Lawrence Little Joins Us Around the Table

After our homeless friend, Lawrence Little, finished shoveling, Husband Goose invited him in for some hot chocolate. Lawrence was grateful! We offered him something to eat also, but he had already eaten his dinner. So we sat around the kitchen table visiting about this and that.

Lawrence Little has family in the area, brothers and sisters, but they are not closely in touch with one another. His dear mother lives in Vance, Mississippi, but he couldn’t remember the last time he saw her. His father left the family when Lawrence was just five. He has only two memories of his father — one memory was of his father beating up his mother. He wistfully mentioned that someday it’d be nice to get a bus fare to go and see her…

We talked a lot about God. We talked about Lawrence’s faith — that even though he is homeless and the days are hard and the nights are dangerous and the winter is cold, God is still good and God is always with him.

He told a story about a lady he met who didn’t believe much in God or His love. “Where’s your God?” she asked. Lawrence pointed to the grass, to the sky, to the trees, to people walking around, to cars driving by. “My God is alive and He’s all around me,” he explained to the lady. “If not for my God, I would be under the ground and not be seeing all that is around me.”

Wanting to prove God’s existence even further, Lawrence began to audibly pray that someone on the street would ask him to shovel right there in front of the unbelieving lady. Up walked a man who said that he’d pay Lawrence $60 to shovel his front and back sidewalks and driveway! The lady’s eyes got big and round as she witnessed an answer to Lawrence’s prayer right then and there.

After finishing his hot chocolate, Lawrence asked what time it was and proceeded to hug us all goodbye. We told him that we hoped we would see him in Free Church the very next day…

Did Lawrence meet us at church? Will he find shelter and a hot meal somewhere down the road? Is there real hope for chronically homeless people like Lawrence?

Please come back next time to hear the REST of the story…

Not Nervous At All

The young and beautiful sister of Mother Goose is celebrating a birthday today! My oh my gooseness how the time flies…

Though it was 1964, it seems like yesterday that Dad drove my brother and me to the parking lot of the hospital in Bemidji, Minnesota, pointed up at a window on the fourth floor and said, “That’s where your mother and your new baby sister are. They’ll be home in a few days.” Dana and I looked at that window and then at each other in wonder — as in “I wonder how THAT happened?”

And in fact, it was just yesterday that our dear sister was back in the hospital though not being born this time. She arrived at the Bigfork Valley Hospital bright and early to participate in her very own Radiofrequency Neurotomy procedure.

They got a little snow the day before…

Bunn has been waiting and preparing for this procedure for months. For many years, she has suffered acute and chronic back pain as a result of a crazy life and arthritis. She had tried many of the traditional conservative treatments options to no avail. Physical therapists, chiropractors, and various medical practitioners had all done what they could to help her pain, but the arthritis grew worse and the pain became excruciating. No amount of physical therapy or anti-inflammatory medications could ease her suffering. Would she need back surgery? Was that the only option left to my sister?

Thankfully, the answer was no.

She became acquainted with the very promising work Dr. Paul Olson at Bigfork Valley. She has been diligently working with a biofeedback technician named Marlene who has helped her with relaxation methods and introduced her to the wonders of Alpha-Stim, a very interesting therapy for depression, anxiety, chronic pain and PTSD. Bunn has also benefited from self-hypnosis and finding her “happy place”.

Mother Goose would like to ask her all of her faithful readers, “Where is YOUR happy place? Where do you go in your mind when you need to relax and delve into the peaceful places of your heart?”

Anyway, back to my long and winding story…

So, Bunn was not nervous at all as she walked through the friendly doors of the medical facility yesterday. She was well-informed about the procedure and confident in the good doctor’s skills. She was well-medicated, and easily persuaded of the compassion of the nurses. She was covered in prayer and psychologically armed with this important conviction:

“The needles will slide into your skin as easily as butter.”

Mother Goose is not entirely knowledgeable or educated about the basic procedure of rhizotomy, which uses radio signals to cauterize the nerves bundled around the arthritic joints in the spine. I have only been told several times that the doctor would insert several large needles into her back bone area where the pain from years of trouble have taken their toll on her joints.

By noon, she was released from the hospital and happily reunited with her dear husband, Allen and special pup, Dusty.

She is miraculously pain-free!

And today, we celebrate her birth and the first forty-nine years of her life!

Mother Goose is convinced that this special sister will thoroughly enjoy her next fifty years and beyond now that the pain in her back is gone. She can actually stand up, walk, sit, lie down, cook and LIVE without that chronic and acute pain.

I hope that if you know somebody who suffers from serious back pain (or other types of pain!), you’ll remember this story from Mother Goose and share the good news that there is always hope, always a healthy solution — there can be real healing!

We say “Thank you Jesus” and “Thank You Dr. Olson” for giving Bunn back her life.

The beautiful sister of Mother Goose.

Deconstruct Pancakes with Mother Goose

This morning Mother Goose performed a miracle for her family. We were all very hungry for some bacon and some apples. But the problem was that all of the apples and bacon were in these pancakes.

How will we get the bacon and apples out of these pancakes?

I shook them and tossed them up in the air, but couldn’t get the yummy stuff out of them. Then I thought, “Hmmm…maybe if I put them into this electric skillet. Electricity can work some powerful stuff — maybe it will pull the bacon and apples out of the cakes.”

The power of electricity in action!

And voila! The voltage topped over 5000 watts, but we succeeded in pulling the bacon out of the pancake. We were so happy!

Bacon extraction successful.

We put the bacon into a frying pan to make it soft and pliable.

Soft and pliable bacon.

And then the chopped apples were shocked out of the pancakes and landed on my cutting board in a neat pile along with some butter and some pancake mix.

Miracles still happen!

After that, it was a simple matter to press the apple chunks together with the skins into a nice firm ball. Mother Goose is quite pleased with the results, and her family is very happy this morning.

Three stacked apples plus some Metamucil equals One Happy Family

And that’s a blessing!