up again. We visited Denali Park and gold mine tailings, rode a sternwheeler on the Tanana River, took a camping trip to Valdez to see the resurrected town after the earthquake of 1964, explored the Kenai peninsula.

When I visited her and her husband in Pennsylvania, we scuffed through brilliant autumn leaves, collected cones for wreaths, wandered through cemeteries and tiny villages.
We both enjoyed writing, poetry and art. Her poems praised her Lord and Savior, and her stories told her adventures in introducing others to Him. We never had time for all the things we liked to do, but Hazel always took time to listen to people. She had a wonderful knack of turning the conversation to what was at the center of a person’s problem, then pointing him or her to the One who had the answer.

Whether Hazel and I were together in person, or via letters or e-mail, I often heard, “What a beautiful day! Let’s celebrate.” What a glorious truth, to know that she’s celebrating today in heaven.

MacBook Musings

This summer we bought a digital camera. In my delight at not having to ration my picture taking to the usual roll of film, I snapped thousands of photos and downloaded them to my little Mac Mini. I overloaded its storage capacity. Its circuits ground slower and slower until my old friend threatened to freeze up.

So we drove to the Apple store and picked out a sleek laptop, which will accompany us on our travels. When we’re home, we can hook up the old monitor, keyboard, mouse, and printer and use it like a desktop. I’m so proud of my prowess! I will never be as computer-literate as most of today’s middle-schoolers, but then, they’ve grown up navigating the world of electronics. They don’t worry about writing legibly by hand.

Back in the good old days, the teaching of penmanship ranked right up there with readin’ and ‘rithmetic. Students learned how to shape the building blocks of communication on sheets of blue-lined penmanship paper.

Alas for this eager learner: My brain and my hand didn’t communicate very well. No matter how hard I tried, my big, soft-lead pencil smudged and jerked across the page, making untidy angles instead of flowing curves. It got worse when we learned to write with ink. Each of our desks had an inkwell--a hole in the upper right corner--into which fitted a bottle of ink. Using wooden pen holders with replaceable metal tips called nibs, we dipped them into the dark liquid, and trying not to get too much on the nib, we practiced the same exercises we did with our pencils. If we did it right, ink flowed from the tips of the pen onto the paper in neat cursive that gradually faded with each letter. Then we dipped the pens again. But if we didn’t get it right, our finished exercises would be blotched with blots and spatters of ink.

Whether using pen or pencil, handwriting for me still causes great tension. My readers often have to ask for a translation. Which brings me back to those fascinating, frustrating, fabulous computers.

• Frustrating, because those in my generation start with a disadvantage. Learning to use a computer can be confusing and complicated.

• Fascinating, because the Internet has opened windows onto worlds we could never have imagined exploring.

• Fabulous, because we can communicate with people all around the world with just a few keystrokes and clicks of the mouse.

Sometimes I marvel at how easy it is to share the written word now. In my lifetime, I’ve gone from pen holder and ink pot to fountain pens and then ball points. I graduated from the monstrous, noisy typewriters in Miss Easton’s typing class to the smaller portable typewriter I carried to college and upon which I later typed my first novel (original and three carbon copies), after first writing it in longhand on yellow legal pads. Then came a state-of-the-art Selectric typewriter. My fingers flew over that keyboard, barely whispering, and I loved it. I next tried a combination typewriter/word processor with a window that showed three or four lines of typing at a time, then bought my first real computer. It came with a word-processing program that no one even knows about any more.

One thing is not going to change though. Even the smartest computers can’t replace the thinking, feeling, creating persons operating them. Their ideas and compassion change the world for the better. And that, this Thanksgiving season, is one thing for which I’m very grateful.

Hometown Parade

What's more fun, marching or watching the crowd?

By 8 a.m. the day of the Granite Falls Railroad and Alumni Days parade, my old home town is ant-hill-busy. Both sides of Granite Avenue are lined with canopies and tents in various stages of set-up. Vendors and festival officials mill about as latecomers like me try to steer our vehicles through the confusion.

Suddenly, a figure from the past grabs my attention. A woman, shapeless in layers of garments under a sweeping, street-length coat, leans on a walking stick. She’s topped her ensemble with an outlandish, wide-brimmed hat. It’s Mrs. F., once an object of mixed pity and amusement to the young people of the town. With a jolt, I realize this can’t be Mrs. F. She was already an old lady fifty years ago, when I last saw her.

