Be Ye Separate

Do you ever find yourself saying, "If it wasn't for me________would never get done!" (fill in the blank)? Be honest now:P I don't do it as often as I once used to but I did find myself doing just that the last week:P

It was a couple of days of things just being so busy and sometimes feeling like we were taking two steps forward and one step back:P It began with, "What would you all do if I wasn't here to sweep up your mess on the mudroom floor?" It progressed with things like, "How would you folks survive if I wasn't here to close the cupboard doors?" "What will you do when I'm not here anymore to, pick up the dirty towels off the bathroom floor...rinse the dishes before stacking them, clean out the muddy drop in the bathroom sink, replace the soap in the dish etc!?!" Then the last one that got me thinking harder than anything was..."Am I the only one who knows how to replace the toilet paper and actually put it ON the dispenser?":P

All this to say, I had become a class one nag and self oppointed doitall:P I got to thinking about how much God has done for me because I didn't do it first or do it for myself and blah blah blah. Hearing yourself yet?:P

I wondered how many times God has said to me "Am I the only one that sees you dragging your feet, not praying enough, worrying too much etc?" What would you do if I wasn't here to help you through your trials, pick you up when you are down, hold you when you are shattered etc etc etc?"

My answer? I would be lost. Completely and utterly lost. I would be desparate, desolate, alone and forgotten. How much He does for me and how often I take it for granted.

What would my family do? Perhaps they would be lost, desparate, desolate, alone and forgotten. All or some of each? Who knows. I know one thing for sure. They wouldn't feel my love or know my guidance. Teaching them as I go along, helping them to become not so much independant but reliant on God's provision. They've been given the gift of someone who loves them enough to do these things (even if it comes with a complaint now and then) for and with them.

I will never be complaint free but I do try to let them know that there are lots of things that I couldn't do without THEM either:) My sweet husband and children will often turn my frown upside down by turning my words around. They will jump on it and say "What would we do if you weren't here to________" or they will do something with a lot of fanfare to make sure I know they are doing it and, with a mischevious little grin, say "What would you do if______":P

I love my family and I know they love me. Better yet GOD loves my family and I know He loves me!

Banned Books

I was not tagged for this meme either but it sounded interesting so I decided to do it too:) (Like so many others who found it just as interesting):)

As I understand it you need to mark or bold the books you've read. so here goes:)

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran (interesting and scarey)
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (interesting and misguided)
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair (very political in nature but makes you think)
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Both in Russian and in English)
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler (both volumes with my grandmother)
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

I did not correct the incomplete titles but those that read them would know anyway:)

That was a walk in history for me:) Some read in school as required reading, some because of curiosity and some because it touched my family in one way or another. (And I adore Ray Bradbury. I met him at a college lecture and who later allowed me to participate in a local radio production from the Theatre in the Round, of Dandelion Wine. He also signed my copy of the script at the time):)

Canopy of Grace:)

I have been enjoying our warmer days this past week under a beautiful canopy of trees behind our home.

Sitting at our garden table with it's own little umbrella mostly to keep the leaves and such from dropping onto the table and subsequently into our food:)

From this table I can enjoy our little bucklings and the beginnings of our garden that will sustain us through winter once it is harvested and put up for human use:)

After a stroll to the barn to check on our Nubian does who are due any day now. You can see our table in the distance where many an idea has been shared. Mornings spent in quiet devotion. Listening to the rush of the river just beyond the stand of trees. Hearing the song of the crickets, cicadae, chirping and rejoicing of the myriad of feathered friends.

I find a sense of peace and contentment in this canopy of God's nature. I can't help but wonder at the awe of the Lord's amazing Grace. Grace that He offers as a canopy of love over us all. Chances given to hear HIS song, HIS touch, HIS rejoicing. I am humbled.

I ponder the reality that we are only renters of this splendid land and are blessed with Christian landlords who trust strangers like ourselves to care for their home in this land of wonder and amazement. It simply reminds me that, just like being temporary tenants of this home, so too are we temporary tenants of this God created wonder. As He trusts us to care for it and rejoice in it's splendor.

Thank you Father for all that You have given to us in our breath of a life here on this beautiful earth. Giving us hope for an eternal future with You. I can't help but wonder...how much more beautiful is heaven? You have given me such an amazing gift here on this earth and I am so undeserving of anything more. Thank You!

Enjoy your temporariness. Be blessed in His daily presence in the wonderful quiet moments when His creation whispers His love for you under His Canopy of Grace.

