Prayer Request

Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers. ~J. Sidlow Baxter

I had been praying for certain things for the last few years, asking my Lord to bless us in very specific areas, but nothing seemed to be happening with them. One of these has been my husband's career and then he was not chosen for a promotion when the company created two positions a few months ago that he was pretty much doing in a limited capacity along with his actual job description. The man who originally hired my husband had promised such a position to him once the company created them, but he had moved to another division and his new boss was not a strong manager in that way.

To complicate things, one man, who does some of the scheduling and used to have my husband travel more than others, seems to have felt threaten by my husband, possibly because my husband was more qualified to do the job he had just moved into back when my husband was first hired. There are people who try to make others look bad so they look good and he was one of them. This man complained about my husband so much within the office that the manager was out voted about promoting him. The office is in Chicago and we are in the Atlanta area, so only a few people really have enough contact with my husband to know him and they took this one man's word over the manager, since he is one of them.

There are also people who try to encourage people to strength their weaknesses and use their strengths so that they do their best, which make those people look even better. My husband is one of those people. He is an excellent manager. He says he was born for that job. (He is so cute sometimes.)

Last weekend, my husband decided to try for the management position that has been left open since his manager quit, completely forgetting I suggested it when I heard the news. This would place him over the positions he did not get a few months ago, leaving us both discouraged, and over the man who feels threatened by him, who probably is also trying for the position himself. What the person who will be making the determination does not know is that if that man becomes the manager, three of their best service techs will be leaving including my husband, and they were hired by my husband's referral. They all have been thinking of going back to a former employer that is now desperate for good service techs and will probably pay and treat them better this time around, so they hope anyway. However, my husband has been asking them to wait until the dust settles because changes were being made, this he did before he even thought about going for the manager position.

I got to thinking maybe he did not get the other promotions because God had this planned out for something better and my husband will be the general manager for all the US and Mexico. That would be so like my Lord!

My husband talked to the man who originally hired him and he said he wondered if he was going to go for it. I think my husband would have already had it if this man was still over this division. This man has very good rapport with the man, who would be making the decision for the position, however he is also in the process of going back home to Japan and being replaced. So much is up in the air!

The downside is that we do not wish to move to Chicago where the corporate office is. Actually, my husband could do the job very well from home by phone conferencing and some traveling to the office as well as to visit customers. The general manager of the another division within the company has been doing this from California. Also, most of the customers are in Atlanta so that could be beneficial.

So, I have been asking everyone to pray that my husband not only get the manager position but that we do not have to move as well. May it be done as God wills.

~ Thank you, my Lord, for hearing our prayers. Please let it be as You will above all things. ~

Catching a Breather Here

The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain. ~Ronald Firbank

I hate the time change stuff:
Spring ahead, fall behind.
Spring ahead, fall behind.
Spring ahead, fall behind.
Just pick one and stop this craziness! Daylight saving time? How does it save daylight? I mean, really, what is the point? Most businesses have lights on all day whether it is day or night, so it is not really "saving" anything at all!

Thursday, the Thursday before last actually, after the Princess begged and we were acclimating to the time change, I was determined to get her to the youth praise and worship team practice. I drove 25 minutes west to the Yorkville campus of our church where it should have been. Unfortunately, we were met with construction inside as they were replacing some of the media equipment and lighting. Practice, we were told, was at the other campus. So we drove another 30 minutes east past our home to find only the adult team practicing as the youth one had been cancelled. Then I drove another 15 minutes to get home with at least a quarter tank of gas wasted. Had I been on Facebook.... (No, I am still resisting the whole Facebook/social networking thing. It is not going to happen.) So, my husband talked to the Music Pastor, who explained that due to vacations where the youth were filling in with the adult P&W and the changes they need to make with stage, they have cancelled the youth praise and worship practice until after Easter, but that he will put together a music book so that the Princess can begin learning the songs. We hope to have them over for dinner this week with their first little baby! I just have some cleaning to do....

