The First Half

I have tumbled haphazardly
down the dusty road of life.

It led me here, to this moment.

Along the way I planted seeds,
stirred the dust, while watching
the seasons change.

Now I am about to begin,
the next fifty years or so.

Where do I go?

What stones are left unturned?

What adventures lie ahead?

My questions ramble on inside.

I no longer wish to tumble,
but be guided by God’s mighty hand,
gently into the light, to see what He has planned.

Teresa Gale
9/27/09

Faded Photo



I stare at the faded photograph trying to memorize every feature in your smile,
remembering the way you walked, talked and laughed.

Your eyes seem to speak to me, sending me messages, secrets between the two of us,telling me you have stories, many left untold.

I compare you to your siblings in the photo; see the love evident and sure.

Your beauty still dazzles me, I marvel at the way you shine, like a movie star,
holding yourself tall, prepared as always to act for the camera and your audience.

You faded much too quickly, your star shooting through the sky, falling away and quickly leaving us who adored you wishing for more.

I miss you momma and search each night for the stars that hold your smile.

Teresa Gale
September 14, 2009

The Long Lost Letter



I adore receiving a letter, almost as much as I do writing one. It is such a thrill to go to the mailbox and find an envelope waiting inside amidst the bills and advertisements just for me. Normally I will wait, holding this precious letter for awhile, until I have a moment to really cherish the words the author has written to me.

I will sort through the bills, throw away the ads, go about the business of whatever needs to be done, tucking the letter in my purse and saving it till later. For me a letter must be savored, like a good piece of dark chocolate, or a steaming hot bubble bath. I don’t enjoy rushing to it, although, I know it’s there and my excitement increases at the thought. I look forward to reading it, don’t get me wrong, but I want to build my excitement wait till I can give the author my full attention.

Once I settle down to read it, I make sure I am comfortable and all is quiet, for I don’t like being disturbed when I am devouring the coveted words. It’s like sitting with an old friend and I often try to imagine the person’s tone as they have written it. What must their day have been like? What mood were they in? I crave to hear more about their lives as I consume each word.

The trouble these days with letter writing is they are too far and few between. Most of the authors of my letters rarely have time to jot more than a few words leaving me hungry for more. Lives have grown much too busy. It seems time to sit still long enough is something few of us have these days.

Most of us have gone the way of emails, which to me have also become too few and too short, or text messaging, which I can barely do or understand, much less see with my failing eye-sight. We hardly have a moment to make a phone call and when we do, it also is interrupted too often by our busy schedules. Cell phones, computers, text messaging, oh my, it is a whirlwind of technology that has far removed us from lingering long enough to enjoy each other.

When I was a young girl, I moved a lot and often lived far from friends and family. My link to these beloved people, were letters written in long-hand, on pretty paper and even sometimes on school notebook paper. As I would sit and write the letter, I would think about the receiver, how much I missed them and tell them all that was in my heart. I waited most impatiently for their replies. The mailman was my favorite person in those days and I longed for those letters from my grandmother or my dear best friends.

Later, when I was a young married woman, I still carried on this tradition. It was these letters, handwritten that got me through some very long winter months when I was a young mother. My dear sweet grandmother would often give me advice or just share with me her heart about God and what was going on in the family I so missed. Stories were told in those letters, lives were shared, recipes traded, secrets whispered, sadness and joy revealed all between those pretty pieces of lined paper.

Through the years, I have kept many of those letters. They are tied with ribbons and kept in boxes, and from time to time I gather them up to re-read and remember those who wrote them. Many who wrote me these letters have since passed on, some who have moved out of my life, and some still linger. Those pieces of paper are left behind for me as a story, history of our lives together, one day my children and grandchildren will be able to piece together some important things about my own life and those from my past.

I have not given up writing letters; I still love receiving them and re-started the tradition with my own sweet grand-daughter recently. I hope she will pass it down to her children and grandchildren. We have lost something in the art of letter writing, we have lost ourselves. In our hurry-up and busy world we seldom take enough time to sit long enough and enjoy each other, up close and personal.

I don’t want to forget this old fashioned tradition of staying in touch and am in hopes that when you receive one of my cards or letters, it might just inspire you to return the favor and write back to me, or maybe send a card with a note to someone else you care about. Take a moment and remember the excitement you once felt at receiving your own letter or card and spread that joy to someone else today.

