June 12, 2007

• I just returned from a four-day trip to visit my parents in southern Lousiana. It's been eighteen years since I've been to the "bayou". Some things have remained the same ... so much has changed.

  I used to love to go there as a child, before my parents actually lived there. I wasn't born into the culture of Cajuns that take up residence there, I was adopted in when my mother married some 40 years ago. To be honest, I'm not quite sure if I ever completely fit in. Even so, I still have some fond memories of the time I spent there.

  I remember standing by my Grandma Sis as she made her famous gumbo and that my Granddaddy Boots always had a can of  'goobers' (peanuts) to share. I remember the old Creole-style house on the water that my great-grandparents lived in. It was made of wood and stood on piers to protect from the threat of rising water. I remember the airy rooms with tall ceilings, four-poster beds and wardrobes instead of closets. I remember the front part of the house that had been closed up tight, a one-time general store to fisherman and townspeople who stopped that way. I remember once being privileged to take a tour of that old general store and being amazed even as a young person, at the stories I knew it could tell. There were dusty, old bottles of medicines and cleaning supplies still standing in their perfectly 'fronted' positions and various other things that the folks may need for their life on the bayou. It had long become a storage room for nets and fishing gear but I was still so drawn to that place. Most of all, I remember my little great-grandfather sitting on the back porch whittling wood and my little round great-grandmother cooking in her kitchen. There was a fireplace that took up one whole wall and a long wooden table in the middle of the room. She had one of those big handcarved bowls in the center of that table and I would watch her make a well in the flour with her hands, adding eggs and milk, mixing and kneading and pulling in small amounts of flour at a time ... never measuring with a spoon or a cup... until the dough had a perfect consistency for the fluffy biscuits that would soon be baking in her ancient oven.

  Later, after I was married and my folks had moved down to the bayou, I would take my little ones there. They would be scooped up by Uncle Tootsie's big hands .. the weathered hands of a seasoned fisherman. They would dangle their feet in the murky water, like I had, and watch the men bring in the cages full of crabs after a day out on their trolling boats. Life down there was always bustling but there was still something peaceful about it. 

  My Grandaddy Boots and my great-grandparents left this life many, many years ago and my Grandma Sis now resides in a nursing home suffering with Alzheimer's disease. The bustling life of fishermen is no longer present on the wharf like it used to be and the little creole-style house that my greatgrandparents lived in, is tired and run down ... worn by time and weather. My parents live in a wooden house on stilts that used to belong to my Grandma Sis and they are battling the ills of cancer and other ailments.

  Some things have remained the same ... but so much has changed.

  Time takes it's toll on the earthly things of this life ... our possessions rust and fall apart, our bodies become tired and worn ... and we begin looking at what was behind us and long for what we once had.

  Then God speaks ... 

  "Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroy."  Luke 12:33

  "Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you."  Isa 46:4

  "In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end." Psalm 201:25-27

  "Whoever is wise, let him -- consider the great love of the Lord." Psalm 107:43

  ... and I am reminded that only one thing withstands the test of time ... the love of a merciful and amazing God ...

  My True Treasure

  and the things I long for must be of Him and the love I share must come from Him. Love is not erased by the passage of time  ... and for that I am blessed and grateful!

   

  • 8:41 pm
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