This week I didn't pick up my camera nearly enough. I made a new recipe and used it to take a picture of that and this image above on Saturday. Saturday was a productive day and also a fun day. I drew a note for a friend. I accidentally found out that April is national letter writing month. I've kind of been crazy about writing letters and drawing envelopes this month because of it. Today I dropped off three letters at the post office. We made a trip to our bank, we bought dog food for Max and got some laundry done. When middle of the day came, we decided with the encouragement of our only girl to make a trip to the beach. We are blessed to live somewhat near the ocean. I read Harry Potter for an hour while the girl sun bathed and motorcycle man people watched. The pair of them also went for a walk to the pier. That was a lovely way to break up our Saturday. All work and no play isn't very fun. When we got home we gardened. We pulled weeds and planted tomatoes and zucchini. It was getting dark when I realized I needed to take a picture for our mindful eye project, I'm wondering what 22 LIMES will share? I also wanted to fold a crane which I had not done yet. I did both:) I folded my crane and took a picture.
Now about the crane. My neighbor and friend Lynda is battling cancer right now. This is her second battle in fact. She has had a rough time of it. It was discovered 8 years later after her first bout. It was a routine colonoscopy that discovered Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma right after this past Thanksgiving. She has already been through quite a bit. She began by having the tumor removed just after Christmas. She then had 2 rounds of chemo over the next 6 weeks. I began folding her cranes for what she calls phase 2 of her treatment. She began phase 2 on March 19th with stem cell harvesting. This went incredibly well and what could have taken a week and possibly donors only took one day with her very own harvest! God is so awesome. She had a little time to rest before she was admitted to City of Hope on March 26th, she has been there ever since but if everything goes as expected she should be home by April 23rd. In the meantime she has had her 2nd birthday when the stem cell transplant happened and then had to go through some major chemo and is now recovering from that. Thats been the really rough part. Folding cranes is not a very big thing. It's a very small thing in fact. However I fold her a crane each day and while I do that it slows me down. It gives me time to pray for my friend and then I can send her a quick text to show her the crane. It's just a small bit of encouragement, the biggest most important part are the prayers. I get so busy sometimes I forget to stop to pray. The crane folding helps me to remember.
Here is her gold crane today. It was the hardest crane I have folded so far. The shiny paper was persnickety and it turned out kind of crinkled and shows lots of imperfection. I like the imperfection part. It reminds me of how imperfect we are as human beings . I'm constantly screwing up. I wonder about myself sometimes but thankfully God shows grace and love and is a safe place to land. Couldn't do it without Him. The little blossom on the bare branches reminds me of HOPE. Hope is very important.
Lots of love to my handful of readers.