Teresa Gale
September 13, 2009

Today

Today I look outside my window and see blue skies and sunshine, it makes me smile, today, I get to travel home to see my parents with my second oldest daughter, her husband and my grandson.

Today, I will count my blessings and there are so many.

Today, I am thankful for the new bible study group I have started and the wonderful and encouraging people I have met.

Today, I will listen to my Ipod and the new songs I downloaded last night, it will be fun to groove to the music as we travel.

Today, I will wear comfortable clothes and feel good about my body, no matter what!

Today, I like my new haircut and color, at least I do today.

Today, I will make lists, and plans and schedule in my calendar all the important dates I need reminded of this month.

Today, I will really allow myself to read a whole chapter in my book.

Today, I will enjoy this life God has blessed me with, won’t you join me?

God bless you all.

It's the Little Things

It’s the Little Things
I woke this morning after a very restless night I will blame on my pastor next time I see him. I had one of those nights where nightmares haunted me, must have had something to do with the sermon yesterday, I am sure it did. However, it was also a good thing, for good sermons that have us restless and later pouring our hearts out to God, also have us thinking about whom and what really matter. So after I shook off the bad dreams, I began to think of all the blessings in my life.

Today, I am off work and while I can blame the economy, for I am home without pay, I can also be thankful for the peace and quiet. I can be appreciative for time to pray for those on my heart today and the list is long. Time alone is so infrequent and very much a blessing when I get it, for time alone with God is precious. So I had a long talk with God today, well I did it in spurts and I imagine He and I will speak more as the day goes on.

I found myself smiling over several things and all before ten o’clock this morning. As I went about my chores, thanking God for this day at home, I found little messages of love everywhere. It is the little things that bring me to smile, to see God’s blessings everywhere, to see the love of family surrounding me. That for me is the true meaning of my life.

My husband, bless his heart, let me sleep in a bit, such a wonderful little thing to do, but so appreciated. That few extra moments of laying still as I listened to him get ready for work, for our son to shower and the dogs barking outside reminded me of all I have in this world. What joy my heart did sing! As they both left, my son not quite so cheerful, my husband wishing he too could be home, I wished them a good day and smiled.

My son surprised me with a clean room without my asking him. I was amazed and texted him, despite my dislike of using texting to communicate to thank him and tell him I loved him. He answered back with his own words of love and my heart swelled again with joy. Anyone who has a teenager must know that these words are very much sought after and coveted by a mother. I almost thought I would cry from the blessing of his text and may have to save them for awhile.

There are countless little things in our day to be thankful for, many that we hardly notice in the hustle and bustle of our days. Some days we are so frustrated, so full of ourselves we don’t take the time to pause and give thanks or notice. It really doesn’t take much to make me happy, I am sure my family would think differently but if they really knew my heart, read my words today they would know me.

Today I had the joy of calling my grandchildren before their first day of school and wishing them a great day, listening to their voices made my day a little better. I stood out on our deck in the chilly morning air as I spoke with them picking tiny red cherry tomatoes, the kind I know my granddaughter so loves and breathed in the morning air. I took in the view of God’s handiwork in the cotton candy clouded sky above and watched as He painted streaks of pink across the horizon with the rising sun. What beauty in the day! I might have missed this had I not been off work and truly opened my eyes.

Any day can be turned around, no matter how bad it seems if only we would stop and see the little things that truly make our lives big. I could have gotten very frustrated today as my well laid plans to stay in P.J.’s and relax were set aside by calls from work asking me to help out. I made the calls, ran my errands and along the way ran into some very friendly people who offered me great customer service. It was the little way they did their job that made me happy to do mine from home today.

So many things turned my day into a day of beauty, too numerous to list here. I nested something I don’t get to do too often. I even managed to cook my family a good old fashioned meal instead of calling for pizza. It felt good to do this out of love for them. I enjoyed the many little things I did today and took joy in my life. I found it was all in opening my eyes and my heart; it was adjusting my attitude and praising God for the day. I pray I have many more days like today. When I see my pastor again on Sunday, I will share this story with him and how my restless night he hoped for lead me to pray for those loved ones and count the many little things in my life to be grateful for once again.

