The view from the pediatric ward on the 18th floor of Massachusetts General Hospital is spectacular. I spent a lot of time contemplating it last week and drinking tea from a paper cup and writing a letter to a friend while Amy slept. It was her fourth hospitalization in twelve months. Sometimes my life doesn't seem real even to me. So I almost understand when people make insensitive remarks. I can only say that I wish I were making up my circumstances "for attention" rather than living them. I really do. Because, on a single day last week my washing machine died, my brother-in-law Joe had a heart attack, and Amy had to be rushed to the hospital (for the second time in a week). But, I am thankful, because even though the unemployment has run out the washing machine can be replaced, my brother-in-law's surgery went well, and my Amy is back home. That is enough. Yet even so, the roses are blooming, the weather is blessedly mild and cool, and God put a rainbow right over our house.

*♥*

While I was in the hospital with Amy, I was thinking about my very early childhood and playing in the back garden of the house in which I grew up. I think I've written before about that house and its ghosts, but I'm not sure if I've ever written about the wonderful old back garden with it's cherry, pear, and sassafras trees, the pussy willow bush, the big, shady Norway maple (who was such a good friend to me), and all of the sweet flowers where the fairies hid: crocuses, jonquils, white bluebells, tulips, forget-me-nots, and wild phlox. My parents did not care for gardening, so there were weeds aplenty, including deadly nightshade with dainty purple flowers and bright red berries. As a very little girl, I loved the nightshade best of all. But, my mother sternly warned me not to eat any part of that plant, as it was highly poisonous. So, I never did. Not even when my cousin taunted and dared me. I believed my mother and trusted her with my whole heart.

Adam and Eve, the first man and first woman--the every man and every woman--lived in the Presence of Love, and chose to believe a liar and a lie. It poisons our very souls.

In the past few years, the circumstances of my life have changed in profound ways, and there was nothing I could do about any of it. I had no choice at all. The culture chirps a lot about choice, as if the point of free will is about your career, your health club, your car, or your handbag. But, I have come to understand that free will was given to us to answer one question only: Who will you follow: Love or Evil?

"I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him."   Deuteronomy 30:19&20

Choose life!