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Dalton
Roberts |
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Joyce Pettet has unique insights and such a wondrous way of expressing them that I have often thought she should be writing a column. Like her recent note saying the real gift people want from us is the gift of our own presence. She writes, “The story I must tell is of a woman who learned that her neighbor of some twenty years was in a nursing facility. I offered to take her for a visit she said she couldn’t go because she didn’t have anything to take to her. I reminded her that she was the only gift her neighbor needed. She answered, ‘That is not a gift. I want to take her something really nice.’ Before she found the perfect gift, her neighbor died. That was so sad because she could have given her a few hours of joy by sharing memories of their good days together.” Joyce’s point slammed home to me because my friend Ronnie Blaylock just died and I missed my chance to bid him goodbye and tell him how much I appreciate our years of friendship. I had the sniffles and was thinking of protecting him from a cold but I could have called him. From now on I shall act on those “love impulses” Joyce talked about. As I looked back to the recent Christmas season, it is the gift of the presence of family members and dear friends that I most treasure. The Christmas story mellows and sweetens the heart, making the presence of people so much more heart-lifting. I could feel this literally permeating the Waffle House on Highway 58 on Christmas day. No other restaurants on the highway were open and I went there for a late meal. They had a heavy shift of workers in anticipation of a packed house and all of them were greeting people with “Merry Christmas!” The meal was good but the special Christmas sparkle in the people fed me much more than the food. It must be some ridiculous sense of unworthiness that makes us withhold our presence from people who are in need. We so undervalue ourselves. Yet, we surely all know from our own memory of our own down times that it was the gift of the presence of people that meant the most to us. I learned this when my mother lived her last 17 days in the hospital. When you know there is no hope, the thing you need most is simple comfort. When you feel like your heart is going to explode and it is all you can do to put one foot in front of another one, any tiny tidbit of comfort helps to keep you going. How well I remember the energy people gave me with their hug. Kirlian photography has shown there is a bubble-like explosion of beautiful energy when people hug. That’s what kept me going in those days of my numb existence. I remember a prayer by young minister Alan Morgan that cast a love blanket over the entire room. How I wish I had that prayer on tape to carry in my shirt pocket and keep close to my heart until the day I die. I have never heard more beautiful words in my life. I realize some people don’t visit the sick and dying because they are self-conscious about praying. I have you a solution. Just say, “I do not have the gift of praying aloud so I pray silently from my heart. Give me a moment for a silent prayer.” Even if you are good with words like that young minister, it was still his loving heart that gave his prayer such healing power. Just show up. Just say, “I am here because I care.” That is quite enough. You will never find a gift or compose a prayer that will improve on the blessing of your personal presence.
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