No more garden!  I’m sick at the thought.  Here’s what happened:  I was visiting at my friend’s house the other night, and met a lady (who just happened to live in “my garden” mansion).  My first thought was, “How fantastic to meet the owner” and I started to gush on like a fool about how extraordinary it was, etc.  She wasn’t smiling.  Then she asked why I walked so much in her garden.  Talk about speechless!  She walked away, and I was left with a ball of ice in my stomach.  Did I feel like a criminal!  I got the message—not exactly her class of people, and not wanted there (what would people think?).

When I got home that night, everyone was asleep except the baby.  I took  him to the kitchen, grabbed a pen and paper, and sat and sobbed.  The poor kid probably wondered why his mom was squeezing him to death!  On wet paper I wrote out my frustrations in a poem I would never mail:

“My Apology for my Twilight Rambles, addressed to a Lady”.  Here it is:

          Yes, when the toilsome day is gone,

          And night with banners gray

          Steals silently the glade along

          In twilight’s soft array,

          I love to steal awhile away

          From little ones and care

          And spend the hours of setting day

          In gratitude and prayer.

I’m exhausted—but I’ll tell you the rest of the story.

“But I will hope continually, and will yet praise Thee more and more. (Ps.71:14)  Well, the Lord gave me hope in the midst of my cramped, noisy, and busy life when I saw the door to my garden of peace slam shut on my toes.  So, I can only praise Him.

The poem was published in a book.  I guess my title was too long and emotional, so it became “Twilight Hymn”.  They also changed the part that said “From little ones and care” to “From every cumbering care”.  Please don’t think I despise my kids! (Definitely not something you want to be remembered for).  Of course I love and care about my family, but my point was that the busyness of my life drove me to a place where I could pray, meditate, and hope in the Lord, something most moms could relate to, I think.  Here’s another verse they left out.

          I love to meditate on death,

          When shall His message come

          With friendly smiles to steal my breath

          And take an exile home?

No, I wasn’t talking about ending my life, but only about dreaming of heaven, as in this next part of my poem:

          I love by faith to take a view

          Of blissful scenes in heaven:

          The sight doth all my strength renew

          While here by storms I’m driven.

My poem-turned-hymn (remember—no education here!) was published in Village Hymns for Social Worship—very popular in my lifetime.

So, the Lord used a seemingly disastrous event in a chapter of my life—Phoebe Brown, Ordinary Woman --to encourage many people, but most of all, to bring glory to the Him.  And even though I lived in 1818, I could have been you. 

http://www.pointloma.edu/WesleyanCenter/Susanna_E-Journal/Essays/HomeHymn.htm