Teresa Gale
8/31/09

Bring Back the Good Ole Days

Bring Back the Good Ole Days


I am sitting here on a Sunday morning frustrated. This is not a good way to start a Sunday, a day in which I love, a family day, a day where I normally start with the Word of God. I should be full of praise, peace, goodwill towards man and getting ready to shower and dress for Sunday Worship. Instead, my blood pressure is steaming and I am contemplating a complaint letter to the world.

What have we done? Have we gone completely insane? Or am I just so bogged down by a hundred different passwords, user-names, secret codes that my mind can’t hold any more. As soon as I have them stored in the memory banks of my already over loaded head, “times up” the bell rings, change it. I need a password just to log into my home computer that is to keep sticky fingers and teens from crashing my coveted PC. At work, I have a password to open up, a password to get to the server, a different password to get to my work email and a password to get into our work station to begin to log in sales orders. Hard as I try to keep them all the same, every 90 days give or take, I have to change them.

I am swamped, over-loaded with passwords, even on my cell phone and work phone to pick up messages. On occassion I keep track by keeping a notebook filled with the many different passwords but am constantly forgetting where I put it or not updating it enough to keep the score. What is a person supposed to do? How do you keep track of all the numbers, names and secret knocks in your life?

Modern technology is supposed to make our life easy right? Right? We have email, cell phones, instant messenger, texting, Face Book, Twitter, Digital cameras and endless other ways to keep our loved ones and friends up to date. Yet we still have no time, we still cannot manage to stay in touch, we are too busy, too tired, too on the go to sit still long enough to have a meaningful conversation.

Modern technology has even made it possible, for a small fee, to pay our bills online, that is if you can remember your password, username and personal secret code. Which is what brought me to write this blog today as I spent the better part of two hours trying to log into one account, reset my password only to find the computer generated blankety blank is still rejecting my user id.The very user id that they sent me the verfied changed password to, can you hear the growl in my words as I hammer on the keyboard?

Don’t get me started on Customer Support that is a whole other blog for a whole other day. Suffice it to say, there is no such thing as talking to a real live human being any more. It is no wonder we are out of touch with our world we live in, no wonder we have become a frustrated society that has no time for anything or anyone. No one has time for us; we have succumbed to being nothing more than a computer generated email, a text message sent to verify we exist.

Take me back to the good ole days when we actually sat down and spoke face to face to each other, or how about writing a real honest to God letter that had actual words in it. I have grown weary of trying to decipher short-handed words such as (lol, idk, jk). Take me back to real customer service served with a kind voice at the other end of the phone and real help, not a computer generated email that keeps circling me around and around, or an automated voice that is requesting I push number 1 or 2 when I really want to scream.

I miss telephone calls from friends on real phones, even though we don’t have a land-line anymore and have been won over by the world of cells. I miss taking walks and really listening to words being spoken, letters in my mailbox, the kind that is out on the street and not inside my electronic computer. I love holding a picture in my hand and seeing it up close. I miss the good old days where human contact made things so special.

As I take a deep breath, letting the steam out of my highly frustrated body and relax a moment, this is not to say I am ready to give up my computer, or Face Book, for I do enjoy the instant gratification of seeing all those I love that has linked me to them. I don’t Twitter as I had to draw the line somewhere, my texting is minimal and I do enjoy emails. I still long to return to simple times, I think we have really lost something. Something of great value in our society and I really worry about what our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren will never get to experience. The value of human contact and slowing down to enjoy one another, which is what life is really all about.

Just a small piece of mind, thanks for listening.

Teresa Gale
8/29/09

Mine Alone

I struggle to make a poem out of my thoughts.

Words tumble and scrape inside my mind,
screaming to be cut loose from the chains that bind.

Yet, the perfectionist in me, bridles the poem,
Keeping it locked tight inside, binding it closer.

I pray, giving life to words.

Words escape to pen,
spilling out on paper, liquid thoughts.

These words, mine alone,
Breathe life onto what was once blank.

Letting go of fear that once held me prisoner

Do not look for meaning to your life by reading
My words, they are owned by me…alone.

Teresa Gale
8-16-09