Legacy of Mrs. Harper

I saw Mrs. Harper last Friday.  She hasn’t changed in 36 years, except to be a tad forgetful.  Understandable now that she has great-grandchildren of her own.  She recognized me even though it has been over a year since she personally waited on me.

The Harper family has owned Crestview Pharmacy forever.  It is the oldest independent pharmacy in the city.  When I moved here in the mid 1970’s and found Crestview it was always either Mr. or Mrs. Harper behind the counter.  As their boys Jerry and David got old enough, they began to work in the family business and now manage much of the day to day operation.  In all these years they have consistently provided accurate prescriptions in the correct dosage without a single mistake and in the friendliest, fastest, most efficient way possible. 

But that’s not the reason I keep coming back.  What the Harpers do best is build relationships.  Just like their neighbors in the shopping center, the Prellops who own the Crestview Minimax, they know their regular customers by name, ask about their children and carry unique items in addition to the usual stock.   When my children were little Mrs. Harper would always make sure they got a piece of candy while I waited on my prescriptions to be filled, and maybe an extra piece if they were sick – no charge, of course.  She recalled those days on Friday as we visited – how she would make home or business deliveries – no charge, of course – and as mothers began working outside the home she would even deliver to the day care because the mothers trusted her so much to take the right medicine to the right place. 

I have an old-fashioned charge-account at Crestview Pharmacy.  When I go into pick up medicine I simply sign a charge slip and then pay my bill each month when it arrives.  As my children got old enough to drive it was wonderful that I could send them to pick up their own prescriptions, let them charge it and not have to send them with money.  Mrs. Harper recalled one time when a little girl came in with several of her friends and announced that her mom said she could charge candy for her and all of her friends.  Mrs. Harper said, “I’m not sure that’s what your mom said, let’s call and ask her”.  Immediately the girl confessed. 

There will come a day when Mr. and Mrs. Harper will no longer work at the pharmacy, and that will make me very sad.  It will be the end of an era, not to walk in and see his tall frame with dark hair and big glasses back at the filling counter, or over in a booth having lunch with a crony.  Or not to see Mrs. Harper’s perfectly coifed gray hair and smiling blue eyes, looking almost exactly like one of my grandmothers.  But I take comfort in knowing that Jerry and David will be there, and they have children so perhaps the legacy will live on past my lifetime.    I’d like that.

The Project from Hell

Unexpected phone call from the CFO.  Nice guy.  Tasked with the Project from Hell.  An Audit of one of our divisions in another state.  All of the auditors are brand spanking new, they know nothing about our industry or what we do.  Assigns a portion of it to me with a 48 hour deadline.

Office door closed.  Hunkered down, staring at my screens for 2 solid days, going cross-eyed from the Excel spreadsheets with only the color-coding of highlighted rows and columns to keep me from going completely crazy.  Searching for files in our system, opening related pdf docs, then running OCR text recognition to be able to mark up some of them.   Save As to a network folder so another can review the items and call with questions.  Endless email strings to get answers to questions that matter only to auditors.

Coworkers with a great sense of humor.  Large sign appears on my door:  DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT KNOCKING ON MY DOOR – ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE JUST HERE TO WHINE ABOUT SOMETHING.   Allison understands.   Laughter for others.   Nice.

Compassion for the CFO.  Irritation with the unknown auditors who are just doing their jobs.  Frustration with internal staff whose errors cause hours of managerial time to explain or ask forgiveness for.  Desire to feel traction with the project.  Desire to be done with the project.

Day 4.  One last round of questions looking for new, different answers that don’t exist.   Big, heavy, audible sigh.   Talk to the boss for ideas and encouragement.  Take a break to have a meeting.  Unexpected wonderful outcome to the meeting.  Return to office to tackle audit tasks to find the requests have been rescinded.  I have unintentionally invoked and benefited from Dr. Kinneavy’s rule:  if you wait long enough the deadline will pass.

It was going to be okay all along, I just couldn't see it.  Big smile.  Happy face.  Life is good again.  Thank you God.  

Freedom

Recently I heard two foreign pastors speak at our church.  One was from Romania, the pastor of a large evangelical Christian church.  He spoke of the amazing ways in which God answered prayer to start their church, grow it in spite of an oppressive communist government, to topple that government and even to establish an accredited university.  You couldn’t miss the supernatural work of our Creator in that story.

The other was a young pastor of a small evangelical Christian church in Jerusalem.  He is a Palestinian Christian.  He spoke of persecution, and great faith in the face of it.  He talked of masked men of that country’s predominant religion that came to his door to kill his father, more than once, and how God protected them.  He has been beaten and threatened many times simply because of his Christian beliefs.  His church has to keep moving from one rented building to another because the ‘religious’ men vandalize the buildings where any Christians dare to gather in public.  At his church they used to keep water pots by the altar to put out the fires started by bombs tossed by those men.  He told of two young girls who were converted from the Muslim religion to Christ-followers, and how they went from unhappy lives to daily joy in the Lord.  They were so happy they shared their faith in Christ every day with the young children in their neighborhood.  They were killed in their beds because of it.

