Whisked Away

"Let us encourage one another, help each other to show love and to do good."   --- Hebrews 10:24


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Next month I'll celebrate 16 years of blogging. And through these recorded adventures, 3 of you have faithfully read along and encouraged me from that first year, another 2 from the year after. 

But I've lost one of you. On Saturday I learned my friend, Betty, passed away--and I am still reeling.

Betty and I met because of Maud Hart Lovelace and Gladys Taber, favorite authors. I think our belief that one could still live a vintage lifestyle in a modern world drew us together amongst those peopled reading groups. 

Her emails? They made me feel as though a 1960's Erma Bombeck had befriended me. What a joy, Betty's self-deprecating sense of humor, what a comfort her paper cards in my mailbox, especially those which came during her 22 months of her cancer fight. 

These days when it's rare to receive a paper card, Betty still believed in their power to encourage. Always, she assured me she still read my blog with anticipation, even wishing I'd write a book she could hold in her hands at a beach.

Though via emails with cute images I consistently thanked her for those cards, now I wish I'd have sent her more paper cards. Though I've not the grace for snail mail as I once did, still, it's important to recognize our friends' favorite forms of love currency. And do what we can. 

But now Betty's earthly journey is over. She led a full life, created a wonderful family, laughed much, encouraged many, exercised faith and left us all smiling with gratitude of knowing her.

Also? Betty never assumed my 100+ followers regularly send me emails and paper cards of encouragement. She somehow knew I mostly have silent 'secret readers' so I must rely upon God for a daily type of nudge and approval.

But Betty was God's partner in encouragement for me and sorely I will miss her part in keeping me writing. 

There'll be no more sweet paper cards from her in my mailbox, no Erma Bombeck-like voice still speaking. And no one who gives to me exactly what God did through my old-fashioned friend, Betty.

With each friend whisked away by death, may we again fully appreciate God's gifts while they still, as treasure, dwell down here amongst us.



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"The distance between the glorified spirits in heaven and the militant saints on earth seems great; but it is not so. We are not far from home. Heaven... is just one sigh and we get there. Our departed friends are only in the upper room, as it were, of the same house; they have not gone far off; they are upstairs and we are down below."

Charles Spurgeon

" ... that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and mine."   --- Romans 1:12






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"For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." ... Matthew 6:14,15