“Hear my prayer, O lord, and give ear to my cry;
Hold not your peace at my fears? For I am a
Sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers.”
Leviticus 25:23
The hot wind of summer brushed across the grasses as we hiked among the rocks. The Isle of Skye proved to be a place of reflection as the twisting roadways opened to sheep-strewn hillsides.
For her graduation gift, my granddaughter Katharine desired to explore the places in Scotland where in times long past her family had lived. I was invited to accompany her and my daughter on the adventure.
Years before, while wandering through Scotland, we hadn’t followed in the footsteps of the Campbell, MacLeod, and Murchison clans. Instead, history had been on the itinerary: from the Battle of Culloden, to the magnificent castle of Edinburgh and the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Blood, guts, rugged cliff sides sheltering the Castle, and Highland dancers whirling to the squeal of bagpipes had filled the days.
This trip to Skye held a sense of peace not found in the bustle of London or a market town on Saturday. On the Isle, stone cottages huddled among the hills. White dots of freshly shorn sheep roamed the stony glaciated landscape. Poetry of the soul escaped to my pen.
Salty sea air and gull’s cries echo through time. Waves concussing the cliffs are set to history’s rhythm. Is that a Viking ship between us and the distant shore? Imagination runs to stories, some told of Princes and rascals, the sacrificial love of family, and the murder of saints.
Patterns woven into hearts often repeat. The love of the ocean’s song and beach sand between toes is played out by grandchildren scouring rocky West Coast beaches in search of “treasures.” Had my grandmother loved the stony paths of Prince Edward Island as I loved the limestone walk my son-in-law created for me?
Hearing the melody of wind striking white canvas sails, we learned to sail, as did my father. The freedom wind gave us still bubbles up when on a daysailer. The slap of water against the bow and the freshening wind perfumed by evergreens makes me long for the familiar.
Our family stories tell of the good ship Polly filled with passengers escaping the Highland clearances. Did the sea cormorants that dotted the skies above the Inner Hebrides usher them toward Ireland as they sailed west?
Landing on Prince Edward Island, my forefathers and foremothers created an environment much as the one they’d left. White stone homes, rock-walled pastures, and the sea, lulling them to sleep with its siren songs, perhaps made them dream of home.
How far is the land to which I go?
Can I fly in the air
And soar to and fro?
In search for the place, I long to know?
Does it span raging seas
Toward a land green and fair?
For heaven awaits my presence there.
~ j. m. mirich
What causes you to long for the familiar? What place beckons to you? Is it a distant memory or the longed-for entrance into the home God has created for His children?
Have bags will travel should be Jeanette-Marie Mirich’s life’s theme. She moved twenty-two times before settling in her first home. An Oregonian by birth and who graduated with a B.S. degree in education from Portland State University, Jeanette has swum in the Ligurian Sea, collected shells and sea glass along the Indian Ocean, Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean Oceans, Straits of Malacca, Gulf of Mexico and the Andaman Sea. Her peripatetic lifestyle is courtesy of the U.S. Air Force and her husband’s medical training.
Passionate about needs in the third world after living in Thailand during her husband’s deployment, she has accompanied her husband on dozens of medical mission trips. Mother of three, Grammy to thirteen exceptional grandchildren, she travels from her Kentucky home to an Oregon cabin, scribbling poems and short stories as well as writing novels.
I shouldn’t have made the promise when Harry was dying but…
You know how it is. You want to please when the person you’ve always loved is hooked up to plastic tubing looking peaky.
Delilah Morgan, a woman of honor, is unable to ignore her promise to her husband, Harry, which leads to trouble, with a capital T. The beautiful, unassuming Delilah plans to mourn in private after Harry passed, but he had other ideas—specifically, leaving his wife in good hands and protected from the elite of their small Kentucky town. However, he neglects to include his wife in his plans.
Harry has selected local judge, Lyle Henderson, the heart-throb of most of the women in town, to court his widow. The judge acquiesces to Harry’s wishes until Henderson’s life spins into a maelstrom after the discovery of bodies in his long absent wife’s car. The police and FBI begin to suspect him of murdering his wife and her apparent lover.
Determined to clear the judge of murder, Delilah resolves to hunt down the true story. Their adventure nearly costs them their lives and leads them on what Delilah suspects is a wild-goose chase toward love. In reality, their wanderings reveal what sacrificial love can encompass.
