Thursday, September 17, 2020
Beverly Everett
Grow
When I saw the verb “Grow” it first reminded me of helping to plant a new garden for our front yard right after Easter. But that didn’t seem to be an interesting reflection, so I changed to more words that can belong to Grow.
My husband and I hunkered down and stayed home- except for necessities and walks outdoors because of the pandemic. After a while I needed something to do.
One way of my coping is reading, and since I would be having a lot of time, I decided that I should now start reading books that my mother had given to me several years ago. Many years before that she began to delve into genealogy and history. She talked to me about it over the years, but it seemed to me that I could not really keep many of her memories in my head because my memory was packed with my medical knowledge. So now was the time to begin those books!
Our family lived in Aroostook County, Maine and nearly all of my relatives and ancestors had been living there for over one hundred and fifty years, as the territory opened up. I read books about the Ashburton-Webster Treaty of 1842, which finally negotiated the border between Maine and Canada along the St. John River, and then I moved on to a book on logging that lasted over 100 years in the County. I have old family pictures, and my mother made genealogy trees and knew where everyone lived and came from. I speak daily to my mother, who is living in a retirement community in isolation lock-down, and for several weeks we discussed the history of where we came from and who our ancestors were. These books and chats expanded my knowledge and I grew more in understanding our ancestors and how they ended up in northern Maine, how they settled and lived, and what they did.
Another occurrence of growing also began in the spring, my brother began to use Zoom meetings with Mom and I, so we could be together virtually at least once a week, and then going to twice in a week. As these chats moved on, my brother’s wife and my husband Jack got in on the meetings. Doing this really made us all come together, as our family is not very large. So growing all together has made us a lot more close than before this pandemic, and I am looking forward to get us all together in person when we (hopefully) can.
And now, all these months have come and gone, but I miss being in church. I listen to the virtual Sunday church and I began to email them to my mother. We talk about the services and as we did this I realized that I am growing in my faith. I pray that the pandemic will not become a second wave of the novel coronavirus and that we may have vaccines to create immunity. And as I see chaos and division around our country I pray that the future will be better and that we will grow in strength and community.
2 Thessalonians 1-3
“We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, as is fitting, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. “
So one more thing about Grow however -the garden plants are thriving!