2012
My friend, who knows I am writing this about her, is a total whack job. I love her to bits, her wackiness is good for me. She rang me at dawn today to tell me about the beautiful sunrise and ask me to mind the kids for an hour this morning. In my state of grogginess, got up and ran outside to see this beautiful sunrise only to get soaked. In my heart I know it was a breathtaking sunrise, but in my townland, it was thick dark grey clouds that were bursting forth like a crescendo.
Later I went to look after Shaq and Benji ‘for an hour’, Shona is not a good timekeeper and I know she rushes to get everything done but gets caught up in other peoples’ lives so I settled myself down to playing with the boys. We played the drums on the pots and pans, colouring and building towers of bricks. There was plenty of giggling, a good time was had.
Shona is a new-age hippie, she has been around these parts for almost a year, probably moving on in the summer. She worships all kinds of things, the sun, the moon, herself, Gaia and considers herself a white witch. I think she is the sweetest most giving person I have met in a long time and love spending time with her. We touch on the subject of God when I say touch, we talk for hours and because God is central to my life he comes up a lot.
Shona loves, that is her thing, but she has had “stuff happen” in her life, as a child and as a young woman that has coloured her perception of religion and religious folk. Every now and then we laugh at the two of us being friends, being centrally so different.
And then today happened, Shona whirled through the door three hours later and said: “LOVE IS GOD AND GOD IS LOVE!” She went onto tell me that she’d gone to a beauty salon for some waxing and on the counter was a calendar. The usual kind, for these type of places, a motivational thing, something to lift the spirits while you pay out exorbitant figures to look ‘perfect’. This was the quote for 24th April 2012, “Love is God and God is love”. Shona was filtering this in her mind and went into the room and lay down waiting for the technician. The usual music was piping through and suddenly in the lyrics of the song, she got it, she got Him. Hallelujah, praise the Lord. He is good.
Don't give up
You still have us
Don't give up
We don't need much of anything
Don't give up
'cause somewhere there's a place
Where we belong
Rest your head
You worry too much
It's going to be alright
When times get rough
You can fall back on us
Don't give up
Please don't give up
Thank you, Lord, for friends, for the beginning of Shona’s journey with you.
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