Heart of Gold

Today is suppose to be gorgeous out. We will see.

Laurel's teachers are coming out to the house to visit us. Laurel got to meet her new teacher, and it's a woman I've known since I was really little. She looks at me and says, "You look awfully familiar." "Yes, I am Tonie's daughter." (No, I didn't say Mel...) "Melanie? No way! I am old enough already!" It'll be interesting how Laurel will do this year. This teacher has a tendency to be negative, but I think it will do Laurel some good to start to deal with people in a positive manner, who don't tend to be so. Especially in authority.

That's one of those things I learned in my life that has helped me a lot. Realizing the authority that has been put over me, and respecting it. I think it really stemmed from starting to care about elections when I got old enough to vote and noticing other areas of my life which I was being disrespectful. I will be honest. I disagree with a lot of what Gov. Granholm does and says, but she has been put into authority for my state for a reason. I respect the fact that God has given her the opportunity to serve the people of Michigan. My mouth tends to get me into trouble (doesn't it all of us???) in this area, but sometimes you have to respect the office, if you don't respect the person. She has a hard job. No one can deny that.

When I was a teen, our church had a change of pastors. I realize this happens quite often for some churches, but this pastor had been there for years on end. And it divided the church over a stupid matter that had happened in the church. I believed in that pastor, and in my stubbornness I decided that I wasn't going to like any pastor they put into office after that. Just to be stubborn.

We had an interim pastor put in, and I rejected him simply because he wasn't my old pastor. I totally disrespected him, in every way possible. I was a pretty stubborn kid.

But I wanted a job like most teens do. The pastors wife just happened to ask me to clean her house, once a week, usually on Saturday mornings. So the pastor would come home for lunch and we would all sit around the table and eat. He would ask me questions and talk about different things, most of which I don't remember now. Slowly I found that I actually like the man, he wasn't the horrible beast I had imagined he would be. He always said, "The best times and talks we ever had with our family is around the dinner table. My family and I would sit for hours just talking with each other after we had eaten." And true to his word, when I would work there, after we had eaten lunch, we would take some time afterwards and talk. It was the best time. It's one of those frozen memories in my heart.

Now this pastor was brutally honest. He would talk openly about even the sensitive issues. He loved with his whole heart and wasn't choosy who he loved. Where the first pastor bowed out, this pastor stood and guided our church, no matter what other people said about him.

I admire his integrity. I may of said that when I turned 18 I started to respect authority, but I admit that it started much earlier than that.

I actually wrote a song about him. Here's the lyrics.

Heart of Gold
I once knew a man with a heart of gold, he walked with God by his side.
He knew when he needed help with his life, and I stood and watched.
As he knelt and prayed, he prayed for my soul that I would seek God's face.
As I watched him pray, God wanted me to see the fullness of His grace.

This man loved to listen to the lives of other men, and tell stories of his youth.
He spoke of integrity and morals he never had, until he sought God's only truth.
And he wept and prayed with all the people that he touched, he wanted them to see God's place.
And I wasn't the only one he wanted to see, God was also seeking my face.

And one day he fell like all men do, he wasn't yet lost to this life.
He called me to help and this is what he said he saw while he slept last night.
"I'd walked into the light and saw God's face, and now I'm going to go home."
And when he died then I knelt and prayed so I wouldn't have to face it alone.

I don't have to face it alone.

So I wept that night and prayed to this God that he wept and prayed to before.
I'm sure he prayed for my life to reflect the beauty of God's pure heart of gold.

God's man has a heart of gold.
Of gold...
I hope to have the heart of gold.


That's it. Maybe one day I'll get a recording up here, quite honestly I don't know how, and haven't really looked.

Sorry for the long post. It seems kind of preachy and discombobulated, all at the same time.