To Carry Their Own Load

Anyone engaged 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 always gave me such relief from the unchangeable things in the world. I had a need to share my skills of things studied. While I was sharing with strangers my own children were reaping the benefits of those instructions and I didn’t even know it.

"I want to paint!" Rhonda requested from me something I just wasn’t able or prepared to believe might happen. How could she? Her hands were crippled and she could barely hold silverware with which to eat.

I set the canvas, brushes, paper towel for wiping her brush, and paints in a pallette before her. My heart was heavy as I put everything in place. Rather than instruct her I simply left the room.

To see her at force to hold the brush upside down in order to make it work struck at my heart. Black despair wished to slip over me, hold me in a vise of paralyzing emotions and make this the greatest of all the disappointments suffered up until now.

"I can’t hide in the bedroom all day. Face up to this," I talked to myself.

On a small easel at the table before Rhonda was a painting of a single white flower. The background made by greying one of the primary colors from the color wheel opposite it was a perfect value balance. Needless to say, I was astonished.

There are times when the world suddenly opens up and embraces the goodness around.

"Rhonda! Rhonda! What a beautiful work." I kept repeating. If there ever was a time for tears it was then. The trouble with that was there isn’t any way I could weep not while my daughter was closely observing me.

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, I shared with my eldest daughter.

The greatest thing to see is how she teaches the children. Everyone of them have been able to produce lovely works. One even won 10th in the state for his canvas.

So it is, in the evening of my our lives Rhonda’s life as well as our own have been carried on the Hands of our Almighty’s angels along with the goodness of those earthly hands of those who helped us.

America turned during our lifetime from a place where those like Rhonda were shut away in lonely institutions absent from the families who could have been there to encourage. Their untapped gifts isolated from humanity where their contributions to society might never have been realized.

At this time in 2012 that has all 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 54 in this year of 2012. 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, after her ancestor, full Native American and a medical doctor.

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 with promises like this:

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.