In walked a frightened little girl,
a child no more than nine,
It was plain for all to see, she had troubles on her mind,
"Oh doctor, I beg you, please come with me,
My mother is surely dying, she's as sick as she can be."
"I don't make house calls, bring your mother here,"
"But she's too sick, so you must come or she will die I fear,"

The doctor, touched by her devotion, decided he would go,
She said he would be blessed, more than he could know.
She led him to her house where her mother lay in bed,
Her mother was so very sick she couldn't raise her head,
But her eyes cried out for help and help her the doctor did,
She would have died that very night had it not been for her kid.

The doctor got her fever down and she lived through the night,
And morning brought the doctor signs, that she would be all right,
The doctor said he had to leave but would return again by two,
And later he came back to check, just like he said he'd do.

The mother praised the doctor for all the things he'd done,
He told her she would have died, were it not for her little one,
"How proud you must be of your wonderful little girl,
It was her pleading that made me come, she is really quite a pe arl!"

"But doctor, my daughter died over three years ago,
Is the picture on the wall of the little girl you know?"
The doctors legs went limp for the picture on the wall,
Was the same little girl for whom he'd made this call.
The doctor stood motionless, for quite a little while,
And then his solemn face, was broken by his smile,
He was thinking of that frantic knock heard at his office door,
And of the beautiful little angel that had walked across his floor.

~ author unknown ~

Gifts

1. The gift of listening.....Try giving this to someone in need. And you must really listen. No interrupting, no daydreaming, no planning your responses. Just listen.

2. The gift of signs of affection.....Be generous with your hugs, kisses and gentle squeezes of the hand. Let these tiny actions demonstrate the love inside of you.

3. The gift of a note.....It can be as simple as "I Love You" or as creative as a sonnet. Put your notes where they will surprise your loved one.

4. The gift of laughter.....Just cut out a cartoon, save a clever article. Your gift will say, "I love to laugh with you."

5. The gift of compliment.....A simple "You look good in blue" or "Good supper" can be of greatest value to those who may feel they are being taken for granted.

6. The gift of a favor.....Help with the dishes, run an errand, etc.....do it willingly.

7. The gift of leaving alone.....There are times in our lives when we want nothing better than to be left alone. Become more sensitive to those times and give solitude.

8. The gift of a cheerful disposition.....Try to be cheerful around those you love.

9. The gift of a game.....Offer to play your loved one's favorite game. Even if you lose, you'll be a winner.

10. The gift of prayer.....Pray for your loved ones and let them know you pray for them.

~ Author unknown ~

Mommy

"Mommy, look!" cried my daughter, Darla,
pointing to a chicken hawk soaring through the air.
"Uh huh," I murmured, driving,
lost in thought about the tight schedule of my Day.
Disappointment filled her face.
"What's the matter, Sweetheart?" I asked, entirely dense.
"Nothing," my seven-year-old said.
The moment was gone.
Near home, we slowed to search for the albino deer that comes out
from behind the thick mass of trees in the early evening.
She was nowhere to be seen.
"Tonight, she has too many things to do," I said.
"Dinner, baths and phone calls filled the hours until bedtime.

"Come on, Darla, time for bed!"
She raced past me up the stairs.
Tired, I kissed her on the cheek, said prayers and tucked her in.
"Mom, I forgot to give you something!" she said.
My patience was gone.
"Give it to me in the morning," I said, but she shook her head.
"You won't have time in the morning!" she retorted.
"I'll take time," I answered defensively.
Sometimes no matter how hard I tried,
time flowed through my fingers like sand in an hourglass, never enough.
Not enough for her, for my husband, and definitely not enough for me.
She wasn't ready to give up yet.
She wrinkled her freckled little nose in anger
and swiped away her chestnut brown hair.
"No, you won't!
It will be just like today when I told you to look at the hawk.
You didn't even listen to what I said."
I was too weary to argue; she hit too close to the truth.
"Good night!"
I shut her door with a resounding thud.

Later though, her gray-blue gaze filled my vision
as I thought about how little time we really had until she was grown and gone.
My husband asked, "Why so glum?" I told him.
"Maybe she's not asleep yet.
Why don't you check," he said with all the authority of a parent in the right.
I followed his advice, wishing it was my own idea.

I cracked open her door,
and the light from the window spilled over her sleeping form.
In her hand I could see the remains of a crumpled paper.
Slowly I opened her palm
to see what the item of our disagreement had been.
Tears filled my eyes.
She had torn into small pieces a big red heart
with a poem she had written titled,
"Why I Love My Mother!"

I carefully removed the tattered pieces.
Once the puzzle was put back into place,
I read what she had written:
Why I Love My Mother
Although you're busy, and you work so hard,
you always take time to play.
I love you Mommy because I am the biggest part of your busy day!