I received my check from my first consignment sale the Saturday before last; it was over $200! Not bad considering that all those clothes and books were from consigment sales so I sold them for about the same price as I paid for them, although I price on the low side. That $200 paid for books and clothes that I bought so far for the Princess plus some. Considering that I get 70% of the sale price, I did very well and sold about half of the things I put in it. I replaced the tags with ones for the next sale, added all our VHS tapes as this sale does not have a limit on them as the others do, and will be dropping those items off this afternoon. I also signed up for another sale that takes place in the middle of April, but if I do not have enough left over from this one to make it worthwhile, I will simply unregister.

Because I needed to go through our DVD and VHS collection to pull the VHS tapes and sell them, I decided to reorganize that entire bookshelf again. I used to have the movies labeled in categories color coordinated for their age ratings--actually, with my age ratings. However no one, but me, really put the movies back by category except for the children's videos. I also used to have them inventoried but the program being free is now no longer being updated so I looked for something free online and found iTrackMine. Now I know that we have over 300 DVDs and I am getting rid of the duplicates plus some that were just plain horrible choices. This time I bought little color dots instead of making a dot with markers, so we have blue for G, green for PG, yellow for PG-13, and red for R with the children and family videos on the lower shelves and the reds on the top shelf. The Princess helped with dusting each one and placing them in categories, which I did not bother to label this time because what would be the point? These days I am usually the one who puts them back where they belong anyway. Now I need to do something with those music CDs also.

We had to replace the compressor for the air conditioner in our van on Friday. That was about $200 dollars more than we had expected it to be. Quite costly, but I really would not want to go without air conditioning in the van with summer coming...if summer ever does come because we keep getting cold snaps in waves as if we are just being teased with warmer temperatures before the next one; tomorrow night the low is expected to dip into the 20's again!

This past Saturday my husband was required to attend the chaperone meeting at Living Science from 9 to 12. I was to clean at the school this weekend as well, so I choose to clean in the classroom building, which has only two large science classrooms, as the other building would be occupied with the meeting. I wish I had taken the pay $50 option instead of cleaning because the classroom building was not vacant, but filled with high school students in the Servant Leader program. All the Princess and I could really clean was the bathrooms and the foyer around the bookbags and kids, which we did and gave up on the classrooms. Last fall I paid because it is an hour drive for us just to get to the school and then there is about three hours worth of cleaning to be done. I pay half the $50 in gas and then it is half of my day shot when I have plenty of house and yard work to do at home. I would not have even attempted it this time if my husband did not have to be there for that meeting. Being thrifty, I do not like paying the money, but weighing it out I also consider my time to be valuable.

Since we were in the area, I stopped by to give my friend, the Princess' piano teacher, an ozonator to borrow as she had smoke damage in her house again. This is the third time she has smoke damage in about three years. Her first insurance company dropped her after the second one which was just a few months after the first time. She simply started cooking something and forgot about it...all three times. This time she felt she could not report it to her insurance company and was washing everything she could herself with a few friends helping. The ozonator would be able to treat the remaining smoke smells, we are hoping. So after a short visit there, we ate out and then started for home.

That same evening our church was hosting a concert but even if we had remembered, it would have been too much to do in one day. We did enjoy the singing couple for church service yesterday morning.

This week we are focused on the Princesss' science presentation and the expedition. Her father has been working with her on the 3-D model of the habitat for the endangered red wolf. So timely, as he had worked with someone recently who had a passion and experience for building an impressive train model, who gave him some great advice. I gladly have taken a hands-off approach so they could do this project together, but I will be working with her on the presentation itself and possibly help her paint the wolf figurines she got.

We have to get certain items for the expedition also. Mostly the Princess is concerned about finding cheap tennis shoes that she has been told she will need to toss away after the expedition as they will be using them in the river and swamp areas. We are going to look for them today when I go out to make my consignment sale drop off.

Oh, and my husband for the very first time in his life was summoned for jury duty. "We don't have anything going on the week of April 14th, do we?" No, honey....just the science expedition! He jumped on that right away last Monday and his differral has been approved so he will be serving in the middle of May instead.

I am looking forward to five days all to myself in April...well, not completely to myself as there are the furry ones. I have a couple projects in mind to do without concerns about being in the way of anyone else and without any interruptions.

