The Sylvr Pen

See my helper? It’s Katie Kat, happy among the flowers.

What is she thinking? Who can know? Who has known the mind of a cat? Who can discern the thoughts and intents of a feline heart?

When she did this…

Husband asked me, “What did she do that for?”

How could I answer? I’m no cat psychologist. My big question at the time was how she was going to get back down?

No problem for Katie. It took a while…

But down she went…

…to mess about in the old “herb garden,” now a mixed bag of herbs, vegetables, and fruit bushes and vines (since the year I learned I was allergic to 60% of the herbs I was growing there!)

Can you find my other “helper”?

This is Emil, appearing when he hears me on the patio–always ready to lend a paw. Usually in the soil I’ve just planted with seeds or tender seedlings. Note the wire mesh surrounding the herb bed in the background. This was my first attempt at guarding it from two cats who find its shade inviting to lie in and its soil remarkably like a litter box.

It didn’t work. Right in front of me Emil pushed past it to go plop himself under the lovage clump’s shade. So next I tried laying it over my seeded areas.

Strike two! Emil just shoved it aside with his mighty nose and plonked his way through the area once shielded.

So… another idea.

This seems to work. Except the seedlings are getting smashed.

However, not as badly as the beds Emil helps me weed–like the poppies. Every time he sees me go near that bed, he leaps into it and bounds around like a nut. Now we have a lot of floppy poppies!

Ah, well. as I said in the last plant post, God does give us richly all things to enjoy. That includes both vegetable and animal categories. His word also exhorts us to develop patient perseverance (2 Pt 1:5-6; Jas 5:7). And cats serve well to exercise us in that!

*****

…The living God… gives us richly all things to enjoy –1Timothy 6:17

I planned a planting frenzy. And Saturday I got the chance to start it. Exhausted myself in the process–well, I had flower beds to tidy and cultivate, and planters to haul around and clean and fill.

Then Came…

But then came the rain, and the rain, and the rain. (This is the rainingest spring I can remember up here on the funny farm.)

I still slip out between downpours, in pink Wellingtons, muddy jeans, frayed shirt, and rubber gloves, to tuck in a flower here, a veggie there. Planting’s happening, not by frenzy, but baby-steps. But that, I acknowledge, is probably a whole lot healthier anyhow.

Color Riot

In the past I mostly majored in monochrome, or harmonious hues, for flower beds and planters. But not this year! I decided on a riot of color. And here you see some of it.

The news predicting my vision’s fading–fast, slow, or erratically one way then the other–has made me want to drink in as much variety of God’s beauty as I can, to burn into my memory. Then no matter how bad my eyesight gets, I’ll still be able to retrieve and enjoy the stored images. And since my ability to discern between shades and hues of blues and other colors is supposed to fade, I’m greedily grabbing all the color my mind can hold!

Sad?

Is this sad? Hardly! I’ve always enjoyed the beauties of God’s creation. But now, oh how my attention, appreciation, and delight have increased! I may be seeing and enjoying more this spring than anyone else reading this post!

So I invite you to imagine that you are about to lose your eyesight, that you’ve been told you have only, say ten years to see, and each year diminishingly–then go out and feast your eyes on the wonders God puts before us. He “gives us richly all things to enjoy.” So, let’s…

Enjoy! Enjoy!

My soul yearns for You in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks You…” -Isaiah 26:9 ESV

Caught! There I was, at 4 AM, perched in front of my computer, in flannel nightgown and pink terry robe, earphones on, singing along with Fernando Ortega, in what I thought was a muffled undertone, when my eye caught a movement beside me.

My husband! “Did I wake you up!?” I exclaimed. At least he was grinning, not scowling.

Good for Laughs

I do provide him a lot of amusement. Even at wee small hours. But I hadn’t meant to wake him. He’s supposed to be hard of hearing, and the bedroom’s on the other end of the hallway; its door was closed.

He just grinned wider and said something like, “That’s okay. Doesn’t everybody get up in the middle of the night and sing? I’m just going to close the door, if that’s all right.”

And so he went back to bed, my profuse apologies trailing behind him, along with “No, no, I won’t sing out loud anymore.”

Songs in the Head, in the Night

Of course I wouldn’t. It was embarrassing. You know how you sound when you have earphones on and think you’re matching the melody? But I did listen again as I read the lyrics (silently!)—because they so expressed my heart.

I had awakened a half-hour before with them running through my head: “I look for You in the middle of the night, Savior and Guardian of my soul…”—and finally got up to hear them and refresh my memory as to how they went. I thought I might want to sing them through the day.

