October 20,2020

I wrote a few poems about the Pandemic and thought I would go ahead and share them in order.

The first one was written on Good Friday the day set apart by the President of our Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who invited all to join us in a 24 hour Fast that the Lord might "Hear Us".

A psalm for the World wide Day of Fasting April 10, 2020

Hear us O Lord!

Hear Thy people!

Incline thine ear to our cries…

Thy children suffer.

We implore thee O Lord!

Thou who hast power over the dead

Raise up a cure.

Raise up the elements 

To enfold  us in thy arms of  peace,

To surround this sick world with healing.

Hear us O Lord! 

Thou who sees the light

When all is dark.

Thou who called with a loud voice

Lazarus Come Forth!

Call again Lord!

Command the darkness to depart,

The tumultuous  waters to be still

And the storms to cease.

We have been filled with fear.

Help us to have faith!

Faith to walk on the stormy seas

Holding out our hands

To thee—to take them.

Take our disease ridden

Weary frightened hands Lord.

Enclose them in thine…

Thy precious hands

Where we are engraved on 

Thy palms.

O God, Hear us!

On this Good Friday when 

All seems lost!

Rise again dear Lord!

Rise up and Save us.

We know that 

With thy stripes we are healed! 

Hosanna! Hosanna!

The Whole World Cries out..

Save us Jesus!!

This poem was inspired by the Scripture in  1 John 1:5. I was feeling rather fearful and worried about the state of our nation with all of the divisiveness and rioting that was going on at the time. 

“This then is the message which we have heard of him and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” 

June 20, 2020

                                 GOD IS LIGHT

Whenever I feel darkness, when my heart is filled with fear

I must remember where that comes from and I don’t want to hear.

I want to give no heed to voices that circle around in my head

“You can’t do this, you won’t make it,” and soon I’m filled with dread. 

The future is bleak, economy is shot, and  the country is falling a part.

All this comes to me and within my soul soon I find a frightened heart.

In this scary place my mind is filled with confusion and negative thought.

How long must I stay here, the choice is mine…is this what I was taught?

Yes things are in an uproar and these times are certainly unsure

But wait, pause and remember there is something that does endure.

Something that brings light, purity and hope to the suffering soul.

Search for it, find it, for it is within, and I can once again feel whole.

For God is there in the stillness of my breath, always filled with light

For there is no darkness in Him and my thoughts  he can make bright.

Free to choose, to look with gratitude instead of fear and doubt

For the future can be clear and free from fear inside and out.

Oh, how someday soon I long to stand in that holy place

Where with my garments washed  clean I can  behold His loving face!

Restore my Soul, oh blessed Lord who watches from above

And knows my every thought, desire and my every move.

Bless my soul with thy light and help me please to know

That tribulations come to us in this life so far below.

They form us into the people Thou would have us become

Until we kneel before thee in our Heavenly Home. 

So, as the storms of confusion and rioting abound, 

I can be still and know that Thy voice is the only sound.

The only sound I need to hear, to hearken and to heed,

For all the rest are filled with fear and hate which I don’t need.

Keep my heart and mind filled with thy light and thy love

And never let me forget O Lord that thou art watching from above.  

Hope in the middle of Corona

A Saturday morning when I sat down to write my morning pages Aug. 15, 2020

The days on the calendar slide quickly by

One seems no different than the rest.

We wake, we sleep, we go to the store,

We continue to hope for the best.

Conflicts continue, people and the virus still rage

And our lives as we knew them are gone.  

We wake, we sleep, we visit friends from afar 

Hoping someday we can  leave our homes. 

Will the economy ever recover?

Will the vaccine ever come we ask?

We wake, we sleep and always we pray

Hopeful to be done soon with this mask .

Surely things like this have happened before..

The depression, the plague, the unrest.

As we wake, we sleep and we return to school

We hope our world will survive this test. 

