Nancy Parker Brummett

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Nancy

The Glory Walk

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In her recent book Waymaker author Ann Voscamp calls the times she goes out to walk in nature her “glory walks,” meaning it’s when she can just bask in the natural beauty of God’s creation and absorb it into her soul. My early morning walks this summer have been just that, so I’m savoring these late summer mornings before the temperature drops and the wind howls.

I usually come home from a glory walk having developed a new perspective, sorted out a problem, or gleaned new insight into life’s mysteries. One day recently I spied two tiny baby rabbits nibbling grass beside the sidewalk. When my big, scary black shadow covered them, their mother scurried out of the brush and herded them back to safety. I wouldn’t have hurt them for the world, but she didn’t know that. That morning as I walked I prayed for all the young moms in our family and church trying to protect their offspring from the evils of our current culture. Not a prayer that would have come to mind without my walk, but a needed one.

This morning’s walk was different—a new route and an additional kind of glory. After a too-early appointment for a bone density scan, I decided to walk around the big lake in a city park in our town. The city’s done a wonderful job of maintaining the park, but still it is in a sketchier part of town than I usually navigate alone so I pulled up to the lake, locked the car, and set out with a bit of trepidation.

I didn’t walk far before my fears were forgotten. The lake was glistening in the sun, the geese were plentiful, and the mountain peaks were glorious. I passed other walkers with dogs and exchanged pleasantries. As I passed by a bench where a young man was sitting near an elderly woman in a wheelchair I heard him remark, “See grandma, all these people are walking to stay fit.” I paused and turned toward them. “That reminds me of a sign I just saw in my doctor’s office,” I said. “It read, ‘I AM in shape. ROUND is a shape!’” That gave them both a good laugh and I was glad I could brighten their morning.

As I made my way toward the far side of the lake I passed a few homeless people, including a young man trying to teach himself to jump rope with a long piece of black cable. I called out a “good for you!” as I passed.

Suddenly this was beginning to feel more like a pilgrimage than a glory walk, so I wasn’t surprised when on the far side of the lake I encountered a group of young Black men and women playing by the shore with an older dog and a passel of puppies. One young man with dreadlocks to his waist was holding two of the cutest puppies I’ve seen in a long time. I might have nodded and walked on, but then I’m reading Senator Tim Scott’s new book America, A Redemption Story. In it he says if we are ever going to heal the racial or political divides in this country, we can’t depend on the government to do it. We each have to do some small thing to make a difference each and every day.

That message speaks to my heart, so rather than nod and pass by, believing they would have no interest in talking to an old white woman, I approached the group and began fawning over and petting the puppies. After a few minutes I excused myself and said, “I can’t stay or I’ll be begging to take one of those puppies home, and neither my cat nor my husband would be happy about that!” We all laughed and waved as I walked away.

Who’s next, Lord? I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. Ahead of me I saw a large Black man standing under a canopy of oak trees to the right of the sidewalk. As I approached I heard him call out, “Come and get it, I ain’t comin’ to you!” Assuming he was calling a dog, I stopped to see if I could spot the pooch. Soon I realized he was holding an open bag of peanuts, and he was addressing six or eight squirrels who were leaping about on the grass in front of him. Another day I might not have approached him, but emboldened by Scott’s book and my experience with the puppy posse, I struck up a conversation by saying something obvious like, “Oh, you’re feeding the squirrels!”

“Yes’m,” he replied. “They know I’m comin’ every day and they wait here for me.” We chatted a bit and as I started to walk away he called out, “Mam, will you pray for me? My name’s Charles and I’m goin’ through some trials. Will you pray for me?”

“I will, Charles. I promise!” I called back to him. I don’t know why he pegged me as a woman who prayed, but for the rest of the walk to my car I asked the Lord to bless Charles, a modern-day St. Francis of Assisi. “Lord, I don’t know what trials Charles is facing, but you do. Be with him today, Lord. Protect him and give him your peace.”

As with most glory walks, at the end of this one I felt blessed and changed. Faith is greater than fear. To God be the glory!

Find Your Friends

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A needlepoint sampler I inherited was stitched by a great aunt in 1933 and reads, “To a friend’s house the road is never long.” The road my husband and I took from Colorado Springs, CO, to Montrose, CO, to see my friend Betty is 230.9 miles long, the estimated time extended by construction delays in the Black Canyon. It felt long that day. So when we pulled into Betty’s driveway and saw her pretty home with the hanging flower basket and manicured yard, I breathed a sigh of relief. When we stepped inside to be greeted by Betty sitting in her favorite recliner, the road no longer seemed long at all.

Elizabeth Van Liere (Betty) and I met many years ago at a writer’s conference although neither of us can remember exactly which one. We just remember that we immediately “clicked,” having our love for writing and our love for the Lord in common. She published her first book, Dare to Live, Devotions for Those Over the Hill, Not Under It!, in 2011 at the age of 87. Her second book, Dare to Laugh, Devotions for Those Full of Years, was released four years later.

