Epiphany of Blessings

I awoke at the magic hour of 3 am on January 6th..Epiphany... filled to the brim and overflowing with images of love and blessings, new opportunities for rich, and colorful transitions... for my life and for others. I had ideas for creating magical things, and filling them with love.

So many opportunities for understandings, and for growth, for a lot of change and many transitions, and the flow of creation and inspirational manifestation.  I simply combine the energies of heart, hands, and home...with the creation of family transitions.....whether is it over the rainbow bridges of time into new dimensions of life everlasting for our elders......or the creation of new unifying elements for each, and every one of us as begin new years, new experiences, and brand new and exciting adventures.

I know in my heart of hearts that this could easily be a challenging year for our family....with both of our mothers near the end of their own earthly timelines and ready to transition into new and permanently flowing ones.

But the miracles continue!

Last week, my husband and I decided to park on a side street as we were running errands.
Some thing as simple as where one chooses to park... which street, in front of which house....became the starting point for the miracle.

As soon as we had parked and exiting from our car, a little old lady peeked out her open door and mouthed words at us. I called back reassurances as to who we were, and why we parked near her house.   We had to go up the street a bit, and close to her and her house, to hear her words as she was calling out in the tiniest of voices....

"Help me. Help me. Help me."

She was 101 years old and had been completely without heat since Christmas Eve...over one entire week. She was blind and almost deaf and didn't know how to get help except to call out from her front door She had became disoriented and couldn't remember how to do simple things..so she thought she might be having a stroke.

She couldn't phone for help because she couldn't read names or numbers from her own address book or see the numbers on the phone, itself and she didn't think to count them by touch and hope for 911 if worse came to worse desperation. She was truly hyperthermic....and she was barefoot in the freezing temps of the home. I saw a pair of fuzzy socks in her living room and tried to coax her into letting me put them on her...and she said she was fine, not cold at all. A terrible sign! We had heavy coats and multiple layers on and we were freezing!

Because I had just read the newest test for 'How to tell if someone is having a stroke', the very day before!..I went through it all. Trying to make her smile,to see if her facial features were off kilter and crooked,  testing her limbs on either side looking for loss of strength and responses. Asking many, many questions from her memory of people, dates, and time to see if she was alert and functioning.

We debated over 911 but it was not a true emergency for this very second kind of situation. She was not comatose and very bright and articulate. We just needed to get her warmed up in a super hurry! With a warm hat, and putting her into a coat, and the fuzzy socks and then borrowing electric heaters from a neighbor, we then moved on to getting her help.   We found and went through her address book and discovered the name of one of her two nephews. He was a 78 year old nephew near Portland an hour or so away, and called him. We stayed two more hours until he and his wife finally arrived and heard all of Kathryn's stories as we waited for them.

Her oil furnace had run dry on Christmas Eve... ..they were letting it get all used up so as to install a new furnace and needed it empty, first. Unfortunately it went dry 4 days after a different 60 year old nephew and his wife..who had been staying with her..left on a holiday vacation on Dec. 15th. . And with no one having checked on her since Dec. 15.....she was truly in dire straits. 16 days alone. 7 days without heat.

So with the first and nearest nephew's arrival, they contacted the oil company and got her 100 gallons of oil within half an hour.....and a warm and toasty house almost immediately after than. We kept the automatic electric heater on until all was fully up to temperature inside.  We got her warm, alerted a neighbor of her situation, made her only relatives aware of her situation...and I made a dear new friend.

Epiphanies manifest opportunities and understandings and blessings flow in, and they flow out from us once again to others.

Keep the love and the opportunities going and don't let fear of the unknown keep you from doing that which you were put in this place, and this time, to do!

Miracles are given opportunities to manifest!

shown at top:
My very newest little 9" x 9" art quilt with freely cut fabrics and raw edge applique. The bit of aqua blue is of the high, or dragon heart of courage, and the rose pinks and amethysts of the experiencing and healing heart of love made manifest. They symbolic little dragonfly reminds us always to see beyond the 'maya' or world of illusion and into the world not yet manifest in the dreamtime of all things past, present, and future made possible.  It joins my other small collection of art quilts upon a wall in my sewing loft and reminds me always of seeing through, and beyond appearances ...to find the truth within.


Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska and all of her AAQI Quilting. Sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns and encouraging others to join in the Liberated Quilting Challenge and make or donate small art quilts to the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!