 

 October 12, 2020

October Twelfth

                                                       (First Christmas Together)

October twelfth was a celebratory day in our family. It wasn’t because of 1492 and Columbus sailing the ocean blue even though that meant we got out of school that day. Rather it was because three young girls welcomed their little sister Rebecca Lynn “Becky” into the world with great excitement. How we loved and adored her! Our mother wrapped her in a yellow blanket and I can remember lying next to her on our parents’ big bed and delighting in her little gurgling baby sounds. She had the blondest hair and sweetest face and a disposition to match; no one had ever dare mistreat her when her sisters were around!! The only time we saw her cry was at her birthday when we would sing Happy Birthday to her!

Becky grew into a tall willowy beauty with beautiful strawberry blonde hair. She never dealt with weight issues like the rest of the family and didn’t even go through an awkward adolescent period. That could have been easy to hate or be jealous of, but Becky was always just the light of our lives and we simply loved her.

As she grew there was always a calm about her and assurance. She seemed to know exactly what she wanted and no one or thing could stand in her way. If she wanted to remodel a house, she did it. Cut wood with a chain saw. Build a log home in Minnesota. Start a health food business and a successful direct selling business. Canoe the Boundary Waters alone every year on her birthday. Cook a gourmet meal. All done. Her dream was to walk the El Camino de Santiago in Spain on her 60th birthday. I believe she would have been able to do that, but sadly she died seven months shy of that October 12th. 

Our Becky maintained her beauty, love of life and dignity all through the last year of her life. She had suffered some disappointment in her relationships, yet she never spoke ill of those people with whom she had shared a part of her life, no matter how painful.  She adored her children Brekke and Peter and they returned that adoration with their time and love and a closeness every mother would want to have with her children.  Her crowning joy was little Luci, her granddaughter, who she got to spend two years loving and adoring visiting in California and showering love and affection upon.

As those who loved her watched her quickly slip away, we knew she was going into that place of light and love where she would be surrounded by family members who would welcome and embrace her and she could be that beautiful, healthy radiant being again in all her glory. Yet, how those of us left behind miss her! Every Columbus Day I think of that little darling wrapped in a yellow blanket, that willowy beauty standing behind the counter of Grammas Pantry and of that radiant smile and welcoming hug I received every time I saw her.

Happy 66th Birthday our Becky! Happy Birthday our dearest sister. No more tears for you. May your lovely light continue  shining  down upon us as we think of you looking down at all of your loved ones wrapped in yellow beams rather than a blanket with that beautiful smile and that ever loving spirit. We love and miss you!

                                                (Last Christmas Together)

 October 7, 2020

A Child’s Prayer

(I wrote this in 2005 when my sisters and I were having a “fifties Retreat” at 

Julie’s house in Minnesota.)

Four golden haired girls were preparing to pray

To thank God for His help throughout the day.

Bowing their heads and bending their knees

They expressed their gratitude and blessed others please.

The oldest was Julie so full of much fun

She skipped from sunrise to sunset and still wasn’t done!

Her voice and laughter she loved to display:

“Bless me Father to stop and listen along the way.”

Karen came next and set a more serious tone

As she watched and observed all who lived in this home.

It seemed she was remembering a not too distance place.

“Bless me Father, to know I will again see your face.”

Then Jeri was born..they thought she would be a boy,

But instead a little girl who brought them much joy.

She had a good time and always wanted to play,

“Bless me Father to get more work into my day.”

Last came sweet Becky who was such a delight;

Her sisters loved and cherished her with all their might.

No one else had better try to hurt her at all.

“Bless me dear Father to get up when I fall.”

Now that they’re grown do they still kneel to pray

With childlike faith for God to bless each one’s day?

Where are the prayers now of these four little girls?

Sisters and mothers, their heart felt prayers are like pearls.

Like when they were children they ask for blessings from above

With knowledge their Father will bless those they love.

He promises to  guide them through their difficult days,

And they thank Him for the peace that comes when they pray.

A child’s sincere prayer will never go unheard.

Even when she is too small to utter a word.

Within God’s heart all her prayers will safely stay

Until she meets Him again in that Joyful Day. 

