Memories in Stone

 

Good Morning!

It’s Spring here Down Under, and that’s prompted Tony and me to undertake “Operation Garage Cleanout”. Honestly, I can’t say that the place looks much cleaner today, but I’m standing here with both armfuls of great stuff I found in the clutter! A lot of it looks like good blog ideas, so watch out.

As missionaries over the years, we’ve had to periodically either move out of places or else organize and pack everything for safekeeping until we could come back from short-term or Stateside assignments. For that reason, it’s been a little traumatic to look in our garage and realize some things out there haven’t been moved in over 10 years! 

So one of the “tear-inducing” treasures I found was a little plaque. It’s made of stone with a poem printed on it and covered in decoupage. We picked it up 33 years ago while on a “grief trip” after Trevor died. This is not uncommon for people who’ve had a long “sick journey” with a loved one and need to take some time to rest.  I recommend it.  We were on our way back to Japan, carrying our son’s ashes, and stopped over in Australia with our little 11-yr-old son Nathan.

There were a lot of ‘God affirming’ things that happened in those couple of weeks, some of which I’ve shared with you.  I needed to remember that God cared, and He reminded me plenty.

But one night it was raining and we were driving down out of the mountains near the Gold Coast. We were tired and hungry and headed for a small town called “Nerang” when we spotted Christmas lights up off the road. Looking closer, we saw a sign that said, “Thai Food”. 

Remember, this was 1992, so we had barely even heard of Thailand, and never imagined that in the future, we would live there for a few years. We couldn’t even imagine what “Thai food” was.

The restaurant was a small house, and we were very warmly welcomed by an Aussie man and his Thai wife, who stayed in the background, smiling and bowing a lot. The man explained that she didn’t speak much English, nor did her mother, who was working back in the kitchen. With his help, we ordered and soon heard the sounds of loud voices and banging pans, making us wonder what we had stumbled into. But the food came out, and it was AMAZING. From that moment on, we will always brake for Thai.

After the meal, we wandered through the anteroom of the house and discovered a huge assortment of poems for sale.  They had been somehow transferred onto slabs of rocks. Not very convenient to carry when traveling, but I couldn’t resist buying one, and it’s hung on our wall for some 30 years. It goes like this,

     "The cottage is old and kind of quaint

     The front fence is falling and in need of paint

     The sandstone is worn right down the path

     And the garden is overgrown with grass"

[The the last two lines are what got me, and who knows, maybe even him, since he's the author.]

     "It has no aspect and it has no view

     But it’s everything to me because inside there’s you."

     By Peter Mann.

Call me a sap, but to me, this is what it’s about …….

Years passed, we eventually transferred to Australia to work with Japanese here; and would you believe it, after three moves from Sydney to Gold Coast, and we found ourselves buying a house about 5 miles from that place.  The house is still there but the sign and the lights (and the yelling) are gone.  Even though I google his name, there is no mention of him.

But God knows …. He knows the valleys we walk and the love that is waiting just around the corner.  

Catcha next week, and Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Marsha