End of a Generous Day

Gently the day

Having handed out

So many gifts

Says Goodbye

I smile

In grateful return

And attempt

To contain them all.

diane mann, 2013

An Irish Blessing - to my Carver Cousins

May the warm love of the Sun embrace you
May the joyful smiles of the Blossoms elicit a smile in return
May the tranquil peace of the Stars quiet your spirit
May the fertile soil of the Fields stir hope within you
As you create and recreate
As you toil and rest
As you give love and receive love
As you teach and are taught
In the questions and the answers
In the draughts and the winters that too long linger
In the exhilarating and the mundane
In the being and the becoming
All you were made to be

Until that happy day when again we meet --
Or greet one another for the very first time.
Diane Carver Mann, 2014

A Healing Moment

I am eight years old (and so very shy).  At the piano I sit.  No

words are sung, but the melody to "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus" flows sincerely from my heart to my fingers to the piano keys then through my home.  Does no one hear me?  Does no one see me? Repeatedly I play the music.  An hour passes.  Surely someone will notice, won't they? 

The telephone rings, and I hear my mother respond excitedly to what her friend is telling her.  "No, she didn't tell us," she says.  "No, we didn't see her.  Thank you for telling me!"  More quickly than ever, she hangs up the receiver.  "We didn't see you, Diane," she says apologetically as she walks toward me then enthusiastically calls for the others in the house to come hear my news.
     
Hours earlier my family of eight had sat through our morning church service in our typical place: the late room.  Tucked behind the back row in the upstairs portion of our sanctuary, the late room had a speaker on the wall piping in the sermon.  I had completed a several-week discipleship class and had prayed already in my bed alone, asking Christ to live in me, telling Him I wanted to belong to Him, admitting my need for Him.  But in my church's tradition, the way we made our decision public was to "go forward," as we Baptists said, by responding to an altar call given at the end of a sermon.

This was my day.  I felt a magnetic tug pulling me to respond publicly to Jesus that morning, to "confess Him before men," as the Scriptures say.  Shaky and scared but with my heart's pounding urging me on, I tugged on my mom's sleeve and asked as the invitation was offered, "Can I go now?"

"Of course you can go, Diane," my mother responded.  But we later figured out she mistakenly thought I was asking permission to leave to go to Sunday school.

Forward I went in my purple and yellow daisy dress.   The only one having responded to the invitation that morning, I stood bravely in the front of a sanctuary of 1,200 people.  I was ushered to a counseling room, where a man went over some Scriptures and prayed with me.  I next proceeded to Sunday school, feeling so sure and decided, where I sang Sunday school songs more beautifully than ever.  It was a happy day for me!

It wasn't until we were all sitting in our rows in our VW van traveling toward home that I realized no one in my family had seen me!  If they had, we would all be talking about it.  So straight to the piano I went hoping to deliver my news.

As I grew up, we told and retold this story when we would reminisce about our family happenings.  While reviewing the story was funny, it also held a sting for me because I carried a wound of feeling invisible, of being the unseen one.  Tucked in the middle of a large, busy family, I sensed that my parents were overwhelmed, and I did not want to be a squeaky wheel or add to their troubles, so I would often try to stay under the radar, thinking my needs were too much for my parents to handle.

One of the ways God has healed this wound in me is to show Himself to me as "the God Who sees me."  I have loved discovering Him in this way and all He's shown me to be true of Him and of me. My story no longer stings but brings joy because my hurt became an avenue to bring me closer to Christ.  I live more and more under His watchful, tending, loving eyes.  He is not overwhelmed with my needs but desires me to depend on Him, to run to Him and share with Him every big and little thing in my life!

I believe most parents partly do reflect something that is true of God to their children and partly fall short of representing what God's love looks like.  God is a perfect parent, and as we call on Him and go to Him with our deepest hurts, He both mothers and fathers us with that perfect love, showing us what He is really like and who we really are.

I am 51 years old (and not as shy as I used to be).  I am sitting at a table during a women's event at my church a few hundred feet from where the old sanctuary once stood.  I stand to join the 100 women around me in song.  The worship team leads us in a newer version of  "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus."   I sing this special Jesus-and-me song that forever will touch a place deep inside of me.   Several tables over sits my mother.  Unable to stand with the others because of the pain in her back, she slides lower in her chair, peering between the many women who stand between us, looks smilingly at me and waves, making certain that I see her seeing me.