Well, I ended up singing them in the night, worshiping there at my computer-altar, lifting up my heart to God in (dubious) melody. Till I interrupted someone’s sleep, and he then interrupted my “joyful noise.”

It wasn’t much longer before I heard footsteps descending the stairs, and soon smelled (good!) coffee brewing. So I went down, laptop tucked under arm, to share with a fully-dressed hubby what I’d been listening to.

“Oh yes,” he said, listening and reading lyrics. “I like that song.”

Wacky-wise

I settled at the kitchen table with a nice hot aromatic cup and he shuffled off to the library to go over some of his Bible memory verses. I could hear him mumbling them off his stack of index cards as I savored my java and thought how I’d influenced him. He never used to “mutter to himself,” but after all those years married to a mumbler, he finally caught the disease himself.

The “muttering” paused. He reappeared in the kitchen doorway with a single index card in hand.

“See. I understand my wacky wife,” he said, and laid the card on the table in front of me.

It was Isaiah 26:9 ESV.

“My soul yearns for You in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks You…”

Fuchs’ (pronounced “fewks,” or “fooks”) Dystrophy: That’s what the eyes have. Never heard of it? Me neither, till last Friday. This incurable progressive deterioration of the cornea (and thus, vision) is evidently the “something else” my optometrist wanted the ophthalmologist to “look at,” (mentioned way back in this post).

So my cataracts fade to relative unimportance. Nothing known can cure Fuchs’ Dystrophy, but some things can speed it up–like catract surgery. So yesterday I called and cancelled mine.

High Hopes and Crashes

I’d had such high hopes. My first (three-hour) ophthalmology appointment’s rosy forecast led me to believe cataract surgery might give me better vision than I’d ever enjoyed. After earlier impressions that some unnamed risk might nix the operation, the radically different report then at the ophthalmologist’s had me exulting profusely as Husband and I exited the clinic’s big revolving door.

Why I got such a wrong message, I don’t know. But the unhappy truth became evident last Friday (partly). The surgeon then told me I couldn’t expect 20-20 vision, even from Crystalens, because of my astigmatism in both eyes (greater than I’d previously been told), and my Fuchs dystrophy (what’s that?!?), which meant I would experience glare. That’s the first I heard of this disease.

Thank God…

… the surgeon let me know about the dystrophy.

…I didn’t choose then between lens types offered, but said I’ll talk with Husband, then call.

… faithful friends were praying wisdom for me Friday. 9:20 AM, there in the consultation room, I could feel their prayer–or some unexplainable blessing from God–washing over me…

… reliable medical internet sites gave me lots of needed information fast…

And thank God for His grace to His little children like me. Because…

How Do I Feel?

Husband came home Saturday from breakfast with a friend to find me at my computer. I told him what I’d learned, my shattered expectations. And then came the tears.

“But it’s okay,” I said.

“Is it?” he asked, earnest.

“Yes, it’s okay–because God’s okay.” And I smiled hope again. Not for earthly vision, but for joy. False expectations were what had gotten me. Build-up to let-down.

I made peace with vision loss back in January.

The later rosy reports took me up Mt. Pisgah, to peek at a Promised Land of clear eyesight.

Now I knew (like Moses) I would not enter. (Rise high, then crash!)

That’s the half-empty part of the glass. I am looking at the full part. And yes, I can see it quite well. I can see a lot of things quite well. And oh, how much I appreciate daily my view of anything. And I know (for I have seen the evidence repeatedly) that God is good, and does good for His own.

He could heal my vision if He chooses–I’ve witnessed miracles like that. But He just may choose not to.  One way or the other, I trust He has good reason that will only bless me in the long view. More on these things in future posts.

New baby chicks this week!

I love to go along to pick them up at the post office! I love to see people smiling!

On baby-chick morning (nearly every year around this time) the phone rings, and a voice tells us our delivery has arrived. The voice is smiling. The package is chirping! We can hear it in the background.

The call usually comes early. But sometimes we wait and wait, and wonder. We suspect the post office people are peeking into the box, poking in a finger to feel the downy softness, and don’t want to let the cuties go, especially on a bleary Monday.

Who can blame them?  When we finally get the call and head to the P.O., I can’t wait to get home and take off the lid…

Out in the coop, one at a time, they come out of the box.

Each beak gets dipped in their water container to acquaint them with it. (Sorry no photo. Cramped quarters.)

In no time they’re pecking food and toddling about. Delightful and amazing! Such fun!