Forty years Moses led God's people in the desert.

My, when I was a kid, forty years seemed forever!

But now I look back at my forty years in a desert

Before I walked away from bondage into the Promised Land.

While Moses was leading his people through the sands,

Babies were being born, Manna eaten and love exchanged.

It wasn't all bad in the desert those forty years,

But yet they were a time of struggle, sweating and prayer.

Now I have stood on the mountain top and peered down

To my new home on a plateau tween Piedmont and Tennessee.

A city from Ashes, a place where LIVES HEAL.

Yes, juggle the letters around, and you get ASHEVILLE.

I didn't know I was preparing for My Promised Land,

The wait was long, crooked, but it's so clear now.

Folks say that this town is a place of healing

For the sick, the sad, the lost, the tired.

And like Moses, for forty years I struggled, too

In a land not my own in union with a partner not my own.

During those forty years, I raised wonderful children,

Met wonderful people, earned a few stars and left.

Got in my old Buick and wandered up the mountain,

And down on the other side into my Promised Land.

A Promised Land my Higher Power said She was preparing

Decades before as I cried, wondered, yearned for a new life.

And now I feel the healing running through this old body

As the blood flows through its veins into head and heart.

I have found others who have found their Promised Land

In this town, where they have discovered wholeness at last.

Together we celebrate, commemorate, commiserate.

We play and pray;  we share and cry;  we rejoice!

Empowered to now be in the care of Joshua!

Just as Moses led us through our lives of despair

Now Joshua leads us into the land of milk and honey.

(Make it organic, unpasteurized and local, please!)

We are healed!  I am healed! 

My chains of bondage have been broken...

And I am free to be the True Me at last!

Forty years:  My bondage is done!

I've served my Time with Distinction!

Thank you very much!