What was I doing?

Well, it seems I've been tagged:P So I'll share mine and then pick 5 unsuspecting bystanders;)

Be debt free and help with the restoration and building of our orphanage in Haiti, prayerfully use it where the Lord directs me.

CA, OR, NV unless you mean towns in which case they are too numerous to list:P Or if you mean houses vs. apartments then those are also too numerous to mention:)

A Father's Place

As Father's Day fast approaches I have been pondering about the honor of a husband and father. We don't actually do much for these types of holidays but that's not really what this is about. I got to thinking about how I see many folks as a family unit. There are lots of "mainstream" families where the father is literally castrated by the wife and children. I even see parents doing the same to their sons! I find it such a sad thing to see a young boy taught to despise his own gender. Or reinforcing the idea that a husband is an inconvenience and toy. Both at the mercy of an overbearing and often merciless female. Sadly I have also seen daughters do the same to their fathers and brothers. What a state of chaos in the lives of God's children.

I got to thinking, as I my son and I were sharing a moment of gardening and work around this place. As I watch he and his wife share little stolen moments together in between work and responsibilities, I see that my husband and I have raised a good man who has chosen a good wife:)

I watch my daughters as they interact with papa and do things for him each day. Always wanting to please him and do things for him because they love him and respect his place in their lives. It warms my heart and makes God smile I am sure:)

Then I pondered further as I reflected on all the years of raising my boys. How papa was such a part of their lives. How he taught them to be men and how important their role is as a man in God's eyes, despite what the world teaches.

I began to think of all the little times that I had taken the time out to show my boys how to do something. How when they made mistakes we would "work through it" with them. When they neglected a responsibility, how we had gently reminded them and loved them and supported them as they took on the task (whatever it was) and completed it. How we saw them make mistakes that we "saw it coming" but they had to learn it on their own. When they were down on themselves for making those mistakes and feeling that they had been stupid in their choices and final decisions. How we built them up and let them know that we are all human and we all make mistakes and the most important thing is the love of a family who lives before God who will stand beside them and encourage them and support them until they "get it right".

Yesterday while we were out doing our auction stuff we sat behind a family. A wife, husband the three sons all in a row. Each time the man opened his mouth his wife would talk over the top of him and make remarks about his intelligence or choices. He went down to the kitchen and bought his boys a little snack and each a drink, and he brought her back something as well. Once the boys were settled in he gave her what he had bought for her and she complained bitterly about what he had done. That the boys were undeserving and they could have shared instead of had something individually. She complained about the pop being too icey and the snack he brought her wasn't her favorite. Not one thank you, not one pat on the arm or kind word. And later on when one of them made a mistake she was right there to let him know it was alright that things would get better.

I often wonder what women think when they are consoling their sons and helping them through the bad times but ignoring their own husbands when THEY make mistakes and go through bad times? I see it often and it saddens me.

Husbands have such a burden placed upon them and sometimes we think we should take everything else on to lighten their load but we forget to comfort and encourage. We can tend to get bitter about it without realizing that they didn't "give" it to us, we simply "took" it thinking that somehow that was helping rather than supporting him and encouraging him and letting him know that even though it seems overwhelming now, he is more than capable of fixing it of making it better and we will wait patiently and supportively until it turns around.

I always make sure that my husband knows that even when he makes mistakes that things will get better. That he's only humand and these things happen. That even if his choice WAS one that I might not have made, we will weather it out together and come out of it united. I want to encourage him like I encourage my sons. Letting him know that it will turn out one way or the other. I let him know that I recognize his attempt to do what he felt was right for us as a family or a couple or even for himself alone.

I just wanted to encourage each of you to recognize your husbands weaknesses and strengths. Encourage him no matter what he is doing or has done. Let him know that side by side you can get through anything. That his place in your life and the lives of your children is important and even if he makes mistakes you all love him and want to help him in any way possible even if it's just making sure his supper is on the table at the same time every day, or making sure his socks are matched up to save him a minutes time in the morning when he gets ready for work:)

I am so very blessed to have let go of a part of myself that was such a hindrance in my relationship with my sweet husband. Over the years I have not only come to appreciate and honor my husband in his role as husband and father, I have also come to appreciate and honor my own role as mother and wife:)

Be Ye Separate

If it wasn't for me...

Banned Books

Canopy of Grace:)

What was I doing?

A Father's Place

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