I am eight years old again wearing purple and yellow daisies.   I notice my mom's delighted eyes fixed on me.  I smile and wave back.

Me in my purple dress, 1970

Lord, thank you for this redemptive moment shared between me and my mom and You.  I don't know how You could make a healed part of me feel more whole, but You did.  Sometimes Your goodness seems to overflow, and this was such a time.  Thank you for the hurts that I can bring to You, for they are chances for You to show me what Your love is really like.


Diane Mann, 2014 

Click on the link below to hear my son Kyle and his wife Destiny singing "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus."

https://soundcloud.com/anewsong4di/i-have-decided-to-follow

For Reflection:

What messages did you receive about yourself as a child that you sense may not be true about you?  Express that to God.  Be with Him in that place, and ask Him to reveal the truth about you and about His feelings towards you.  Together explore ways you can live in the truth of who He is and how He sees you.  (There are many Scriptures upon which to meditate and soak in the truth.  You may want to spend time in them, allowing them to go from your head to your heart).

Are there areas of your life that God has healed or is healing? Express your thanks to Him.

Do you have guilt over your failures as a parent?  Ask God's forgiveness for ways you have intentionally or unintentionally hurt your loved ones.  Express your sorrow, and sit with Jesus in forgiveness sensing His heart toward you.

Enough and More

I belong to a rich family, wealthy in love, fun and those all important memory-making traditions.  In fact one could call us the "More Family" and pretty much get it correctly.  Our true name, however, is "Carver."  The clan consists of my parents, me and my five siblings and our spouses and 20 grandchildren all born within 11 years of each other.  Far be it from us to eliminate an old tradition to make room for the new.  No.  That would be too -- well, simple.  Each new way of commemorating the holiday season becomes a link to the treasured chain we fondly know as Christmas.

"Christmas will be smaller this year, much smaller," I could hear my father proclaiming regretfully each December when I was a young girl.  "Don't expect too much."  Feeding six children on a teacher's salary was never easy, without the added cost of gift purchases.  Our father was not wanting us to get our hopes up, yet we always had more than enough.

As we six children wed, beginning households of our own, magnetically we were drawn together again each December anticipating the long-kept rituals:  caroling in rest homes, craft making, walks through the Euclid Avenue Nativity scenes and viewing the spectacular neighborhood of lights.

A cherished event was our Christmas Eve progressive dinner.  Beginning in Hesperia for one course of a meal, we in our line of minivans wound our way down to Upland, followed by Walnut, on to church in Pomona for candlelight service, to three of our homes in Chino, ending up at our parents' Chino dwelling.  The laughter shared as we moved all 34 of us to each home was even better than the food we consumed throughout the night.

So it went each year.  "More" was exciting.  "More" was fun.  "More" was happily chaotic --

That is, until our father fell from a roof, severing his spine in June of 1998 leaving him paralyzed and completely ventilator dependent.  The commotion prior to his accident was for glee; but after, for survival.  I recollect not much about the first Christmas after he was injured, except to say we numbly went through the motions.  Because Dad could not fit through anyone's front door in his wheelchair, he did not attend the yearly dinner.

"Let's do less this year," someone mentioned as we planned for Christmas 1999.  Less?  The "More" family doing less?  Childhood fear of having to do without echoed in me.  But less it was as we met only at church then at our parents'.

Because our party was smaller, more thought was put into costumes and a script for the reenactment of the Christmas story, avoiding the usual hustle-bustle of kids' digging in Grandma's closet for shepherd wear, wiremen robes and pillows for Mary's stomach.  For once all truly was calm and bright as we closed our evening singing "Silent Night" much less off-key than we ever had.

We gave my father, Paul Carver, a chin-operated electronic page turner that Christmas.  Two weeks later his book was opened to Page 66, and he died, the pages of his life numbering 66 years.  Dad's counselor spoke of his last session saying that our father at that time could not stop speaking about the incredibly beautiful and meaningful Christmas he shared with his wife, children and grandkids.

I will forever hold close to my heart that sacred night, the Christmas when less was 
enough -- and more.

Diane Mann, 2000

Printed in the Chino Champion