Symphony of beauty☀️🙏🏻

‘If you have hope; this will make you cheerful. Do not give up if trials come and keep praying’. (Romans 12:12)

She is beautiful beyond words. The kind of beauty that never fades. She made me some cookies and if I like them she will make me some more. She says that, every time she gifts me something delicious. 

‘You have a poor mother in your own country and you have a poor mother here’, I say laughingly. ‘Too bad you do not have just one rich mother’.

‘I love my poor mothers. I thank God for you both all the time’, she replies sweetly, sincerely. 

As we go our separate ways, we look back and wave until we are out of sight to one another. Same every time. Just like my dear Mom and I used to do way back then.

First time our paths crossed was in the Charity shop, she cried continuously. Somehow something made us laugh, we do not remember what. At that moment her tears dried, she often tells me. She chose a brown coat. Oh how badly she needed a warm coat. 

Today as Storm Ashley rages, she is wearing that same brown coat.

Hard to take in how much she has suffered in her own country and in her gruelling journey to this place of rest and renewal. Her smile is like a thousand suns. Her heart is bigger than Ireland.

As Pope Benedict XV1 reminds us so powerfully;

‘We were not made for comfort. We were made for greatness’.