I have taken for granted the incredible freedom we have in this country to worship wherever and whenever we choose.  No one has tried to kill me for what I believe; the worse I have experienced is ridicule and that not often.  I go to church not even thinking of a firebomb attack.  It burdens my heart when I see any American freedoms jeopardized, whether by our own ignorant government or power-hungry people within it, or the truly wicked at heart who would see freedom squelched for their own reasons.   Blood was spilt over 200 years ago in this country so I could have this freedom, and blood is spilt every hour of every day in other countries by those trying to keep others from exercising it.

May we cherish our freedom, live it out, and fight to the death those who would try to steal it.

Hardwired for Peace

I’ve discovered I’m hardwired for quiet stillness, calm, and order.  I long for my world to be that way and when I get pockets of it I am delighted.  Usually it’s in the morning at prayer time when my soul is resting easy and my mind has not yet filled with the day’s obligations.  The quiet winter sky or a beautiful spring morning with birds singing and just enough breeze that you can hear the leaves barely sway – that’s the time for me.

But I’m also wired for relationship and community, and that desire to connect with others hangs in constant tension with my desire for order and calm and peace.  Connecting with other humans doesn’t usually bring those things – it brings laughter or love or birthday hats or shower gifts or memorial services or picnics or worship or breakfast or working together on a mission project or sitting on the porch with a sister.   All important things, just not quiet and orderly.

The trick for me is to find the balance.  I can only experience those other things fully if first the craving of my soul to “be still” is satisfied.  Only the Designer of that soul can do that.  Faithfully He is there each morning, ready to get my spiritual house in order and paving the way for the messy, wonderful connections of my life.

Recovery Moms

Recovery moms is a term I use to describe mothers whose children are in some stage of recovery from drug or alcohol addiction.  The kids range from pre-teen to teenager to young adult, but drug use at any age presents a special set of heartaches for the mother.

Recovery moms automatically exchange knowing looks when one says their child relapsed back into drug use and they are “going down that road again.”  The one whose child is currently clean and sober, or mostly so, is quietly hopeful but never far from the memory of “that road”.  It is so scary.  But one of the wisest Recovery Moms I know, my dear friend Barb, recently gave me a new way to see that experience.  She says that we are on that same road but the scenery changes.  She’s exactly right.  We are farther down the road – more able to handle it, and our kids have more recovery in them to call on when they find sobriety again.  I believe the way that road ends depends on our individual relationships to God, our Creator and Author of the very universe.  He can Reframe the pain, transform it into healing as “that road” intersects with healthy others, those He has placed in our path at that time for that very purpose.  All we have to do is keep the eyes of our soul open and be willing to let Him do it.

I didn’t set out to be a Recovery Mom – no one does – but I am grateful for the life lessons I’ve learned and the precious friendships that have shaped my life for the better.

Growing things

My neighbors have turned their entire back yard into an experimental garden.  They are hoping to grow all kinds of vegetables, herbs, trees and some flowers.  I so admire their commitment and ability to grow things.

I used to have a brown thumb, but I’ve gotten better at keeping things alive longer.  The iris bulbs I planted years ago, given to me by a dear friend, bloom every year.  They don’t always last long, and sometimes there are only a few, but the lovely purple flowers remind me that I can plant and grow things.  Of course it’s really God’s design that causes the growth, but I get to be a facilitator and have the joy of seeing the blooms.

This year I’m adding a few pots in amongst the iris to try my hand at container gardening.  We don’t have much sun so it’s hard to grow blooming things, but in this one little strip I think it might work.   I spent a lovely Saturday afternoon messing with potting soil, fertilizer, flower seeds and a watering can – we shall see.

There is also my annual fern.  I say annual because usually there is one freeze yearly my fern can’t survive, and this year the 5 nights of temperatures in the teens did her in.  Each year I drive up to Breeds, my favorite local hardware store, and select the “fern of the year”.  I like the bushy, deep green Boston ferns, but this year they had a slightly different type.  More .. stately somehow, the leaves stand taller and are variegated - Kimberly Queen, a type that originates from Australia.   I picked out the one that called to me – it seems there is always one that wants to go home with me – and placed it gently in the trunk.   I repotted it for the hanging basket, watered and fertilized.  Now to begin enjoying the beauty of a graceful green plant growing over the porch railing.

The Fern of the Year doubles as a home for Carolina Wrens who nest each year in the same spot and hatch their babies.   Just days after I hung the new plant it was visited by this year’s new family.  They love that spot.  I think each year’s family are the babies from the previous year, but who knows.  I only know I love hosting their extended stay – it’s my own private heralding of spring.

I love spring – growing plants, growing baby birds, growing in gratitude for the simple things.

Playing in the Puddles

I got caught in a rain shower Saturday morning during my neighborhood walk.  It was a tad too cold for that to be pleasant, but I had just visited with my neighbors and didn’t mind. 

As I walked in the rain, my mind wandered back 20 years ago to when my children were little, both under age 6.  We loved taking walks in the neighborhood after a spring shower.  We would take off our shoes and splash in the puddles on the sidewalk.  If it had been a downpour, we delighted in walking in the street right next to the curb where the rain rushed like a mini-river, swirling around and between our toes and running under our feet.   I can still feel that water – soft and pleasant and clean, freely making its way through our foot-barriers and dancing on to its gathering place.  

A simple pleasure, but a very fond memory for me.  I wonder if my son or daughter remember how much fun we had - how we laughed at the silliness of walking in rain rivers, or how sometimes we got to see a beautiful rainbow.  I hope so.