~ My Lord, so much more to do. Let me not waste time on things of little importance to You. ~

2014 Sping Consignment Sales

If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it. ~Olin Miller

I am again preparing for two spring consignment sales. I enjoy getting the checks from the sales so that it helps pay for my daughter's wardrobe for the coming season. I enjoy shopping consignment sales to get good clothes at very low prices. However, I cannot say that I enjoy this part of the task.

Over the years, my daughter has turned the guest room, the one room in my home that always used to look as if it was ready and just waiting for a visitor to stay there, into her own personal dumping zone and clutter just overwhelms me. I have asked her to keep it organized with all the clothes hung, but her idea of organized and mine differ. It is difficult for me to plow through, organize the items I wish to sell, and tag everything because no matter how I do it, it still has that clutter quality until most of it is dropped off at the sale. This time I choose the earliest drop off on Monday morning.

Even after dropping off what will be allowed in the spring sale, I still have some fall items that will be waiting for half a year, which increase in number and bulk by the fall. Clutter...it just drives me crazy, especially when it is unending as it has become in my guest room. My husband has suggested several times that I could just give away the outgrown clothes and I toy with that thought until I start adding up the potential net pay from the sales.

That thrifty side of me just cannot get past that these sales generally pay for at least half (most of the time more) of the cost of the clothes I will be buying for the Princess and it is getting more difficult to find consignment clothes for her. She is more particular, as expected with this age, as she is exploring her own sense of style and there are fewer modest styles for her size--I am thankful that modesty is still important to her. In addition, we cannot have her try on clothes at most of these sales, which means more of the clothes we do get may not fit her well as her body is morphing from her former willowy shape to one with more curves.

Still, I have to keep working on this task, because I am hoping to not have to mess with it much this weekend so I can spend time with my husband. He is feeling better and hopes to be coming home tomorrow evening. Now that I have written out my goals, perhaps I will be motivated to get it all done by tomorrow afternoon.

~ My Lord, it is difficult to stay motivated to finish preparing for the consignment sales, so I surrender my desire to procrastinate finishing this task to You. ~

Career Concerns

[I wish you] health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbour. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.
~Johann von Goethe

I tend to get anxious about the future, especially with sudden unexpected changes that could have a bad effect on it. One income families, such as ours, are so reliant on that one job that any change ripples into our family carrying a potential dread.

My husband's manager handed in her resignation in February, taking a lesser position job in another company. She stated she wanted to spend more time with her family, but my husband felt there was more to it than just that. He could hear her frustration over the last few months with trying to affect change and none being made. One thing she did disclose on her last day was that she had suggested promoting my husband to a couple of positions, but she was met with excuses like he is too valuable where he is or he is too moody—the latter happens when he gets overworked while others (are these not so valuable?) get to stay home and maybe answer phones or wait for a machine to break.

I had am empathic feeling when two other inexperienced men were promoted some weeks ago that his manager was unhappy. She also did say that she had hoped to surround herself with people who were willing to help her make the changes she wanted work, but that her choices were met with rejection. When she confronted one man about his attitude with customers and employees, she was told to back off instead of helping him to improve.

It must have been terribly frustrating for her, so I am hoping she finds what she needs in her next job.

So, while we are praying about his company finding the next manager, my husband continues to deal with his own frustrations. He was told that he is the only field service engineer that the customers request, which may be contributing factor as to why he is sent out more than most. Now, I am not particularly business savvy, but it seems to me that if I had an employee with such a good reputation with my customers and had such high technical skills, that I would like to clone him. I would create a position so that he trains others in the field to not only have better hands on training as to how to fix the machines but also know how to talk to customers so that they are pleased with the service for which they are paying. My company would then have the best of employees to share the workload rather than burning out a few while others are doing little.

It seems practical to me, but that is probably because I did not go to a business college to learn the most impractical ways to run a business. We have seen the same scenarios played out over many years. If not related to someone high up in the company, those who make the biggest fuss or already live close to the home office are the ones who get promoted, even if they are not the best fit for the position and it rarely works out well.

Anyway, God has a purpose and timing for all things, so for now I am just surrendering my husband's career into His hands. He does what seems impossible so very well.