Available through Iron Stream Media or Amazon.com.

Yet Betty had been writing and publishing articles, poems, children’s stories and devotions in periodicals for at least 60 years before venturing into book publishing. “The first little story I wrote was about a rooster,” Betty recalls, “and I sold it to Jack and Jill Magazine.”

I knew Betty to be a faithful attender of writer’s conferences, but when I asked her if she’d ever had any formal education to prepare her for her life as a writer she quipped, “No. I was born smart.” Clearly, that’s true. God also gave her the gift of laughter making her a delight to be around. Her witticisms have often appeared in the comments she consistently adds to my blog posts, and she’s encouraged me in my writing time and again. Recently she shared news of my new book, The Hope of Glory, Volume Two, with ladies at her church.

When I told Betty that we wanted to stop in to see her and gave her the date she said, “OK, I’ll try to hang on.” We’re so glad she did! It was a joy to just sit and visit about her life, learning things I never gleaned from the warm relationship we’ve developed over email and Facebook these many years. I learned she was born and raised in Holland, MI, and that she and her husband Chet visited Germany, lived in Colorado, New Mexico and Oregon, and wintered in Mexico for years before his death from cancer in 1991. Her family now consists of their four grown children, 10 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren. She and her daughter Joanne share the home in Montrose.

While her husband pursued a career in the automotive industry, Betty often worked in high school libraries in towns where they lived, and I can’t imagine a better fit for her. When I asked her what’s next, she said, “I’m going to go up, that’s what!” pointing up to heaven. She will be 99 in November.

I recently read a book by Jennie Allen titled Find Your People. In it she encourages readers to experience the power of friendship as it was meant to be; to go out of their way to find and maintain friendships. I’m so glad I found Betty.

Coupon Clipping

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My name is Nancy and I’m a coupon clipper. Yes, I admit it. For most of my adult life I’ve been addicted to picking up a pair of scissors and clipping coupons I think I might be able to use from any and all sources. BOGOs are a definite trigger for me (buy one get one free!), so those never go unclipped.

Do I use these coupons? Well, sometimes! I organize them by category and keep them in a small purse in my car. On a good day I remember to sort through the food coupons before going into the grocery store and take the ones correlating to something on my list. Of course I’m also guilty of buying something I didn’t really need just because I have a coupon for it, so that may negate some of the savings I’ve accumulated over the years.

When I worked at Current, Inc., in the eighties and nineties, we even sold a product for organizing coupons. A coupon clipper’s delight, it was a pouch that fit over the edge of the shopping cart and had preprinted dividers to keep each category easy to find.

Even this handy tool couldn’t prevent the two downfalls of the coupon clipper however: letting the coupons expire before using them or forgetting to turn valid ones in to the cashier when you check out! I confess to being guilty of both and yes, I’ve been so frustrated with myself for not using a coupon I intended to use that I’ve gone back to the store with the receipt and coupon in hand and asked for a refund. It’s not the money, it’s the principle!

With food prices skyrocketing, coupons may become more of a necessity. But to all coupon clippers everywhere, may I say the times they are a changin’! When I took a friend recovering from surgery to do her grocery shopping, she was vigilant about finding the items for which she had a coupon, but I never saw her hand over the coveted clip-outs to the cashier.

“Did you forget to use your coupons?” I asked, hoping to spare her the coupon clipper’s contrition. “Oh, they’re all on my phone so they went through automatically,” she said.

What? Yes, I’d seen the grocery store ads for mobile apps that allowed you to access coupons, but I never imagined that practice would be so easy, or that it could replace having clipped-out coupons completely. I stood amazed.

So now that’s my goal. Sorry, scissors. I may not be needing you as much. Someday soon I, too, may waltz through the grocery store coupon-less, phone in hand. I know the people behind me in line will be glad I’m speeding up the check-out process. They’ll no longer have to overhear the cashier telling me, “Sorry, you had to buy three to get one free,” or “this one’s expired” as she hands the coupons back to me. My, oh my. What will they think of next?

The Smoky Hills

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This week I’ll be spending a few days in the Smokies, so I revisited this column I wrote for the Gazette in Colorado Springs 26 years ago. Hope you enjoy your visit too!

Growing up in East Tennessee, my definition of mountains began and ended with the Appalachians, specifically Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Whenever I travel back in that direction I always watch for the rounded green summits veiled in blue haze from the window of the airplane. When I see the mountains, I know I’ll soon be home.

As a Girl Scout on a day hike or a young woman on a backpacking adventure, those peaks always seemed plenty high to me, so I was a bit shocked when my Colorado husband said, “you mean the smoky hills” when I spoke to him of my native mountains.

It’s true the Smokies will never “measure up” to the Rockies. Although the national park encompasses the highest portion of the Appalachian range, Clingmans Dome is the highest of the 16 peaks over 6,000 feet, and it only measures 6,642. There are no fourteeners in the Smokies.