 

(Our little sister Becki died of cancer at the age of 59 in March 2014...I was holding her hand just like this when she passed through the veil to the other side....a very sacred moment)

Oct. 6, 2020

 I decided on a lark a few months ago to write this poem  as I was thinking about my husband after running across this picture from 1978, newly married when he was finishing college at Illinois College here in Jacksonville. I had just gotten a great job as a head resident at Jane Hall, MacMurray College here as well. Unfortunately, MacMurray college closed this spring and I will forever be grateful for this three fun years we spent here, getting to know some incredible students who we are still in touch with.

Evolution

Won’t you sit with me? I say

to my husband who is

constantly 

moving. 

Won’t you walk with me?

He says to me who 

loves to 

sit.

Yet, somewhere we meet,

we merge,

we accept.

And so we walk, we sit.

We talk, we laugh, we enter old age

with love. 

Evolving ever closer together

As the years slip by. 

                                                              

Daddy

Jan. 30, 2019

My dad, father of four girls, would have been 101 years old today. He died in October of 2001, 83  years old after suffering a stroke in his seventies. He had to leave his beloved farm in Aitkin, Minnesota behind which we ALL came to know and love. He and mother moved here to Jacksonville for about three years until he had an episode at the hospital which mother felt could have been avoided and she wanted nothing more to do with these Jacksonville doctors! So, back they moved to Aitkin into a nice apartment  at BlackRock Independent Living where daddy lived another three years and mother a very happy 11 more years. I'm so grateful they spent out their last days in that area they had come to love so much for the 30 years they lived there during retirement.

Daddy was a complex man. He was often moody, sometimes grouchy,but he loved his girls and his grandchildren, his woods and his farm which was a continual vacation for him, even though he kept preaching and built the Cascade Methodist Church in Crosby. He was a constant support to Becky, my youngest sister, who lived down the road in a log home. They cut wood together, made maple syrup together and he and her two children Brekke and Peter became very close.

I gained a new appreciation for him this  week as I was talking to Kari about  in laws visiting and griping about the shower, the cold room, etc. etc. I hearkened back to mother and daddy visiting us on Sandusky in Jacksonville from Minnesota and staying for a few days....they never complained about the one shower with 8 of us sharing it. They never complained about  having to sleep on an air mattress in the back room...they just decided to buy a nice trundle bed for the girls' room that they could use when they visited. Why in the world didn't we offer them our bed? I have no idea but am a bit ashamed of my selfishness there. Mother cleaned the refrigerator, made curtains, made homemade applesauce in season; daddy fixed things, cut wood, relaxed, went to games with us and never complained. I am grateful for that now in retrospect...now that I am now the grandparent visiting the children's homes where it isn't your bed, your shower, your heat, your schedule, but it is all worth it to  get to spend time with precious children and grandchildren!

I'm sure that was his and mother's attitudes as well...they loved their family, they loved their home, but they loved us more. Thank you Daddy for loving your four girls...taking us fishing, on vacation, teaching us to drive a stick shift and instilling us with independence. Happy Birthday. I love you

Gramma Marker

Jan. 14, 2019

Today is my Gramma Marker's birthday..she would have been 137 years old. That set me into a little bit of a tizzy wanting to write about her or at least read a bit more about her..much writing has been done in Farm Girl that Karen wrote and then there are more writings that mother preserved that I have in a folder. I just ran across two things in the back of Farm Girl...one an interview done with her  by an Omaha Nebraska newspaper in the 1930's and the second a tribute written about her by Willa Cather, the famous author's sister, Jessica Cather Auld. 

 She did not have an easy life...always on the farm, dealing with lots and lots of snakes that she said plagued her from the time she was in a cradle in their sod house until she left the farm for a nursing home in 1962. I always liked her...very gentle soul, didn't talk much but very kind. She always made horehound candy for us when she would visit using some of the horehound from her farm in Nebraska. It's nice to have her writings and paintings to bring her a little more to life for me. 