~ My Lord, I surrender my husband's career to You. I am thankful he is employed and paid well. I would like to see him get recognition for his work so that it honors You, so that people see a difference in him because he calls himself Christian, because You are in his heart, and because You are his Master. ~

Pieces of My Heart

God can heal a broken heart, but He has to have all the pieces. ~Unknown

One of my dearest friends and I had a phone conversation on Sunday. She was very depressed and as she voiced her fears, I was thinking that I would have said much the same this past year. You see, she is alone, divorced decades ago and has been alone ever since. Both her parents have passed on and even her ex-husband who also never married after the divorce. She was an only child, was unable to have children, and it seems that relationships with her cousins are dysfunctional. Being in her sixties, she is having increasing health issues and when she is sick or in more pain she feels unloved and gets depressed.

As I listened to her voice her fears, I heard the echoes of how I had felt most of last year. The only family members who talk to me is my aunt and uncle, even though I have two sisters and a brother and four cousins. My husband was traveling for work more than he was home and my daughter was going teenager on me. I was not feeling well overall and felt my health was beginning to fail me.

Trying to help my friend through my own experience, I reminded her of something I had shared a few weeks ago that my Lord recently asked me if there was just one thing that I would asked to be healed that He would promise to heal it what would it be and I had answered my heart, which I mentioned in The Fast is Working. She then asked me how that was going for me and I replied that it was a process, but her question stuck with me and I really began probing my thoughts and feelings about it.

I was very much feeling like my friend for most of last year, so here I was sympathizing with her but also rejoicing because I could so clearly see the contrast of where I was and where I am now. I am not depressed as I was nor as unhappy with life nor as fearful of my Lord. Now when I hear my Lord tell me that He loves me, I do not try to run from it or deflect it with feelings of unworthiness as I probably have all of my life. Now I simply say, "I love you too" and smile at myself because it makes me happy that He loves me instead of sad because I do not deserve it. He loves me. It is like a mother naturally loves her baby even though the baby has done nothing to deserve it but to exist. God just loves me. (Smiling here.) Oh, and if He loves me, He loves you too. He just loves you. He is telling you that every day. (Are you smiling?)

My heart is healing, or perhaps has been healed, and the other physical things I had been praying that He would heal are also being healed, because God is not stingy about blessings. I thought I was being receptive, but actually I was only being receptive if God did it the way I thought I wanted it. I have seen so many, so very many, people do this and wondered why they just could not let go and let God do it His way. It is so easy to see it in the lives of others and even easier to be blinded to it in your own, it seems.

It is a work in progress, not God's healing of my heart, but my recognition of His healing. The best way to heal one's heart is to surrender it to the Lord...all of one's heart...every single little piece.

~ Thank you, my Lord, for healing my heart. ~

She Did It Again!

The pianokeys are black and white but they sound like a million colors in your mind.
~Maria Cristina Mena, The Collected Stories of Maria Cristina Mena

The Princess was judged on Saturday after practicing two piano pieces for months, actually we had to change one a several weeks ago because of her hands were not quite able to make the stretch in a couple of places on the one she had chosen. She was disappointed in herself as she still was weak on dynamic variations on the first piece and had something that the judge called a "memory slip," but as typical of her, she recovered well, which the judge told her that she saw as a positive.

We went out for lunch at Outback afterwards to celebrate, since her father was not home this weekend, but she was not in a celebrating mood until I asked her how she did on the second piece, which she felt she nailed perfectly. I then reminded her that the scoring is weighted for different things and each piece is judged separately, then the scores of both pieces are combined. That is when she brightened up a bit and said that maybe then she would score well enough to get the five points she hoped to get.

She also told me that the judge told her that she was really good at piano and, with a smile, that she should never quit because if she did that she would have her piano teacher call her so she could come "get her." I thought this was something she told all the students that day, but on Sunday when I talked to her piano teacher, I found out that this compliment was solely given to my daughter, who was the eighth of the nine students judged.

It is nice to know as we approach the our nine year anniversary of her first piano lesson this May that it is worth all the time and money. However, it is not just that she plays well, it is that she performs so very well and that is a gift that God must have given her from the beginning.

Yes, the child scored 95 percent overall, which is a "superior" and she earned five points toward her next trophy. A trophy is given at 15 point intervals and the most a student can earn is five points for the year so it takes at least three years to get a trophy and the Princess wants one every three years.

