Stick Horse Cowgirls

This is a post about a post.  My mother-in-law posted the other day at Immigrant Daughter , and in it she revealed something I only just discovered while reading it.  She did not make much of this in her post but, as you will see, I have been pondering it ever since I read it.  Here’s the much-shortened version of the back story:  My father-in-law (now gone from us for two years) was born out of wedlock in Indiana in 1924.  He was raised in foster homes, and his story is one of extremes: tragedy and redemption.  This is one of my favorite pictures of him, in my breakfast room, holding my cat.  You can read more about him on Immigrant Daughter .  He married MIL in 1949. When he was grown, with his own family (maybe in his 50’s??), he found his blood family.  After he was given to the foster system as an infant, his parents had married and had two sons—his full brothers.  His parents had both died by the time he located the family. ...

He [Jesus] answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'’" Luke 10:27 (NIV) So, Jesus, do w e have a “heart” AND a “soul” AND a “mind?”    Could it be that we could love the Lord with our minds but not our hearts?  Yes, I think this happens all the time.  Maybe most of the time. Could it be that we could love Him deeply in  our souls but not realize it in our minds?  Are these separate components but which combine to make us a whole? The verse above has been on my mind recently because, of all things, Alzheimer’s Disease.  We lost my father-in-law to Alzheimer’s not quite three years ago.  How vividly I recall the devotion of MIL to his needs; watching his fear and confusion as he began to forget; the surrealism of having him turn to me, his daughter-in-law for nearly forty years, asking, “ So, do...