We visited Great Smoky Mountains National Park last week. It was wonderful. Bob let me experiment with one of his cameras. I needed lots of coaching! When we created the cover for the book Poems we discovered that the iPhone photos I mainly take did not have enough dpi (dots per inch) to create a good book photo cover. So I set about learning a new skill. Tried to relax as I fudged the photo up then took it again, repeatedly.

The opening photo is from New Found Gap, elevation 5,048 feet. We had to travel there to see most of my favorite spring flowers. With global warming they had already bloomed and faded at the lower elevations. First photo is a hillside just covered by May Apples that were still in bloom.

Just before we arrived I had read this selection from The Edges of His Ways by Amy Carmichael: April 26

Sometimes we wake feeling “down,” and we feel like that all day long for no reason that we can discover, only it is so.
It is useless to try to feel different; trying does not touch feelings. It is useless to argue with oneself; feelings elude arguments. Be patient–feelings are like the mists that cover the mountains in misty weather. The mists pass; the mountains abide. Turn to your Father; tell Him you know that He loves you whether you feel it or not, and that you know that He is with you whether you feel His presence or not. “I beseech Thee,” said one long ago, “let the power of my Lord be great, according as Thou hast spoken, saying, . . .” I suggest that you ask the Holy Spirit to bring some “saying” of His to your mind that has helped you in the past. That saying wherein He has caused us to trust, “the same is my comfort in my trouble: for Thy word hath quickened me.”
Our Lord can enable us so to live that of our inward “toil and dejection” others see nothing.

“The mists pass; the mountains abide.”

I do love the writing of Amy Carmichael! The Lord can enable us so to live that others see nothing of our inward toil and dejection. I am certainly not there yet, but it is a lofty goal. Amy Carmichael suffered “For most of her life, she suffered from a nerve condition called neuralgia, which caused chronic pain, fatigue, and migraines. Then, due to a spine injury, she was bedridden and in severe pain for the last twenty years of her life.” Today Neuralgia is defined “Neuralgia is the medical term for severe, shooting pain that occurs due to a damaged or irritated nerve. Neuralgia can affect any part of the body, causing mild to severe pain.”

Then a spine injury that left her bedridden for 20 years?!? I can hardly imagine. Yet she carried on her Christian ministry in India and wrote booklets that comfort us even to this day.

Lord, thank you for her life and writings. Thank you that she is no longer suffering with pain. Bless her memory I pray.