From her motorized go-cart, the director points me to the spot where I’m to set up my shelter and offer books for sale. Right on a corner! Not only a good spot for vending, but I have a front-row seat for the parade and people-watching. Hank is sick, so brother-in-law Jimmy has come to help me set up. My sisters Lois and Patty are down the street at the alumni breakfast, and brother Bill is helping at the Granite Falls Historical Museum. Here we are, the remaining Rawlins siblings, back in the town where we went to school six decades ago.

Families towing excited children pass. I smile at them, remembering the upwelling anticipation that once kept me bouncing on my toes the same as the children are doing. It doesn’t matter that many of these faces are tawny or black, where Granite Falls kids were once mostly Caucasian. One dark-eyed tot with a purple lollipop in her mouth breaks away from her family and talks to me earnestly. “I can’t understand you with candy in your mouth,” I say to her. She removes it, but I still can’t decipher her words. Then her mother calls to her in Spanish, and I know why I couldn’t.

Another town character waddles past, beaming good cheer in every direction. “Isn’t this fun?” she asks each time she goes by.

Across the street, the high-school cheerleaders, wearing orange-and-black trimmed outfits, set up a pie-in-the-face fund-raising booth. They could have been my own high-school classmates, full of energy though not so physically fit as teens were back then. With preparations finished, they group themselves in the street and practice cheers.

A growing crowd wanders from booth to booth. My sisters arrive from the breakfast, along with old high-school friends. Strangers, acquaintances, and friends stop to visit. Looking at my book, A Logger’s Daughter, opens the floodgates of memory for many of them. Oh, the stories that pour out!
Here comes the band!
Music trumpets from up the street. Here comes the parade, first the flags and then the Granite Falls Tigers high-school band. Who cares if their notes are a bit uncertain? After all, school has barely begun.

Every age is represented in the groups on parade, from mini-cheerleaders marching in formation, to 4-Hers on their float, politicians, church groups, and wrinkled Shriners with the float and calliope they’ve used for years.


Ladies in red hats and purple outfits follow a shiny black Model-A draped with a red lace shawl. A platoon of belly dancers shimmy down the street, some with far more belly than dance. There’s a “Sauerkraut Band” and some of Seattle’s Seafair Pirates. The local museum’s entry is a wagonload of plastic pumpkins filled with candy. Brother Bill marched with other museum volunteers to toss candy to the children. He arrives before the parade is over, saying they’d been too generous to the kids at the other end and run out of candy. He collapses into one of my chairs to watch the rest of the parade.

Niece Heidi deposits her toddler, Grace, into Papa Bill’s arms so she can comfort little Noah, crying because his red balloon has escaped and headed toward the clouds. Sister Lois calms Noah’s crisis by commandeering one of the balloons tied to my tent.

They say you can’t go home again, but celebrating Railroad Days in my old home town comes pretty close. It’s a wonderful chance to observe the whole gamut of life in one place. I’m reminded that people are pretty much the same today as they have always been. That gives me hope for the future.

Now that’s a Sun Break thought!

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The first three photos above are courtesy of Lois Drake. The one of Bill with granddaughter Grace is courtesy of Mr. Cecil Andrews, from his collection taken for the Granite Falls Chamber of Commerce. You can find more of his photos online at Greater Granite Falls Photo Collection.

Cecil writes, "In your blog you could let folks know how active the Granite Falls Chamber is becoming and encourage them to join. Individuals are just as welcome as businesses. They can apply online at our web site:
www.granitefallswa.com. Granite Falls is a community on the move and the parade is just one of the things the Chamber sponsors."
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Rainbow People

Vicki, one of my rainbow people.


My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky--

...William Wordsworth

Driving down the freeway a few days ago, we saw something we’d never noticed before. We’d been caught in a downpour so heavy we couldn’t see the pavement for the water washing across it. Spray from their their wheels made it difficult to see the vehicles around us. Hank slowed, clutched the steering wheel and hung on for dear life.

As suddenly as the cloudburst began, it stopped. The sun broke through behind us. Each vehicle still churned up a traveling cloud of water droplets from the water on the roadway. And then--we could hardly believe what we saw-- a rainbow caught in the spray followed each vehicle. Some rainbows arched properly. Some were little spots of color. Others spread out in pools of moving green, yellow, red. The drivers stared straight ahead, intent on getting where they were going. They didn’t realize they carried rainbows in their wakes.

We all know people like that. They are too busy going about the business of daily living, laughing, loving, encouraging, and helping others, to ever see the rainbows in their trail. Like the drivers on the freeway, they can’t see their rainbows from where they sit. But they brighten our lives.

Like Wordsworth, I love to see a rainbow in the sky. But it’s even more beautiful to see the aura of life-giving hope that surrounds persons who are living life the way God wants them to live it.