(cross posted from my studio newsletter, dated yesterday December 1)

At 10:21 pm on Thanksgiving evening, as I was laying in bed (early for me) exhausted by so much, I heard my cell phone ringing. I looked at it, and was surprised to see that it was a very elderly woman–a repeat customer over many years–ringing my phone.

“This is so odd,” I thought to myself.

The woman, who is 93 years old, lives in another state. I had not heard from her for quite some time, around May of 2023 to be precise. Whenever we encounter unusual behavior from a very elderly person, sometimes we may wonder about possibilities…

I mean, it was very late at night to receive a business call, and on Thanksgiving Day, no less.

I did not answer the call, and then two minutes later she called a second time. I also did not answer that call.

My mind went to the possibility that somehow she was either accidentally dialing me–perhaps she had me in some call history, who knows–or that she had no idea the day, or especially, the time of night.

I felt uneasy.

I felt uneasy because I specifically remember my last interaction with her for business. In my client files as I search her name this afternoon, I find that I go back with her nearly 25 years, possibly over twenty-five years. At the bottom of this writing, I have put some of the file work I retained (and redacted her last name) from the personalized orders. I kind of think that she first contacted me prior to her 50th anniversary and had ordered a “Cord of Three Strands” from me.

Back in those days–unlike today–it was my most popular item and I was routinely contacted by new customers.

These new customers would find me through my website–back when Google was “fair” in search results–or customers came through Sandy Cove Conference Center in Northeast, MD, or through any one of a handful of small, privately owned Christian Bookstores that put my sample wedding/anniversary gift on display and took orders, and kept a commission fee.

These days, most “Christian bookstores” are part of huge chains, and the local managers have no authority to take on the work of a local Christian artist. I learned this when I moved to Alabama and approached several stores down there, and the economic factors that have forced most small, privately owned Christian bookstores out of business has only deepened during the past few decades.

Perhaps here in Pennsylvania there still exist some small Christian bookstores, but I literally do not have the time nor resources right now to explore that. I have too many other immediate urgencies before me, and too many other “more likely” yet “not effective” means of communicating/promoting what I currently need–sales, sales, sales.

But, back to dear Virginia.

Because I periodically hear from her when she has another grown grandchild getting married and wants to order a “Cord of Three Strands” piece (or once, “These Hands”) from me, I have her in my cell phone contacts.

For the third time, at 10:23 pm on Thanksgiving Day, dear Virginia called again and this time, she left a voicemail.

I was feeling uneasy for several reasons.

Virginia was not a user of technology. And when she would periodically contact me over the years, I would discuss the order details with her and write the information down by hand. She would always describe the “lovely” Cord of Three Strands that I made for her and her late husband, David. And I knew exactly what that framing combination was.

Over the years, I had raised my prices on this piece. The first time Virginia contacted me after there had been an increase of say…$25…and I told her the new price, she recalled that it was less before–$75 to be exact. (The piece currently sells for $165). But out of kindness, care and recognition that she was older and probably on a limited income, I decided to tell her that I would do it for the same price and she was “grandfathered in.”

Back in January 2023, as I was essentially broke and preparing to go to Delaware for the funeral of a church friend around my age range who had died quite suddenly of an aneurysm, I was looking over my funds and wondering if I’d have enough gas and other money for the trip, without delaying other obligations.

As God does, He often provides for me at the very last minute, the 59th second of the 11th hour, so-to-speak. The phone rang that January 2023 and it was Virginia, wanting to order a Cord of Three Strands. I had not heard from her in probably a year or two, and I took her order as usual. But instead of giving her my address to send me a physical check, as usual, I asked if she might want to pay by credit card. I was in urgent need of cash flow, and actually, she may have suggested paying by card. I don’t quite recall.

She made the purchase of $75 using her card by phone, and I was grateful that I would immediately have sufficient gas money to get to Delaware and back. I recall being in the midst of planning to leave the very next day. And then, to my surprise, Virginia called me back fifteen minutes later and wanted to order a second “Cord of Three Strands.” According to my records, the grown grandchildren getting married and their wedding dates are shown below. I think she first ordered for the January wedding (actually, this may have been a family friend as I now think back…) and then decided to go ahead and order the second piece (well in advance) for the couple getting married that October which I believe was a grandchild.