The words were an arrow straight to the heart.
At seven years old, she had the wisdom of Solomon.
Ten minutes later I carried a tray to her room,
with two cups of hot chocolate with marshmallows
and two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
When I softly touched her smooth cheek,
I could feel my heart burst with love.
Her thick dark lashes lay like fans against her lids as they fluttered,
awakened from a dreamless sleep, and she looked at the tray.
"What is that for?"
she asked, confused by this late-night intrusion.
"This is for you,
because you are the most important part of my busy day!"

She smiled and sleepily drank half her cup of chocolate.
Then she drifted back to sleep,
not really understanding how strongly
I meant what I said.

~ Author Unknown ~

A True Story

There was a skinny young boy who loved football with all his heart.
Practice after practice, he eagerly gave everything he had.
But being half the size of the boys, he got absolutely nowhere.
At all the games this hopeful athlete
sat on the bench and hardly ever played.
This teenager lived alone with his father,
and the two of them had a very special relationship.
Even though the son was always on the bench,
his father was always in the stands cheering.
He never missed a game.

This young man was still the smallest
of the class when he entered high school.
But his father continued to encourage him,
but also made it very clear that he did not have to play football,
if he didn't want to.
But the young man loved football and decided to hang in there.
He was determined to try his best at every practice,
and perhaps he'd get to play when he became a senior.
All through high school he never missed a practice,
nor a game, but remained a bench-warmer all four years.
His faithful father was always in the stands,
always with words of encouragement for him.

When the young man went to college,
he decided to try out for the football team as a "walk-in."
Everyone was sure he could never make the cut,
but he did.
The coach admitted that he kept him on the roster,
because he always puts his heart and soul into every practice,
and at the same time, provided the other members
with the spirit and hustle they badly needed.

The news that he had survived the cut thrilled him so much,
that he rushed to the nearest phone and called his father.
His father shared his excitement
and was sent reason tickets for all the college games.
This persistent young athlete never missed practice during his four years,
but he never got to play in a game.
It was the end of his senior football season,
and as he trotted onto the practice field shortly before the big playoff game,
the coach met him with a telegram.
The young man read the telegram and he became deathly silent.
Swallowing hard, he mumbled to the coach,
"My father died this morning.
Is it all right if I miss practice today?"
The coach put his arm gently around his shoulder and said,
"Take the rest of the week off, son.
And don't even plan to come back to the game on Saturday."

Saturday arrived, and the game was not going well.
In the third quarter, when the team was ten points behind,
a silent young man quietly slipped into the empty locker room
and put on his football gear.
As he ran onto the sidelines,
the coach and his players were astounded to see their faithful teammate back so soon.
"Coach, please let me play.
I've just got to play today," said the young man.
The coach pretended not to hear him.
There was no way he wanted his worst player in this close playoff game.
But the young man persisted,
and finally feeling sorry for the kid, the coach gave in.
"All right," he said.
"You can go in."

Before long, the coach, the players and everyone in the stands
could not believe their eyes.
This little unknown, who had never played before was doing everything right!
The opposing team could not stop him.
He ran, he passed, blocked, and tackled like a star.
His team began to triumph.
The score was soon tied.
In the closing seconds of the game,
this kid intercepted a pass and ran all the way for the winning touchdown!

The fans broke loose.
His teammates hoisted him onto their shoulders.
Such cheering you never heard.
Finally, after the stands had emptied
and the team had showered and left the locker room,
the coach noticed that this young man was sitting quietly in the corner all alone.
The coach came to him and said,
"Kid, I can't believe it. You were fantastic!
Tell me what got into you? How did you do it?"
He looked at the coach.
With tears in his eyes said,
"Well, you knew my Dad died,
but did you know that he was blind?"
The young man swallowed hard and forced a smile,
"Dad came to all my games,
but today was the first time he could see me play.
I wanted to show him I could do it!"

~ True story from a young man who sent it to me ~

The Smell of Rain

A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas
as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing.
Still groggy from surgery, her husband David held her hand,
as they braced themselves for the latest news.

That afternoon of March 10, 1991,
complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant,
to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the couple's new daughter,
Danae Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces,
they already knew she was perilously premature.
Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs.
"I don't think she's going to make it"
he said, as kindly as he could.
"There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night,
and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it,
her future could be a very cruel one."

Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described
the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived.
She would never walk, never talk, she would probably be blind.
She would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy
to complete mental retardation; and on and on.

"'No! No!" was all Diana could say.
She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin,
had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter
to become a family of four.
Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.
Through the dark hours of morning
Danae held onto life by the thinnest thread.
Diana slipped in and out of drugged sleep, growing more and more determined
that their tiny daughter would live, and live to be a healthy, happy young girl.
But David, fully awake and listening to additional dire details of their daughter's chances
of ever leaving the hospital alive, much less healthy,
knew he must confront his wife with the inevitable.