As to my husband not being home this weekend to celebrate with us, he was stuck in Indiana with the same cold/flu I had over two weeks ago, so he did not feel like flying back home for the weekend at all. I know it is the same thing because it starts with sneezing and the sinus are draining constantly, but the headache is horrible and your strength is zapped yet you cannot sleep but a few minutes to maybe two hours at a time and then you are awake for hours before you can nap again, which is the most annoying part of the thing. My husband is exposed to so many more people than I am, but still he usually gets a cold only about once in two to three years. When he gets one, though, he really gets it. Today he felt well enough to go to work in the afternoon when the customer opened, as they had a very bad snow storm and stayed closed this morning. I am hoping he will be finished and well enough to come home before Friday, but as things go....

~ My Lord, thank you for the gift You have given my daughter. May she use it to honor You always.~

Finally Normal, er Well....

Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey. ~Marcel Proust

I am taking this back-to-good-health thing one slice at a time!

This morning is the first morning I have felt normal...as normal as I ever feel, that is. Although I was on the mend, I still had energy issues as the infected gland drained all week, but it seems that yesterday was the last of it. I finally can stand, walk, and sit up in a regular chair without any pain—well, you just do not really appreciate a simple thing as sitting until it is too painful to do for two weeks.

Today will be the first normal day I have had in nearly three weeks...as normal as any of my days are. The Princess and I will be doing our homeschool lessons in full swing, much to her displeasure. While I was laying around (literally), on most week days she did do the very basics: the three R's: reading, writing, and arithmetic—algebra actually. (The girl actually sometimes admits she likes algebra and she gets the concepts easily even straight from the textbook without me, as I knew she would.)

This week may be the first normal week I have had...again as normal as any of my weeks are. My husband, who has thankfully been working locally for the past couple of months is away this week until Friday, so he says, so I am doing all the chores he normally does plus trying to get back into doing my own.

I have much to catch up on, like my blog—so much to share—and homeschool records to which I look forward to doing with almost as much enthusiasm as my daughter has doing the lessons. I also need to restructure the language arts and history portions of my plan for the rest of the year. Then there is the upcoming consignment sales just two weeks away—the child has grown into the woman-child stage and not many jeans are fitting her now. So many normal things to do...and I am thankful that I can do them.

~ My Lord, thank you for Your timing. That my husband was home to take care of the things I could not and that my daughter was so helpful when I needed their help. You and I both knew I needed a break mentally, but I would not take one had I not had this painful condition developed and had taken away my ability to keep pushing. I praise You even in my illness; help me remember to praise more You when I am well. ~

Another Winter Storm with Ice and More

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.
 ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As we recovered from the last winter storm fiasco with our governor making future promises and appointing someone to manage storm threats, I came down with a flu. I rarely get sick with a cold/flu, but I definitely was feeling horrible on Tuesday, two weeks ago. I tend to have low days now and then, but an all out flu is something I rarely get. After I set aside denial, I called my husband asking him if he could take the Princess to her last piano lesson the following day as it was before the judging on that following Saturday.

As things turned out, I ended up taking her after all...mostly because of my stubbornness and my unforgiving mood about how it seemed to inconvenience others. As I said, I rarely get really sick, so when I am and my husband is working from home and our daughter has a deadline, I have this expectation that my family will take into consideration that I am SICK, so all the stuff that Mama usually does is going to have to be done by others. Actually, my husband had worked it out to take her, but by that time I was too angry to stay at home in bed as I should have done.

I did take the Princess to her school and piano lesson, but I did not have the energy to go grocery shopping and I thought that it would be fine since I would be coming into town for the piano judging on Saturday and could shop then. When I dropped the child off at her piano lesson, her teacher told us that the judging was rescheduled to a month later because the church she rented for it was having renovations done. Weeks ago, she had been concerned about how unprepared nearly all her students were for the judging, even the Princess who had just pulled it together the previous week, but that was the only available slot for the church. Now she had the extra four weeks she felt nearly everyone needed, except for the Princess and one other girl, and more students could participate because it would not be conflicting with school sports. The church had called to inform her of the problem and offered her another day that was not available previously just one hour before we arrived. I was happy that the Lord had worked it out for her, but all I could think of was I wished we all had known before I had left that morning for I would not have tried making the trip at all.

