Letters for Trinity

I received an invite on my Facebook page and it really touched my heart.  I had True and Annika write letters.  What a great way to encourage and bless this little girl while teaching our children love and compassion:

Hey Everyone, you know me and normally I don’t ask for favors but I have a HUGE favor to ask. I come from a small town back in Iowa called Lytton and in that town, we are like a family. Our neighbors back home (my parent’s next door neighbors)daughter, Trinity was recently diagnosed with leukemia and has been having a rough go of it. Trinity is 7 years old and is currently receiving aggressive chemo treatments and suffers daily pain and high fevers. She is also away from her friends and family in the hospital.

The one thing that Trinity looks forward to everyday is receiving letters in the mail. Our town has banded together to try and get each resident to send a card with words of encouragement. Our town has even set a goal of adding a $1 bill to each letter in to make Trinity smile and help her parents with medical bills as they have 5(!) kids. Even if you don’t feel comfortable sending $$, please take the time to send a card with words of encouragement to Trinity. She looks forward to getting mail so much, her father holds over a few cards every Saturday so she has cards to open on Sunday when there is no mail delivery.

The address is to her room at Blank Children's Hospital in Des Moines. Please help and give a smile to a little girl with a big heart. It is a small request but you have no idea how it brightens her day. Also please feel free to pass this on to anyone you know who would be interested in being a part of this great cause or invite people to this event!


Trinity Jean Carlson
c/0 Blank Children"s Hospital 4th floor room 415
1200 Pleasant Street
Des Moines, Iowa 50309


link to Trinity's Mom Jess's blog-

http://www.caringbridge.or​g/visit/trinitycarlson?ref​=nl

Attempt at a Sonnet

This was going to be for Faithwriters, topic: Crime and Punishment (not the book :)) but was under word count and I figured this was a good enough first attempt at a sonnet without further obsessing and tweaking on it.  So - put it here instead.  Try a sonnet - they're hard!  

Tormented by sin and a lust for this life

A burden is the price I pay for my crime.

Seeking pleasure for freedom, I find only strife.

And condemnation sentences me to never-ending time.

But, by the grace of the Victor, the punishment was paid

And the oppressor’s wicked gavel set down,

When on the cross at Getsemene, the Savior was laid

And I traded my chains for a gown.

My sin He took, when His life He gave,

And from bondage, I was delivered.

He silenced forever the threat of the grave

With the covenant and truth of His Word.

Though it was for my crime He was punished,

 For love’s sake, He declared, “It is finished.”

Rising

                The blue drapes, thick, hung militantly across the window, a strict block to any sunlight.  But today the sun was too bright to be warded off and demanded entrance.   Henry walked in, shook his head, and pulled open the curtains, letting the yellow light attack.  Ellie shielded her eyes immediately and then rolled over to cover her face in her pillow. 

                “It’s daytime, Ellie, and you’ve got it feeling like midnight,” Henry said in defense of his action and when Ellie said nothing, he left. 

                Not able to shut the light out, Ellie finally forced herself to rise from bed, which she did not do often these days.  She had been holed up in her room for probably weeks at this point, but after what had happened, she was not ready to face the rest of her life.  Shielding her eyes, which were not yet adjusted, from the bright light, she walked across the room and found her tattered, blue robe, which should have long been tossed, but which she now wrapped herself in, gaining a bit of comfort.   Their room had taken on a hospital look, she realized, as she forced her eyes to look around. She studied her haven, noting that everything was clean, and uncluttered, not even the sun exposing any dust or disorder.  Was their housekeeper still coming?

                The room was done in hues of blue, bubble covered area rugs, ocean blue sheets and bedspread,  even the antique white dresser accented with china blue flowers.  The spectrum of blues, Ellie thought, so wide, the hues engulfing so much emotion, so many layers of the truth of her sadness. 

                But the brightness of the yellow the sun now produced in this for so long dark room, much more straight forward.  Light has more weight than darkness, Ellie thought, knowing she’d heard it before.  Happy golden rays struck lines across her carpet and pulled, she walked toward the light to test its warmth.  Feeling its sudden and powerful comfort, blanketing her, she laid on the floor beneath the giant window in their room, like a cat in its glory.  A healing effect seemed to slowly travel her body in a lazy manner, unrushed, the sun shunning the idea that later it would set, knowing elsewhere it would rise. 

               

                Tears formed but evaporated before falling, this feeling somehow less complex than anything yet.  Ellie thought back to her last day at work, the flowers, canary yellow, brought to her to comfort her in her pain, alive, spring tulips, and how she’d wanted even them to die.  Death in its blueness had consumed her, its weight powerful, bruising.

                She knew she needed the boldness of this heat, this yellow, to rescue and revive her from the sea of despair she was drowning in.  She felt like so long ago, she’d crawled into a tunnel to hide but then had found that the opening had closed up, had found herself trapped. 

                Was she now being given an escape?  Was it open now, the bright and yellow light at the end, a hand held out, her only job to stay fixed on it, moving forward, not looking back?  Could she today, in agreement, rise also?