Last week I got down on my knees and started to clean out the junk under our guest bed. My goal was to clear out some room to put some of Rich's computer stuff under there and give our guests a little more room in the closet! We collect stuff so quickly! I make regular runs to the thrift store with donations but with a little kid you can collect stuff at an exponential rate! Any way, back to my story. As I was clearing out the last of the stuff under the bed, I noticed a small pile of picture frames way in the back. I had to lay flat, get it with my finger tips and pull it out. I was delighted what I found! It was an old frame that held a collection of family snap shots of when I was growing up. I thought, "That is where those photos went to!" Some of them I had given all hope of ever finding. When I lifted that frame up another picture fell down below. My sweet little Mary doll, who was "helping" mama, grabbed it and started studying it. It was a print of a painting that was my husband's. It was nothing fancy, just a print mounted on a piece of foam core with a few small dings in it. I remembered that he had this print in his room when I first started dating him. He had it up above his computer. All he had ever said about it, is that he really liked it. When we got married I packed it up with some other miscellaneous pictures and forgot about it. I became intrigued with it because Mary was so taken with it. All day she would not let it out of her sight. I looked it up on the Internet. It is a painting by Edmund Blair Leighton called "The Accolade" painted in 1901. When Rich got home that night I told him about finding the picture and how Mary was in love with it. I asked him when and where he got it. He said "Oh when I started working for Gitti in the fall of 2000, I found it out in the dumpster behind her shop. I really liked it and took it home. I realized that that was just 6 months before we met. The picture is of a man being dubbed a knight by a beautiful young maiden. I looked up the meaning of "accolade" and it said this: accolade n 1. strong praise or approval; acclaim 2. an award or honour 3. (Historical Terms) the ceremonial gesture used to confer knighthood, originally an embrace, now a touch on the shoulder with a sword. It also said it had to do with some one taking a stand or sticking their neck out for what was right and true. It has a very virtuous connotation. I told Rich that that picture fit what was going on in his life when he found it. He had known the Lord all his life but 4 years before I met him, he made a much stronger and closer commitment to God. He had left all his material possessions behind except his truck and the clothes on his back. He came home, lived with his parents, got completely out of debt, found a church home and served actively there. He had given up his old lifestyle of smoking and mild drinking. He then rented a house with another Christian brother. He became totally committed to God. Four years after that crossroad in his life, we met! The Lord is so good! Mary went to bed that night saying how much she liked that picture and what a great picture it was! Here it is:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. Isaiah 55:8
Have a blessed weekend my dear friends!