James and Kenzie	1/23/2023	Virginia
Andrew and Laura	10/29/2023	Virginia

I was grateful for the work, and in my mind I wondered if an elderly person such as her might want to get something in advance…”just in case.” She expressed how important it was to her that each of them got the same gift from her. We never know the future, and I “think” she said this was her last grown grandchild to be married.

All was well back in early 2023 with the transaction/shipments, until about a month or so later, when I was contacted by Square payments (the app I use to process a client’s credit card) stating that the two payments totaling $150 had been deducted back out of my bank account quite suddenly. “The client” had disputed the charges.

After a large amount of my time in producing her order records, shipping records, and responding (as a vendor) to the paperwork in documenting that the charges were legitimate, it eventually got resolved.

According to Square, the charges were being disputed because the client “did not recognize the charges or the name of my business.”

In my mind, I imagined the worst. I thought, “Perhaps something has happened to Virginia, and another family member is looking at statements and can’t figure it out.”

I had left a few voicemails for Virginia with no response, which was also unlike her. I later learned she had been out of town for several weeks.

Eventually, Square put the money back into my account after I documented the charges, and also submitted her phone call record to me from the day I processed her card. Weeks later, I got a call from Virginia, and I answered the call!

When my long-term customer, Virginia, learned what had happened (I had also mailed her a letter explaining the situation and showed all the correspondence with Square) she felt horrible and apologized profusely. She had become confused seeing charges on her statement from “Visual Design Arts” (my business name) and said she would have recognized had it said “Eileen Slifer.”

She said she was going to have her son–whom I believe is a doctor–go straight down to the bank that day and take care of the matter. I explained that I had already received the funds back, but I was also relieved that the legitimacy would be doubly confirmed to Square, and that I was able to communicate what had happened.

So back to Virginia’s three calls late Thanksgiving night, 2024.

I decided to listen to her voicemail, and that is when it all became even more confusing!

You see, I was afraid perhaps she was slipping in her mind…and what if…what if she was calling me at almost 10:30 pm to place an order! At some point, I would need to wonder if she was OK, and what my response should be.

But I listened to her voicemail. One minute and sixteen seconds, as loosely follows:

“Eileen…this is Virginia ______, in Silver Spring. 301-___-_____. I just received your beautiful words, ‘These Hands,’ and how that touched my heart so deeply. I lost my precious friend, Karl _____, April the 10th. We talked on the 9th, he said, ‘until tomorrow,’ he lives in _____ he said, ‘I’m coming Sunday and we’ll have two weeks together,’ and dearest Eileen he died the next day. Oh these words are so tender…I so want to hear your voice and thank you…by hearing your voice. I love you and I thank you…thank you…God bless you…what a Thanksgiving blessing you sent me…Virginia.”

If you have read this far, you may be getting quite confused.

After hearing the voice mail, I was also confused.

You see, according to my shipping records it was in May of 2023 that I had mailed this small personal gift to Virginia. This was not an order, just something I felt inspired to send her, to touch her. It was probably around that time, actually, that she had called me when she found out the confusion with the bank charges. So here is the rest of the story.

Probably in that phone call, she and I were chatting personally, as I sometimes do with various customers I’ve come to interact with repeatedly over the years. I’ve actually never met Virginia in person, and she has a distinctive–now elderly–voice and way of speaking. There’s always a kind of urgency in her voice, or perhaps, she may have a hearing issue…I don’t know. The flow of it is somewhat breathless, urgent, and strongly expressed. (hard to articulate…it is just distinctive…and lovely!)

Somehow Virginia had told me about re-connecting with an elderly man her age she had gone to school with. He had become widowed, as she also was a widow. I remember her telling me all about him and their periodic visits…how they would talk about life and everything and take daily walks together, and cook food. I remember she told me, “I am so in love.”

I remember thinking how beautiful that was–and inspirational. There was a child-like quality to it all, and I treasured hearing this woman in her early nineties speaking like a teenager. In fact, I believe she said she felt like a teenager “in love.”