Interview with the World Omaha newspaper and my grandmother Julia O’Lava Walstad Marker

"Mrs. Julia Marker, whose four hundred acre farm in the middle of Nebraska hasn't produced a spear of grass since 1932, painted her way out of the Depression.
Today, Mrs. Marker is proud to announce that her crop of pictures exceeds one thousand, that they have gone to every state in the union and her household budget is balanced.
'We have not had  a blade of green grass here for five years, Mrs. Marker said, so I had to do something. I borrowed a painting and copied it. Since then I have made as many as three oil paintings a day. I send hundreds to stores in Minnesota. I also exchange paintings for embroidery work, quilt tops, oranges from Florida, salmon from Washington, dates from California and also turkeys from the state of Iowa.'
Mrs. Marker said she gets up early in the morning to paint and is often still working at midnight. She never tires, she says, because she loves to paint. She never had any formal art education.
'Only when the dust blows too hard, I have to stop, she explained. I tried to paint in a dust storm but had to give it up, although I was indoors.'
'Sometimes I copy snapshots of animals, Mrs. Marker said. Something I just copy a picture out for the paper. My favorite picture is "Dog and Lamb", which I painted in 1934. I also like the one I made of two cranes standing in a stream of water with water lilies in front. (that one is in possession of  Julie Jones Bucknam) I think a picture is more complete with a deer, a dog, bird, or some animal in it.'
Mrs. Marker's ambition is to paint a large church mural. 'The next time I get an order for a church painting, she said, I am going to paint a picture of Bethlehem. I want to do a large canvas with lots of color and life. I know I can.' (I am not aware if  that ever happened)
The middle-aged woman who took up painting in lieu of potato planting, makes all her own frames. She augments her income of oil paintings with what she earns from plaster plaques and painting of velvet. 

Tribute to Julia Marker written by Jessica Cather, Auld, Willa Cather's sister
Julia Marker 1882-1964
"She was born of Norwegian parents who came to the United States from Norway during the 1870's to take up land under the homestead settling act. The Walstad family acquired homestead sites near Campbell, Nebraska, and it was here the two Walstad girls were born and grew up. Mathilde and Julia were brought up much the same as all the farm girls of that time and locality were. Brought up to work diligently both inside the house with its many duties and to help outside when needed. But they differed a bit in their outlook. In fact Julia differed from most all of the girls in that part of the country at that time. She saw the hills and dales, the flowers and birds in their beauty and put it down somehow to keep. She wanted to paint them, to write about them and about happenings in her life.

Well, it so happened that while her sister Mathilde was working in the home of some very fine people in the nearby town of Riverton, a young artist came to visit there and in cleaning his room she saw his works and all his utensils, his studies and instructions. My how she wanted the instructions for Julia, so while he was out, she copied them and brought them to Julia on her next visit home. So with the purchase of paints and brushes her art lessons began and on paper and canvas she caught the colors of the sunrise and sunsets, the sunflower and the goldenrod, and all the beauties of the Great Plains.

She dared to open doors and go through and do the things that stirred within her; do them by herself though she might be jeered for doing them,  jeered, not cheered, for to many this seemed a waste of time. Her friends thought her a bit  peculiar. But as Will Rogers said, 'Why, friends, we are all peculiar, only in different ways.' Yes, even the best of artistic people have been thought peculiar at one time or other. I can well remember when Robert Frost was thought very peculiar and his poems adversely criticized, especially his 'The Death of the Hired Man.' But he kept on writing what was in his heart and finally it crept into the hearts of others.

As Allen Tait, a fine poet and literary critic said, 'Robert Frost helped us to see the old things in a new way in a new light.' This is what Julia Marker tried to do - just to see the old things, the common things in a new light, as she  saw them in her heart,."

I am grateful for the entreprenual determination and grit that this grandmother of mine in her quiet, humble way demonstrated. When life gets tough, I love to think of her, doing whatever she could do to survive and didn't complain. 

Going Home from the Mission

August 18, 2018

In June after our mission ended and we went on a lovely Norwegian Cruise,we flew home  from Copenhagen Denmark instead of Berlin. My whole mission I had wanted to go to Copenhagen.  There were a couple of reasons for that. There was  a beautiful temple there that was only 4 hours away via ferry and train. 

The actual statue of the Christus that the Church uses and is in the Temple Square visitors center in Utah  is located in a church there. 

