Full Moon memories

I awoke to moonlight in the bathroom doorway last night. Sure enough, a beautiful, full moon hung high in the night sky.

“You sneaked up on me again,” I said.

That happens when I fail to note “full moon” on my paper calendar.

I learned to look for the full moon when Mrs. Urban, my third grade Sunday School teacher, taught that God created Earth, Moon, and the stars. Then He created man.

My Friday night Pioneer Girls teacher gifted me a huge Bible to celebrate my water baptism the same year. Although these teachers passed away long ago, my Bible remains my companion.

Albeit in pieces.

I knew nothing of constellations and Moon cycles when a child. However, the light of a full moon shining through a window often lured me outdoors. No matter the season.

I felt so small resting under the vast sky, yet significant. I knew, because my Sunday school and Pioneer Girls teachers said so, that God created every person for a purpose onto Heaven.

I didn’t understand what that meant, yet I knew children were to love and obey God’s Word, and their parents.

My goodness, how could I possibly achieve such love and obedience every day?

Verna Wilson, my Pioneer Girls teacher, would say, “We know all things work out for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.”

Since I loved God, that meant He would forgive me, use my disobedience for good and His purpose.

As I grew into a teenager, whenever I needed to escape household strife, I’d take my cocker spaniel, Sweetie, outside to stargaze in the darkness. I’d lay on the lawn, my head on Sweetie’s side, studied the sky, and determined to always trust and love God.

Eventually, the night came when I asked God what purpose lay before me when I left my family for college. Decades later, one moonlit night, after marriage, birthing three daughters and burying my firstborn, the Moon at last replied, “Write your story. Leave your legacy.”

I laid on the grass in the backyard, endless space above me and the home my husband and I had built together. What story? What legacy?

The answer came class by class, and many graded papers later, until fall, 2004. September of that year, the Oxford Leader published my first column. Other local publications also published my essays, profiles, and feature stories.

Meanwhile, I developed and taught journal writing classes throughout the Metro-Detroit area.

Dear Reader, so powerful is the pull of the moon and personal purpose that I’ve since published two novels. Once this present gardening season concludes and I park Betsy, my golf cart, in the shed with John Deere, I’ll open the file of my memoir cookbook again.

Meanwhile, I stand in moonlight, remember God’s faithfulness to me, my family and planet Earth.

And thank Him for calling us according to His purpose.

Contact Iris at irisfarmletters@gmail.com