Cool...clear...water.

My sweet friend Eliza spruced up my blog. I whined on facebook that I am elderly and decrepit and she worked on making it look nice without me even asking. She is a talented, beautiful, quiet 17 year old young lady. I’ve known her for years, met her at church when she showed up with her tiny, elegant mother and 3 sisters. Circumstances and life took them away from my church, but never my thoughts and prayers. If I had sat down and told Eliza what I wanted, it couldn’t have been any more perfect. How do people know you at times better than you know yourself?

    Funny how life moves people in and out of your life like the tide…people move in, and out and drift with you on your journey. I feel  Eliza, her mother and sisters are tethered to me as we drift where God takes us, bobbing with the waves, paddling like crazy when the water gets rough. Oh, and dear reader…don’t we all paddle? I went through rough waters once and found myself quoting that fish from “Finding Nemo”…just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. I’m glad I got to be in the water with Eliza and her sweet family, tethered together, swimming, swimming, swimming. You wouldn’t  have known we were paddling so frantically..we were ducks, smooth on the surface, paddling like crazy underneath. Oh, let our problems roll like rain off a duck’s back.

  Eliza is still water, deep and sure, cool and steady. She is beautiful and doesn’t know it. She speaks rarely, but when she does it is wise and sweet. She is refreshing, too, like cool water. She isn’t turbulent or filled with the flotsam and jetsam that floats.  She is still and cool and deep, rising and falling with the tide or the rain.

    Eliza is funny, too, a quick wit often said in a whisper. I miss her in my Sunday school class like the desert misses the rain. 

   I write this as the rain falls outside my window and I think of Eliza and how much I love her and her sweet family. How cool the rain, how it washes the windows of our soul.

  Eliza loves the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkle, her dogs, her sisters, and most especially, Jesus.

  I think of that as I type, the rain sounding like the tap tap tap of my keyboard. Jesus calmed the storms, the raging seas…He walked on the water after making it as still as glass.

  Eliza is water, cool and still, deep and sure. Her status on March 15^th is “often times the people we’ve known for a short amount of time have the biggest impact on our lives, even more than those we’ve known forever.”

  How true, Eliza. How true. Such a short time I’ve known you, but how much you and your family means to me. The tide has taken you further away, yes…but still, we are tethered together. I can see you, happily bobbing and swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming,swimming.

  God bless you, Eliza. Thank you for being a part of my tide. Someday, when the tide is low, let us wander and look for shells with your dear, strong, elegant mother.