Decades Come & Go

I have had an eventful decade. My two brothers, Marshall and Tom, died in the last decade. Also, my older sister, Karen, had a stroke and no longer speaks to me.

My devotion has been to my personal ministry, to help feed the elderly. There are many who do not have enough food, folks who live next door and 8 can help them.

The other events of my decade have to do with creative efforts. I was commissioned to write celebratory essays on my choir, and all 50 of them were pretty darn good examples of my writing.

Accordingly, I was approached about publishing a book, which I told everyone in town was going to happen. I have since learned not to blab about good fortune. You have to keep your secrets in this world, or someone else will see them and want them for themselves. Shortly after I agreed to let my essays be published, I was told another person had a book that was going to be published instead of mine. It hurt me, but it also was one of the better things that could have happened. I didn't need a book. I did not need to be recognized publicly. I simply had an extended ego trip that missed a gear and ended up in the scrap yard. Or so I thought.

David Shirey, the senior minister at my church, has eventually become a fan of mine because he finds my essays in the file folders for folks that pass away who have been in the choir. In the last decade I have lost my dear friends Mayme Hamby, Maud Johnson, Naomi Broida, Gay Brown, Arvil Reeb, Malcolm MacGregor, Sherry Harkless, Stuart Talbert and Virginia Browning. These are folks who have been by my side throughout births and deaths, weddings and divorces, solar and lunar eclipses...gregorian chants even. We shared music, we saw each other through ... and grew to love each other because of it.

My essays are an everlasting legacy for everyone about whom I wrote. That legacy is much more profound than any book would have ever been, and I realize that God was trying to tell me this was more important, celebrating saints, not public recognition and self congratulation.

It's not about me!
Peace, y'all,
Kimmy

Humility is a lesson that cannot be simply learned in one day and forgotten the next. When I look into the mirror I cannot forget who I see. I have to deal with that person every single day and I have to listen to the word of the Lord and not look away and that's the lesson I learned from the last decade. Hang in there, you're enough!