David walked in and said that they needed to talk
about making funeral arrangements.
Diana remembers feeling so bad for him because he was doing everything,
Trying to include me in what was going on.
but I just wouldn't listen, I couldn't listen.
I said, "No, that is not going to happen, no way!
I don't care what the doctors say.
Danae is not going to die!
One day she will be just fine,
and she will be coming home with us!"

As if willed to live by Diana's determination,
Danae clung to life hour after hour,
with the help of every medical machine and marvel her miniature body could endure.
But as those first days passed,
a new agony set in for David and Diana.

Because Danae's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially "raw,"
the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort.
So they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests
to offer the strength of their love.
All they could do,
as Danae struggled alone beneath the ultra- violet light in the tangle of tubes and wires,
was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.

There was never a moment when Danae suddenly grew stronger.
As the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight
here and an ounce of strength there.

At last, when Danae turned two months old,
her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time.
And two months later, though doctors continued to gently,
but grimly warn that her chances of surviving,
much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero.

Danae went home from the hospital,
just as her mother had predicted.
Today, five years later,
Danae is a petite but feisty young girl
with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life.
She shows no signs, whatsoever, of any mental or physical impairments.
Simply, she is everything a little girl can be and more.
But that happy ending is far from the end of her story.

One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996
near her home in Irving, Texas.
Danae was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ball park
where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing.
As always, Danae was chattering non-stop with her mother
and several other adults sitting nearby, when she suddenly fell silent.
Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked,
"Do you smell that?"
Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied,
"Yes, it smells like rain."
Danae closed her eyes and again asked,
"Do you smell that?"
Once again, her mother replied,
"Yes, I think we're about to get wet, it smells like rain."
Still caught in the moment, Danae shook her head,
patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced,
"No! it smells like Him.
It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest."
Tears blurred Diana's eyes.
Danae then happily hopped down to play with the other children.
Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed
what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known,
at least in their hearts, all along.
During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life,
when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her,
God was holding Danae on His chest.
It is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

~ RICHARDS HEART ~

My Special Angel

If You Come Across an Angel
Every day, in the world around us,
real-life angels are doing the things they do...
and bringing more smiles to the world around them
Real-life angels build bridges instead of walls.
They don't play hide-and-seek with the truth,
they do whatever they can to help you.
Real-life angels understand difficulties
and always give the benefit of the doubt.
They don't hold others up to the standards
they can't live by themselves.

Real-life angels are what"inner beauty"is about.
Real-life angels don't hold things against you;
the only thing they hold...is you.
They take your hand in theirs
when you could use a little reassurance.
They walk beside you when you could do
with a little guidance and direction in your life.
And they support you in your attempts to do what is right.

Real-life angels multiply your smiles and add to your interegrity.
They make you feel like,
"Hey, I really am somebody who matters."
Then they quietly prove to you how beautiful and true
that feeling really is.

If you come across an angel like this,
you are one of the luckiest people of all.
If someone in your life is wonderfully like an angel
to you, it's important to let them know.
It's the nicest compliment you could ever give...
in all the days of your life
and in all the years that you live.

~ Author Unknown~

CRYSTAL TEARS

CRYSTAL TEARS FALL FROM HIS EYES
WHEN HE LOOKS UPON THE EARTH.
FOR WHAT HE SEES BREAKS HIS HEART,
WE LIVE IN ABJECT DEARTH.

HE DIED ON THE CROSS SO ALL COULD SEE
THE GLORIES HE CREATED FOR YOU AND ME,
BUT IF WE DO NOT BELIEVE HE DIED FOR US,
THEN HE CRIES, AND CRIES FOR US.

THE CRYSTAL TEARS ROLL DOWN HIS CHEEKS,
THEY DROP ON HEAVEN'S FLOOR,
HE DIED AND ROSE AGAIN FOR US,
HE IS THE ONE AND ONLY DOOR

INTO THE PRESENCE OF THE FATHER,
THE RULER OF ALL, ON HIGH.
IT IS THE NAME OF JESUS ALONE
THAT GETS US TO HIM NIGH.

OH, FRIEND, PLEASE LOOK TO JESUS,
HE DIED UPON THE CROSS,
AND ROSE AGAIN THE THIRD DAY
SO WE WOULD NOT BE LOST.

WHEN WE BELIEVE IN JESUS
AS THE RISEN SON OF THE LIVING GOD,
OUR FUTURE IS SEALED IN HEAVEN,
AND THE GOLDEN STREETS WE SHALL TROD.

THE CRYSTAL TEARS FLOW DOWN HIS CHEEKS
BECAUSE OF HIS GREAT, MAGNIFICENT LOVE.
HE WANTS US ALL TO LIVE WITH HIM
IN THE HEAVEN HE CREATED ABOVE.

© 1998 Tulsabutterfly

"How Beautiful"
Courtesy of Midi Farms

© 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 jlc@ix.netcom.com

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