When we got home, I prepared for bed and stayed there for two days.

Since there was no judging, I did not go grocery shopping on Saturday. We are well stocked with a full pantry and two freezers, but my husband was able to get fresh organic greens, eggs, and fruits locally.

I recovered and made it to church on Sunday, where everyone was abuzz with the news that another winter storm was coming on Tuesday night (last week), but this one would likely be an ice storm starting with rain that freezes. This would mean downed trees and power outages. The schools did not take any chances this time; they were closed on Tuesday. For us, science class and piano was cancelled again. The governor declared a state of emergency before there was one. The schools here were closed the rest of the week, but power outages did not affect us, mostly because there little wind here with the storm, thankfully.

By Monday, I realized I was having my own state of emergency: an infected gland in tender place. I had this once before about thirty years ago when I had no health insurance, so I dealt with it then the old fashion home remedy way with hot sitz baths or compresses. I had to make a decision about seeing a doctor on Tuesday because it would be highly unlikely it would be possible after the ice storm hit. My husband was home and had made as many preparations for the storm as he could, so I chose to home treat, but this infection grew to be more stubborn and worse than the first one. I was feverish for most of the week and too sore to sit and praying not to have to have it lanced. Thursday night my fever broke and Friday morning it finally began draining.

Sitting upright on a chair is not comfortable yet, but my husband is leaving and I have errands to do tomorrow, as usual. During most of my illnesses the Princess had time off from lessons and is as reluctant to get back to our regular schedule as I am to sit in a chair, but at least the latter will pass.

~ My Lord, thank you for hearing my prayer for healing. May all go well tomorrow with errands, science and piano. And, thank you for reminding me how precious a thing good health is and let me not waste it. ~

When it Snows in Georgia

Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough. ~Earl Wilson

We did not go out for errands on Wednesday this week, but we had gotten in an extra piano lesson on Monday and Living Science cancelled classes for Tuesday and Wednesday due to the extreme cold and possibility of a winter storm. Good thing too, because of what happened....

First, I have to say that those of us who are originally from the northern states are always amazed at the level of unpreparedness that seems inevitable even when Georgians know a snow/ice storm is coming, but what began Tuesday morning this week went far beyond the worst case scenarios I could have imagined. It really could not have been much worse if there had been an unscheduled bomb drill in the middle of Atlanta that the general public mistook for the real thing. The magnitude of what three little inches of fluffy, white stuff and below freezing temperatures can do to this area is unimaginable unless you experience it for yourself.

It all started with the weather models showing that a storm would sweep across Georgia probably blanketing it with snow and possibly freezing rain somewhere...the best guess was south of Atlanta, because of the jet stream coming up from the south bringing moist air up to the higher atmosphere into the strong winter front moving in from the northwest is the toughest call for meteorologists in pinpointing the dump zone. Even the computer models went back and forth between nearly all of Georgia getting it to most of it hitting south of Atlanta, practically until it was upon us. Having lived in Georgia for well over a decade, I can say unpredictability really should be no surprise to anyone who has lived here even longer. It is just best to expect the worst and be thankful when you are wrong when it comes to winter storms here.

Folks, let me write this again so there is no misunderstanding: We all knew for a fact that a completely unpredictable major winter storm was approaching with temperatures in the twenties and lower from the northwest into Georgia. The only uncertainty about it was when, where, and how much snow and/or ice.

So, here is the Mayor of Atlanta and the Governor of Georgia knowing a major winter storm is coming in for sure, like everyone else, knowing it is unpredictable, like everyone else, but instead of erring on the side of caution in fear of being criticized for overreacting, they keep all the government offices open so employees are at work and all children are in school. The Governor honestly stated in a speech that he felt his biggest failure was in not staggering the time government employees could be released from work...yeah, like that would have made all the difference. Now the school boards are independent and can close schools as they see fit, but since all the rest of the government facilities were up and running....

