Lately I've been thinking on my heritage. I'm only going back three generations but I am remembering how much the Lord has used this "place" during so many years of my life. My grandfather owned the farm that adjoins Darling Hill, his family property used to include all of the hill, actually. Anyone who knows my mother knows that it was her job, as a young girl, to come up through the field (which is all forest now) to the top of Darling Hill to retrieve the cows each night. She was to gather them up and herd them down, over the first brook, "where they'd always wander up and take a long drink, then I'd have to get them all headed down the hill again...only to come to the second brook, where they would walk up through the water to drink some more..." this is a typical rendition of how Mom will tell it.
When I was ten years old my father bought the Darling Hill piece from Grandpa. Up until then I had spent SO MANY hours and whole weeks at my grandparents home. Through those years I'd stayed close to the house; only wandering from the brook above the barn, but as far away as three or four houses down from their place, still IN the brook. Grammy would pack me a lunch that would feed five people and whole days would be spent building dams, washing my hair at the bridge, skipping stones and trying to catch fish with a safety pin tied to a line on my pole. As I got older though, my long walks would always land me on the top of Darling Hill; sometimes with one of my girlfriends, sometimes by myself. These memories have an amazing sense of "place" to me and I thank the Lord for the experiences.
As I was reading from Psalm 119 today, I came upon verse 54 which reads, "Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." The Lord reminded me that He has lead me all the way through these years of my life. I have the privilege of being lead by God's Word (His statutes) through the years of my pilgrimage, or "wandering", eventually to end up in my heavenly home. I studied the word "house" from the Hebrew lexicon and it is the word for "place", "daughter" and "family". I'm glad for His leading through, first my grandfather's life, then my mother's (and father's, of course) and my life. God used this house of my pilgrimage to make me into the person I am today.
On Darling Hill there is a rock, a piece of ledge, that my mother refers to as her dreaming rock, or praying rock. It is here that she would sit for a while when she would come for the cows. It is directly across from where her new house stands today, and at 82, she still sits on that rock almost daily, to pray and reflect. The following is a poem that I have written, with her in mind:
My Mother's Rock
I sit on the ledge where sat a young girl long ago.
Dreams swirled around her head as hair did 'round her face.
Her eyes of faith looked out toward the distant ridges;
Prayers were spoken from silent lips
while she perched for long periods on her daily mission of herding the cows home for their rest.
The rock is warm in the late day sun.
An hospitable resting place that spans the years;
Here is where children play.
lovers cuddle, campers picnic and hikers gaze
out over the tops of mountains and into Mill Village, below.
I see the young girl rounding up the herd, heading them down toward the farm.
She is running through the lower gate,
jumping over the bushes now.
While I sit on my mother's rock.
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