The Cherokee Indians named the mountain range that was their home Great Smoky because of the haze that continuously nestles in the valleys and glistens in the morning sunrise. The mist comes from the dense vegetation, and the park still boasts 150 species of trees and over 2,000 species of plant life, including the white-blossomed rhododendron, pink azalea, and myriad of ferns and wildflowers that I remember lining the moist mountain paths.

It’s impossible for me to think back to hiking the trails of the Smokies without remembering the cool smell of green, or my delight at discovering a “jack in the pulpit” nestled amongst the wildflowers.

Most summer, Sunday afternoons when I was little my family drove to the mountains to cool off. We stopped for a big lunch at the Apple Tree Inn in Pigeon Forge, a sleepy little town before Dolly Parton built Dollywood and all the other tourist attractions sprang up. Then we’d roll down the windows in the station wagon and take the windy road through Gatlinburg and all the way to the top of Clingmans Dome. My dad would drop a quarter in the long-range binoculars and my sisters and I would take turns standing on “tippytoe” to see all the way to Virginia.

A few descendants of old mountain families still live in pockets within the park, having managed to get lifetime leases from the park service when the land was claimed by the government in 1934. But most of the residents then and now are the white-tailed deer, raccoons, foxes, and black bears that call the Smokies home.

Before tourists were discouraged from interacting with wildlife, we used to get out of the car whenever we saw a bear and run to toss it stale Ritz crackers or take its photo. At school each Monday there would be a competition as to who had seen the most bears the day before. Twenty-one is a record I remember claiming.

Only in the Smokies can you rock on the front porch of a rustic cabin and listen to the Roaring Fork river dance around the boulders as you “soak in” the mountains. While I may marvel at the Rockies, I can’t say that I ever remember “soaking them in” as I always have the Smokies.

Gentle, green, smoky hills, you aren’t tall, but you are beautiful to behold.

All photos courtesy of Steve Hixon, www.stevehixonphotography.com.

The Flower Fields

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One can grow very weary waiting for spring to bloom in Colorado, so imagine my delight when we visited The Flower Fields in Carlsbad, California, during peak season. We went to California the end of April to meet up with friends and celebrate my husband Jim’s 75th birthday, but strolling through fields of flowers while there was certainly a highlight.

The 50 acres at Carlsbad Ranch are dedicated to growing 13 colors of Ranunculus flowers (in the buttercup family) both to sell and for the production of bulbs. According to the website, “The fields today are a direct result of nearly 85 years of floral cultivation that began with Luther Gage, an early settler and horticulturist that settled in the area in the early 1920’s. Mr. Gage brought Ranunculus seeds to the area and began growing them in his fields next to Frank Frazee’s small vegetable farm in South Oceanside. In 1933 Frank Frazee also started growing Ranunculus and introduced his son Edwin to the art of seeding, cultivating and irrigating the pretty but not yet popular flower.”

What today’s visitors see from March through mid-May is a legacy of beauty for sure. In addition to the Ranunculus fields, specialty and artistic gardens with a variety of flowers grace the property. A desirable event venue for weddings and other events, the property also includes a pavilion, a demonstration garden, a sweet pea maze, and fun activities for kids on school field trips. We got to listen in as a performer delighted a group of kindergartners with his catchy song, “Dirt Made My Lunch.” Such a fun way to learn about agriculture!

Of course there’s also an extensive garden center on the property and an irresistible gift shop. I guess hope truly does spring eternal, because I bought a package of Ranunculus bulbs to try in my backyard garden. The master gardener there assured me they would do just fine in Colorado. Mmmhmm.

Whether my bulbs bloom, I’m sure to be California dreamin’ about The Flower Fields for some time. So glad I can say, “Been there. Got the T-shirt!”

 

You’re Invited to a Book Signing!

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(Colorado Springs and Denver friends, this is mostly for you! Hope you can stop by. I know you will enjoy meeting Lois. She turned 87 on Easter. This is her third book and she has two more in the works!)

Legend’s resident author Lois Johnson Rew and Bible study leader Nancy Parker Brummett invite you to join them at a Book Signing Event introducing their new book releases. Lois will be signing her historical fiction novel, The Carnelian Ring, and Nancy will be signing her devotional guide for older adults, The Hope of Glory, Volume Two. Both authors will have previously published titles available for purchase as well. (Cash or check only please.)

 

When: Saturday, April 23

Time: 1:30 to 3:30 PM

Where: In the Front Lobby of Legend Assisted Living

2368 Research Parkway, Colorado Springs, CO 80920

 

Refreshments will be served and we look forward to seeing you there!

 

Directions: You can’t turn in to Legend going up the hill on Research. The best way to come is to get off I-25 at Briargate Parkway, then go up the hill to Chapel Hills Drive and turn right. Go to Research and turn right. The first right turn off Research is Legend Assisted Living.