family

Mar

26

Remembering Anna Marie Nelson (1930-2024)

Family  Posted by

Please share your tributes, recollections and photos in the comments section below.

Our dear mother Anna Maria Nelson went to be with the Lord on Sunday February 4, 2024 at the age of 93. She was a kind, gentle, and generous lady who loved animals and music. Although she suffered a great deal during her later years from severe arthritis and dementia, Mom continued to love her family and her cats. Her son and daughter-in-law Janis and Ed Nelson faithfully cared for her during her last years in Katy, Texas.They visited her regularly, loving and serving her in so many ways until the very .end. My brother Ed and I are grateful to the many friends who prayed for her these past few years. Ed was with her, reading the Bible to her as she breathed her last and entered into glory. All who knew her loved her.

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Jan

15

Remembering Melvin C. Nelson (1927-2021)

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Please share your tributes, recollections and photos in the comments section below.

Mel Nelson was born in Kearny, New Jersey in 1927. He was an only child, grew up in a Swedish immigrant family and in an immigrant neighborhood. He went to a Swedish Baptist Church until he was about 10 years old when the family made the switch to an American Baptist Church. He was a Boy Scout and had a band of friends in the neighborhood who roasted “mickeys”(apples pilfered from a neighbors tree) and swam in the meadows (read “swamp”) nearby. He was proud of the fact that when he visited his ailing grandparents in California, he taught the local kids how to make slingshots. The birds, squirrels, windows and parents were probably not very happy with this East Coast Technology transfer. Dad graduated at 16 because he skipped 2 grades in elementary school. He got right to work as a chemical technician.

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Sep

07

It Runs in the Family

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Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts; let them proclaim your power. I will meditate on your majestic, glorious splendor and your wonderful miracles. Your awe-inspiring deeds will be on every tongue; I will proclaim your greatness. Everyone will share the story of your wonderful goodness; they will sing about your righteousness. – Psalm 145: 4-7

Most doctors take a dim view of the self-diagnoses certain of us love to make with the help of the internet. When I’m afflicted with one thing or another, I usually get caught up in some late-night online symptom sleuthing. My findings are quite often hair-raising and only serve to add to my insomnia.

And when at last I do get in to see my doctor, I helpfully supply my own personal diagnosis of the ailment that has brought me to her office.

Problem is, most of the time I’m wrong.

The physical therapist I saw last week corrected my assessment of my current problem. The trouble was not the flare-up of plantar fasciitis I had so confidently advised him I had. He looked at an x-ray and let me know that the real reason every step I take feels like a demon is driving a nail into my heel is because I have a bone spur.

And, now that I think about it, it wasn’t actually shingles that other time, nor was it skin cancer the time before. Maybe I should just abandon my amateur practice of worst-case scenario medicine and leave the diagnosing to the professionals. ( I do love this advice from a sage friend regarding alarmist tendencies when facing ailments and disorders: when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras!).

A New Diagnosis

But this time it’s different. Todays’s web-surfing helped me with a self-diagnosis I am sure is 100% accurate.

I have thalassophilia.

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Jun

30

Victory in a Vineyard: 36 years of Marriage and Still Learning a Thing or Two

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Remembering the heat and humidity of Nashville in the summer, we had packed for the tropics. But our first Sunday here, the last Sunday in June, was a complete surprise, a total gift. Blue skies, puffy clouds, moderate temperatures, glistening green hills all shouted of God’s glory. As San Diegans, we automatically think of heading to the ocean on such a day, but here in Nashville, Arrington Vineyards seems to have come to mind for hundreds of people wanting to be outside to enjoy the beauty of a summer day.

Overlooking verdant vineyards in the rolling hills of central Tennessee, the wide grassy slope was dotted with picnickers at rustic wooden tables under tall shade trees. Music and fragrance filled the air. A path through the woods led to a barn and another lush lawn seating area where a bluegrass band livened up the atmosphere. Back up the hill on the other side of the property was a wide tented pavilion for those who preferred jazz. Both styles seemed entirely appropriate for the setting and Jeff and I enjoyed spending time in each location. Since Nashville is a magnet for the most talented musicians in the world, it is impossible to have a bad listening experience here.

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May

12

Dancing with a Star: A Tribute to My Mom

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Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.” Exodus 20:12

You already know the most important thing about my mom if you read my April 19th post about her recent baptism at the age of 86. Now here is the rest of the story of this crazy fun lady who brought me into this world.

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Apr

19

Let the Circle be Unbroken: The Goodness of the Lord

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Psalms 27:13-14:  I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living! Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!

My mom was 86 years old when she finally decided she’d like to join the rest of her family in believer’s baptism. The timing was perfect: a reunion to celebrate my father’s 90th birthday meant her pastor grandson would be flying in for a visit. I was delighted to learn she’d asked my son Jon to baptize her and he’d agreed.

Jon wanted to be certain she understood the meaning of the step she was about to take, so before the baptism he took her through the relevant Scriptures, carefully and patiently explaining each one. Sitting down on the couch next to her grandson, Mom looked happy as could be and tried her best to follow along with her magnifying glass and large-print Bible. I was flooded with joy as I witnessed this conversation—what a marvelous culmination of years of prayer as both a daughter and a mother!

Mom leaned forward, listening intently and nodding, but when Jon began to read from Acts Chapter 8 about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, she got a puzzled look on her face. She stopped him right there and asked for clarification.

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Dec

04

Simple Feast of Friendship

CrossWise Living  Posted by
Simple Feast of Friendship

May the meals that I prepare, be seasoned from above,
With Thy great blessings and Thy grace but most of all, Thy love.
So bless my little kitchen, Lord, and those who enter in,
May they find naught but joy and peace and happiness therein.
— Kitchen Prayer

A Simple Feast of Friendship

It is the day after Thanksgiving. What will I be grateful for at the end of this day? Hordes of bargain-hunters have set their alarms for the wee small hours of the morning and have arisen with a mission. I’m not above such frenzied commerce, but today I nod in its direction and am able to pass it by. Today is a blank check, and I will not spend it in spending.

What business would you have me about today, Lord? I’m mindful of the message from last week’s sermon: what will I choose to do today that will outlive me? The rest of my family members all have specific plans today—to see, to do, and to accomplish—and I’m now alone and wondering how to best use this treasure of an unscheduled day.

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Nov

08

Glacier Bay

Journal  Posted by
Jeff and Gail in Alaska

There are benefits to sticking it out and holding fast to your vows.

The joy of twenty-five years of marriage to a creationist means a cruise to Alaska to celebrate. And now, whenever I sing lines like, “From the highest of heights to the depths of the seas, creation’s revealing His majesty,” I have a new reference point: Glacier Bay.

In dazzling Glacier Bay the azure skies meet the frigid, pale turquoise sea and even the ice is powder blue. All this beauty is a result of time and pressure. Glaciers are formed from snow that has accumulated over many years and it is all these years of mounting compression that make the ice so dense it absorbs all the hues but blue.

Like the diamonds given by suitors as symbols of that which is precious and enduring, glaciers also derive their beauty from the power of great pressure. Our marriage has endured because the stresses of life have kept us as couple reaching for God, pressed down and moving together in the same direction, the way the tidewater glacier heads for the sea.