Ate breakfast on the porch pondering in the swing and watching the world wake up. Dark blue sky with large fluffy bleached clouds. Wasn’t the brightest of suns but warm enough to make the flower blossoms stand up and turn their faces to the warmth. The day was pleasant till the afternoon storms heated up. The breeze blew in a peculiar way and made the wind chimes closest to me ping one pipe three times before it pinged the next one once. Never heard that wind chime symphony before, it was a new melody. The other wind chimes on the porch were silent. Maybe it was Chief or Rosie’s angel wings fluttering before me. I think that way sometimes. Childlike but it’s real to me. Got to admit it was strange the other ones were silent.

The rain and wind pushed me out of the swing in the afternoon. I retreated to my bedroom to my reading chair where I sat surrounded by my quote books, watching out my window as the bamboo performed their rain dance acrobatics. Today’s quote in my daily quote book read, “Your life is your story, go write it,” Clare. Our life story belongs to only us. We need to be careful to write well and edit often. I was pondering, who really holds the pen. Does God hold the pen to write our narrative or do we control the pen?

I honestly think God has already written our story but our life is long with many winding turns. God has placed us on the path to eternity but we have free will to make choices and actions that determine the direction of our life. Maybe we’re co-authors with God. We write the day’s details, choose our direction, and make decisions with God’s influence. We have chapters of joy and chapters of sorrow. We write of colorful rainbows of hope, dark storms and difficulties, bright sunshine of new days. Proverbs 16:9 reads, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.” If we take a wrong turn or step off the path of faith, God’s grace will help us find our way back. No matter how dark the journey, no matter how many times we stumble, God will lead us back home with his holy light. Psalm 32:8 states, “The Lord says, ‘I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you.’”

Ever have disappointments in life and wonder why things turn out differently than you planned. Ever gotten the answer to your prayers and realize it was a good thing it didn’t work out the way you wanted. We should look at disappointment as a detour in our life’s story, not dead ends but stepping stones to a new path. These times can bring new dreams. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” Aristotle. Romans 8:28 reads, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Been thinking this morning and late afternoon about the times I have been disappointed by life. When I was in college I took a creative writing class the last semester of my senior year. My English professor would bring a small brown paper bag to class full of mundane every day objects. We had to reach in the bag and write a story about the object we took from the bag. I was the last to reach in the bag one morning and drew out a safety pin. I wrote a story, Ned the Needle and his friend Safety Pin. I remember some of the story. Ned and Safety lived in a dusty old farmhouse closet in the bottom of a purple straw sewing basket. The basket had a broken handle where an old black boot, tossed in the closet, whacked the handle. Ned and Safety were always wishing to get out of the basket. They wanted to be useful and needed. Ned was poked in a dingy stuffed strawberry pin cushion. He hated the strawberry’s musky smell. He had some needle friends sticking out around him. One day Ned was taken out to darn some socks. Safety was in the bottom of the basket, buttons and thread spools haphazardly piled near him, caught up in an old yellow cloth measuring tape. Can’t remember what happened to Safety. Anyway, the professor loved the story and read it to the class. She read my creative writings out loud to the class many times. Always embarrassed me when she did this.

Close to graduation the professor approached me and told me I needed to apply to Radcliffe’s summer publishing program. She had already gotten an application for me. Told me she thought I was qualified and maybe they needed a token Southerner that summer. Talked to daddy and he said, “Well, if that’s what you want, apply.” Kinda got excited. Most of these students from this program immediately got jobs with major publishing companies. I filled the application out, mailed it off, and waited to hear from them. I was crushed when the letter arrived, “We regret to inform you…” Didn’t make the list but I would have been lost up there, anyway. I’m a small town girl. Went back to work at The Roanoke Leader newspaper after graduation from Wesleyan. A year later I went to work at The Russell Record, as assistant editor of Russell Corporation’s newspaper and internal publications in Alexander City, where I met and married the editor. That disappointment brought me 41 years of happiness with Chief.

“Don’t let failure or disappointment cut you off from God or make you think the future is hopeless. When God closes one door, He often opens another—if we seek it,” Billy Graham.

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope,”— Martin Luther King, Jr.