Renewal of vows, corrections and healing, planning

Mama was reminding me last night that tomorrow is the family reunion in West Virginia. During that gathering, Grandma and Grandpa are scheduled to renew their wedding vows. This year will be their 50th wedding anniversary. Grandma’s brother Jack will be officiating the ceremony. Thought it is not required during this exchange of vows, he is an ordained minister. It is a reversal of sorts on the less than joyous meeting at the Justice of the Peace fifty years ago.


Grandma has not been feeling very well over the past several days and since she has anticipated this event for many months, it has her concerned. We are praying that she will get to feeling better so the second time around, it will be a very happy memory. Sometimes, when it comes to Grandma, happy memories are hard to make.

I will be leaving Amarillo this afternoon, heading to Bowie. Much of the stuff I have been asked to bring is setting by the door of the house. I could have brought it all with me this morning, but I have other assignments on Amarillo before I am fully authorized to leave. Most of those are shopping errands, but one is to vote in the runoff election for several Texas races.

As I went through downtown Amarillo yesterday evening, I could not find the building I was looking for where I could cast my vote. Mama and I have been there several times but for some reason, I was not successful in the time I had allotted myself. Since I am able to cast my vote today, I gave up after a little over a half hour, deciding instead to look the directions up so I could be better prepared today.

I spent a little over two hours with the two ladies that were having personality issues in the office in Guymon, OK. It took the first hour of talking to get them to look each other in the eye. From there they began to speak freely and communicate the hurts that had brought about the fracture in their relationship. Once one particular item was communicated and corrected, the entire atmosphere in the room changed.

Though it was obvious that the healing had begun there is still a huge amount of work to be done to restore the office to calm since the wounding has been communicated very broadly by one of the feuding parties. Everyone will have to be slowly brought into the reconciliation. One particular person, who is a trouble-maker, will have to be excluded from all conversations not directly work related.

Though it makes us feel empowered and vindicated to build alliances against someone we perceive to have wronged us, it can have disastrous consequences. Every time the offence is repeated into a receptive set of ears another stone is dropped into the pond of each person’s mental and emotional reserves and the ripples begin to move across the surface. Nothing will stop them; nothing can unless the Spirit of God brings calm to the water.

Neither of these ladies can undo what has been done but the greater harm was done by the one who kept the offence fresh in the mind of everyone she talked with. That is the point I needed to get across and I think the Lord allowed that to be done. There are several people I need to thank for their prayers. Those of you, who did so, thank you.

Chase is still looking at apartments in Amarillo in case things work out that he stays there for his schooling when and if Mama and I get to relocate. We had a pretty long discussion last night about how to budget for such an expense. I think he will do well, but he will need a roommate to make it work even though he is doing very well in his job at Sear’s. For the moment he and Bo York are talking about sharing the apartment. We will have to wait and see how that works out as Mama and discover the direction the Lord will take us.

As expected, I have heard nothing new concerning either of the pending job offers and the respective relocation opportunities.