|
Anyone I could engage in
learning art over the years were part of my family’s experiences as well
because I used our living room to give lessons. Art had always given me
such a relief from the unchangeable things in the world. I had a need to
share what I studied. While I was sharing with strangers my own children
were reaping the benefits of those instruction and I didn’t even know it.
Rhonda’s art work is now
evolving and coming along. She can rest an easel on the kitchen table and
work at some small canvas for hours. I won’t allow myself to remember the
time I didn’t believe she could do it.
All the dreams I wished for
my girl when I was pregnant with her somehow now are coming true, not as
far as her enjoying dancing in steel toe shoes, jumping toward a hoop with
a basketball, or swimming through waters of the Kansas Trap which were
deep, cold and visible to the very bottom. Those were only my own
pleasures and there was no way I could share that, but for art, the most
enduring and greatest of all disciplines, this could be shared.
So it is, in the evening of
my and Rhonda’s lives we are the ones who have been carried on the Hands
of our Almighty’s angels. America turned during our lifetime from a place
where those like Rhonda were shut away in lonely institutions absent from
the families they could have been there to encourage. Their beauty and
love had been left isolated from humanity where their contributions to
society might never have been realized. At this time in 2006 that has all
been changed. Families are being educated and supported in their
willingness to carry their own load and to enjoy the unseen benefits of
what the Christian Scriptures teach.
Rhonda was baptized
February 27, 1988 at Tulsa, Oklahoma after she made a study of the
scripture with the overseer, Doyle Scot, of the Fairfax congregation.
Rhonda will be 47 this year. We consider it the greatest honor to have
been privileged to have had her for this length of time.
Her Ponca name is:
Wahk-Chah-Ska, White Flower. She was named by Gramma Lucille Feathers Big
Goose. Her sister, Kay’s name, is Easch-Stah-Aunk-xthey, Sky Eyes,
Elizabeth, Kay’s daughter is named, Easch-Stah-Ne-Om-Bah, Bright Eyes.
Mark’s Ponca name is: Pon-Kah-Ska, White Ponca. This is their Native
heritage and bloodline.
A greater promise comes
from her Heavenly Father’s blessing.
Luke 11:4 reads:
4. In reply Jesus said to
them: “Go your way and report to John what you are hearing and seeing. 5.
The blind are seeing again, and the lame are walking about, the lepers are
being cleansed and the deaf are hearing, and the dead are being raised up,
and the poor are hearing the good news; 6. and happy is he that finds no
cause for stumbling in me.
This theme running through
the entire Bible sustained and brought us through the darkest of times.
Isaiah 65:25:
“The wolf and the lamb
themselves will feed as one, and the lion will eat straw just like the
bull; and as for the serpent, his food will be dust. They will do no harm
nor cause any ruin in all my holy mountain,” Jehovah has said. |