I remember talking with her about my two divorces, and some things about my feelings about my future, and my diminished prospects, that I would likely never be fortunate enough at my age to find and risk another life partner/marriage. I said my standards were now so high and specific, and I felt I might be too old. Something along those lines.

Yet Virginia’s chatty sharing with me of her experience at 92 years old, gave me some hope at that time.

I had actually been thinking about modifying my “These Hands” artwork for a “second marriage” or for elderly people who might dare give love another chance. I also had been listening to a musical artist I connected with at the time, and there was a song she sings called “Dearest Dear” that struck such a deep chord in me–of longing and desire. I had created not only a modified “These Hands” but I interspersed those same words into some other artwork with the words of that folk song (Blackest Crow/Dearest Dear).

I listed both pieces on Etsy, but have never had an order for either one.

When I got off the phone back in May 2023 with Virginia, I decided I just wanted to write her a personal letter and print out a gift of the modified “These Hands” with her name and Carl’s (I later learned it was spelled Karl) and the other poem. Actually, the time line of all this is getting fuzzy in my mind. I kind of recall being on the phone with Virginia and learning that his name was spelled differently…but I don’t know if I told her something was on the way to her, or whether she had received it and mentioned.

All so strange.

Maybe she told me of Carl in January 2023…who knows…

But why. Why was she now leaving me a voicemail on Thanksgiving night 2024 sounding as though she had just received this all in the mail?

In my imagination, I thought perhaps she had found the item in her home again, and was in fact, confused on day, time or more...and “thought” it had just come in the mail???

I was exhausted that night.

I am exhausted every night.

And, I will likely be exhausted every night for the rest of my life…trying to survive, and trying to navigate my “new life.”

Trying to navigate multiple life/family situations that feel like “too much.”

Trying to answer the calls God has put upon my life.

In a sense, perhaps my current struggle reflects an odd kind of “call” now put upon my life: a call of sorts to become a spectacle of what happens when a 49 year old, once-divorced woman (I am now 61 years old after my ordeal), answers a false call to “lay it all” on the altar of a man that was not God’s provision for a “second chance at love.” A call I “answered” which sometimes feels like the wake of destruction in its path will never, ever end. My mounting losses, griefs and difficulties should be a kind of “sign” to divorced women–be careful, be very very careful not to turn to the left or to the right, but to keep your eyes fixed upon Jesus first. Or you might be like me, in a 2nd divorce that in some ways devastates you more than the first.

I’ve answered many calls in my lifetime, and I thought about those today as I left church. I’ve answered the call to give of myself–to go above and beyond the calls of both duty and desire to give–in ways I will not (and should not) enumerate here.

But the other night, I did not want to answer that call from Virginia. At least, not then…

Last night, I decided around 7 pm, as I was working on the final touches on a portrait, to return Virginia’s call. This whole situation obviously has struck me as worthy of writing about. So, here goes. More…

When Virginia heard my voice, she was so very happy and excited. I listened to her, as she explained that on Thanksgiving Day, when family was there, someone had seen the package I sent her in May 2023 under a table on her porch and brought it in. She had begun along the lines, “You will never believe this…how the timing of all this worked out…”

While there were some logistics questions still in my mind, after talking with her nearly forty minutes, I became convinced that somehow, she had in fact not received my gifts to her until then. And that in her emotional state of mind in loss and grief this Thanksgiving, that it had meant so very much to her to see it for the first time that day, and that is why she called.

She went through the sequence of things with Karl from this past April, and like many elderly people, she needed someone to talk with. His death was entirely unexpected, and he had died in his sleep. At 93 or so…

There was a type of powerlessness I felt. Normally I might have more capacity to singularly focus on such a conversation, and to offer the right words, but I was under extreme stress and pressure to finish up a portrait, and I was working on parts–painting, while listening, too.

I seemed to be able to make the appropriate periodic responses or ask thoughtful questions of her. She is still in her home, can no longer drive (she told me the story of that), and now has a walker but still takes daily outside walks. But mostly, she just wanted to talk about the loss of Karl, and I listened.

