"Life..."

I'm back to write now....This has been an interesting week. Spent Thanksgiving with some friends. And I met some lovely people from Africa...they were so warm and dear... and we all had dinner together...Sanmi, Yinka, Yebi, and Tobi...Temi and Bimpe,Sharon and Wendell, Daryl and Pam....lovely time together. Then on Saturday my dear friend of over twenty five years, Sharon came for a visit. She is just back from a trip to Israel and she arrived Saturday afternoon. What a joy to see her...she wanted to take us out to have dinner Saturday night, but I knew she had been travelling and really felt she needed some R&R badly. So I insisted we hang out and that we did. We went in the kitchen and hung out there for a good while and talked and laughed while I cooked...and I mean cook I did!! Some serious Italian cooking!! I made home made fettucine alfredo (Aunt Stella's recipe) and my"Pollo Ala' Patti" chicken in a wine cream sauce with peppers and mushrooms...garlic bread....baked an apple cream cheese crostada for desert and coffee! Oh my gosh we were laughing so hard...Sharon went crazy over the food!! We stayed up late Satuday night...got in our jammy's and had a fire in the fireplace, I partially decorated the living room for Christmas with twinkling little white lights in some trees, candles lit up...we just got blankets and piled up on both ends of the sofa and laughed and talked for hours. We had tears talking about Israel...I went some years back and we both shared what our experiences were like....we finallly fell asleep and Sunday morning I made us breakfast and we talked for a few hours again and then she had to leave to go on to Knoxville to look at a site for an event. Sharon is very knowledgable about politics in Washington and is the event planner for a key group in D.C. and what is going on "on the hill" so we discussed alot of things regarding that and the direction our country is headed in right now. Serious stuff....we go deep..on all topics!! She is like a sister I never had! It was bittersweet saying goodbye...the time went so fast. She called me on the way to Knoxville and said she felt like she was at an "Oasis" of refreshing and felt such peace and comfort here at my place and felt so refreshed and revived when she left. That meant so much to me. I've always had a dream of having a real home...a house someday... where friends would come and it would be filled with music, and love, and joy, and good food, and a wonderful place to be. I've had a vision of it...with a big sign in the sky over it that says "Happy House!!!":) All things are possible with God right!!:) I always think of what Meryl Streep said in the movie "Out Of Africa" (one of my faves!) "...I think she said to Dennis (Robert Redford)..."I'm much better at "hello"...." I relate. I remember another quote from her in that movie...sometimes when people read my poetry and my writing they say it is very romantic...well sometimes it really is...it just comes out of my spirit.... and yes it is soo true I am a romantic at heart...I long to have some of those experiences...so in that sense it isn't like I have lived that...it is from, as Meryl Streep said to Dennis and his friend "I have been a mental traveler..." I would have to say that my inner world is a very rich world replete with many treasures. We get so focused on the outward appearances and the superficial, when there are treasures inside these earthen vessels. Sharon and I talked about an experience I had in Israel...where I saw a little boy in a wheel chair who was crippled... after prayer...get up and walk to his mother. We all wept...and I remembered how it affected me, because I had the same experience as a little girl. When I was a child I became very ill with a fever....it was Rheumatic Fever...it left me paralyzed...affected my inner ears..and my heart. The doctors told my mother I would never walk again...would be on medication the rest of my life...but they were wrong...I was paralyzed for a year...but one day because of the faith of my mother and a little child believing in what God said to me, and prayer, I recieved a miracle...I got out of that wheel chair just like that little boy, and walked across the room to my mother and my aunt. I'm walking today, and my heart is fine!!:) sometimes I still have inner ear problems , but I believe I can still be healed from that! God is so good, and I give Him all the glory for everything in my life. Only by his grace....only by his grace.