The oldest amusement park in the world, Tivoli, is located in the middle of Copenhagen.

And most importantly to me  the famous 19th century Danish religious painter Carl Bloch had most  of  his  famous  paintings of the Savior we have all come to know and love displayed there.  

They are housed  in the Fredericksborg Castle, a little out of the city. So, finally that  day arrived . We awoke Monday, determined to get to the Castle where I could finally see these pictures! It was a beautiful day, the castle was huge and there were a ton of tourists as it is quite a landmark and is also Denmark’s National Historical Museum. 

We of course asked about the Carl Bloch paintings as soon as we entered and were directed to the chapel area which was stupendous in itself as those European churches are. The organ was playing which Gentz loved and as we walked we eagerly looked for the display we knew was there somewhere.

Finally we reached the Carl Bloch room! It was at the end of the chapel in a tiny room which served mainly as a walk through from the church to the rest of the castle. It was dark…you could barely see the paintings.

There was no place to sit, to ponder as one looked at these masterpieces and the beauty of them and of the Savior who they all so beautifully expressed. The whole story of the main events of the Savior’s life were there ending with His ascension into heaven after the Resurrection. There was the woman at the well that hangs in so many  Relief Society rooms and many others! Oh how I loved seeing them! The originals!!  Yet, These spiritually moving paintings were in a walk through and people hurried past barely sending a glance towards these magnificent portrayals of the Savior and His life and death. 

All throughout  the rest of the castle there were huge pictures of other dead kings, long forgotten and a whole beautiful room dedicated to the royal family of Denmark. 

Yet the King of kings, living still, barely had his own room, just like in His life…no room for Him at the inn…no room for Him at the castle, no room for Him in our hearts.  We know that someday every knee shall bow..yes, even the knees of kings and every tongue confess that He is the great Messiah, the king of kings, the Lord of Lords. He, the living Christ, will then certainly have everyone’s attention. But for now, He remains tucked away, waiting for the humble and meek to find Him, to bring Him out of the obscurity of their hearts and make Him the center of their lives. All he asks is a broken heart and a contrite spirit and a desire and willingness to follow Him and keep His commandments. 

How this summed up  what we saw on our mission….the people who were the most humble  stopped and looked, listened to the message of peace and beauty that the missionaries brought. But most hurried past, not a glance and hurriedly looked away if they did glance.  I never could understand how anyone could turn those missionaries, so honest in heart and light in their countenances and full of goodness and love away.

Can’t they see? I wanted to  cry out….here is the answer to your problems….the complete true and restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Listen!! This will change your life, rock your world and put you right were you need to be..on the pathway home..the covenant  path. “Look to God and LIVE!” STOP for a minute! Consider. Open your minds. But on they go…hurrying to the next bus stop and whatever problems of life await them. Are we who know better and have this rich wonderful Gospel  the same? Do we stop and seek the Lord early and often when a challenge presents itself? Do we seek answers  from the world or self help  books rather than from the very book itself written by the hand of God that will answer any question or problem and at the very least bring us the peace that we  and so many others seek when faced with difficulties?? Is Christ tucked away into a tiny corner of my heart like in that castle? I want to bring Him into the royal room where He deserves to reside..front and center in my life.  I want to give Him the time that is needed for me to learn more of Him…to seek Him and to receive the peace and love He is so willing to give to those who He loves.  We have been counseled to go to the temple often, to feast upon the scriptures, to seek our our kindred dead, to minister to others. All these are ways we can bring the Savior to the center of our hearts where He belongs. “Look to God and live.”! How simple yet how very true!

I echo the words of the prophet Jacob from the Book of Mormon…. “Oh, how great is the plan of our God!” How great indeed!! He has a plan for each of us.. His children wherever in the world we might be. May we live according to that plan as we get on our knees and ask and then listen and then act as we minister to others.  I cannot thank Him enough for His love and support and for the sacred privilege we had in serving Him whom we love and revere these past 18 months. I only pray that we did some good and that our service was acceptable to Him, imperfect though it may have been. 

                                                         Thank you for traveling this journey with us.