At one point, within a number of stories about how they reconnected and otherwise, she said “I will tell you something I’ve never told anyone else.” And she expressed something personal to me about her inward thoughts on that second chance at love (she had spoken of the beautiful life/marriage with her first husband, his rapid decline and death from cancer, and other things about life and relationships, and her own self).

She said, “I’m having trouble putting this into words.”

I actually think there were two points she said that, and I had listened and reflected back what I thought she was trying to say, and she said, “You articulated that well.”

I found it interesting that this 93-year old woman I’d never met in person–only known remotely in the context of answering just one of the calls God put upon my life, to create art and beauty in this world and to serve others through my giftings, as well as to support my family and now myself, alone–was talking to me and telling me deep things from her life experience. This is the type of relationship we find ourselves in, sometimes, through virtue of the fact that we are simply “in Christ,” together.

In the conversation, she eventually told me how very much she valued me, and that “my name” was so deeply embedded in her mind over the years and how glad she was to have found me through that first “Cord of Three Strands.” In a sense, it felt somewhat over the top. She expressed her “love” for me and what a blessing I was to her…and then again…talked about just how “tender” my words and gift to her regarding the artwork with “Carl” meant to her.

Eventually, she asked about my Thanksgiving and what I did.

I did not want to burden her with the specifics and messiness of my life and situation. God knows I already share with other, younger, closer, trusted friends on these matters.

I did not remind her that I had two grown sons, or anything about anything. I just told her, “My neighbors invited me to go to their son’s farm for Thanksgiving, and there were over twenty people there.”

She said, “Oh I’m glad you had others to be with you!”

Eventually, the call came to a close, and she again expressed her affection for me…and I listened, and communicated as best “in kind” back to her, wishing her God’s blessings. Only God knows if I will ever hear from her again, and in what context. I answered the call–I answered His call, I suppose–when I returned her call and I listened and engaged.

This is what I do.

I answer calls.

I sometimes have answered calls both large and small when it seemed it would be more self-preserving not to…and sometimes I am tempted to wonder why God or others don’t seem to hear or understand when I “call.”

I was very distracted in church today, I confess. I was looking at my phone–not at junk per se–but at things that are going through my mind (and situations) in various ways. Somehow as this afternoon has gone on, I entered a “place” that I can only describe as supernatural. It is a place in God at which I found myself humming and singing to this song, while draining my bank accounts down to less than $10 in total after stopping for two needed items (for this day)–at the beginning of today they were at $19. That’s total.

Could you do it? Could you answer this call–to obey God’s call(s) on your life with supernatural perseverance and hope–while singing, contemplating and writing such an expression?

Glory to God, for the work He has done and is doing in me and in my life. I don’t understand it–but there is a kind of gratitude at the immense wealth He is pouring into me. Not everyone gets to know what it is like to be in the situation I am in, and to experience such treasures.

And now, I urge you to “Answer the Call(s)” in your life–whatever that might look like.

Cord of Three Names:	Wedding Date:	Customer
Tom and Bea	4/18/1953	Virginia _________
Chuck and Nannett	11/10/1973	Virginia _________
Wesley and Susan	1/1/2001	Virginia _________
Kevin and Carol	12/1/2001	Virginia _________
Roy and Jane	12/1/2001	Virginia _________
Andrew and Kathryn	7/18/2009	Virginia _________
Nicholas and Katherine	5/17/2018	Virginia _________
James and Kenzie	1/23/2023	Virginia _________
Andrew and Laura	10/29/2023	Virginia _________

Matthew 25:14-30English Standard Version

The Parable of the Talents

¹⁴ “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants^[a] and entrusted to them his property. ¹⁵ To one he gave five talents,^[b] to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. ¹⁶ He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. ¹⁷ So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. ¹⁸ But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. ¹⁹ Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. ²⁰ And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ ²¹ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.^[c] You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ ²² And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ ²³ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ ²⁴ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, ²⁵ so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ ²⁶ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? ²⁷ Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. ²⁸ So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. ²⁹ For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. ³⁰ And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’