The morning starts out sunny and bright, but well below freezing. Then snow comes in with the clouds, light at first, but within an hour it is obvious that it was accumulating and the roads began to get icy. Our county school board sent out an alert at 10:30 AM that they had decided to release the students early. The elementary students would be leaving the school at 12:30 PM, with the middle schools and high schools at other times (like staggering) but it was already too late at 10:30 AM when the notice was sent. Many buses could not even get to the schools. Many children here and all over the Metro Atlanta area stayed over night in their schools, and those were the luckier ones, for some were stuck on school buses that could not finish routes because of the ice. Most of Atlanta had about three inches of snow, I think we had more like four in our area, but it was hard to tell as it was dry and blowing off roofs and trees.

The governor stated that what caused most of the traffic problem was that businesses sent people home all at the same time, rather than staggering I suppose, so salt trucks could not treat the roads because of all the traffic, as if Atlanta never has much traffic except during rush hours...but again that was already too late as they should have began treating when the snow started falling.  When I thought about it, why wouldn't businesses send home their workers when their children were being sent home by the schools...?

My husband was working only 45 minutes from home, on the average day, even though I did not want him to go out at all because I just knew this was going to be a bad one. The customer account he was at closed so he had to leave around 1:30 in the afternoon. He had already called around to hotels, but they were full. He made sure he had plenty of gas and headed home. He tried different ways because I-20 was closed, so he was looking for a road not yet closed to get north of I-20 and every time he was met with a road that was closed. The radio stations were no help at all: just people telling their own stories about being stuck in stopped traffic and cars being abandoned because of an accident, jack-knifed semis blocking the road, running out of gas, lack of traction, or the driver just gave up all along major highways and roads, even smack in the middle of lanes, because they could not move them off.

At least my husband and I could talk to each other because he had enough gas and his cell phone charger with him, some people had dead cell phone batteries and could no longer talk to anyone. At 10:30 PM, an hour and a half after we last talked, I asked how far he had traveled in that time: two tenths of a mile. There was not much I could do about it so I went to bed, knowing my husband can take care of himself and praying he would arrive soon. Twelve hours after he started, at 1:30 AM, my husband finally made it home. We were fortunate: in our church, a few husbands working in the city have not been home for two nights, either staying at work or hotels near work.

Would you believe that work asked my husband to fly to Boston that day, while he was stuck in his van all those hours? He simply told them that Delta had cancelled all flights, which was true, and all the highways and roads around the airport, we later found out, were the worst of the worst all the next day as well, for we did not have enough sunshine and the temperatures were still in the 20's.

As horrible as Tuesday was, Wednesday was not much better. It took until afternoon before people could get out at all. While we were all advised to stay home, vehicles were still obstructing driving lanes, so people wanted to get their cars, if they could, because the "magic hour" was ending around 5:00 PM, when the sun would start going down and everything that had somewhat thawed in the sunlight would refreeze. Actually, it never got above freezing as we were still in the 20's all that day, but there were some patches of the roads with good amounts of sunshine that melted some of the ice. Power outages were not the big problem as they were with the ice storm in 2011, because it was a dry snow rather than a heavy wet snow or freezing rain which causes pine trees to snap from the added weight and down power lines.

Today (Thursday), the schools were still closed and some businesses were opening with later hours.  This afternoon the temperature has reached above freezing for a few hours and the snow is melting fastest in the sunlight and most of the ice has melted on well traveled roads, but there is still ice in the road in front of our house and there could still be patches of black ice again tonight. Tomorrow and thereafter, the highs are to be in the fifties and rain is in the forecast, so in a day or two more, this debacle will wiped from the natural earth as if it did not even happen, but with over 900 reported accidents in the area and who knows how many yet to be reported, people will still have some cleaning up to do for many coming days.

My Lord, please help the people of Georgia who were affected so badly by this storm. Thank you to getting my husband home to his loving family, warm food, and bed.

At the Close of the 21-Day Fast

Unless you put prayer with your fasting, there is no need to fast. If it doesn't mean anything to you, it won't mean anything to God. ~Jentezen Franklin

Here am I...at the close of the 21-day fast and I am still wrestling with this "love myself" thing. I now well aware of the depths of this problem, I recognize it in my thoughts, but it seems to remain unresolved, not that God is done with me, but I had this hope....

Frankly, I had a very difficult time praying during this fast, more to the point I feel I failed in that respect. For the corporal part, we were to be praying about this year as a season of acceleration, multiplication, and increase based on prophetic words given to our pastor. The goals are local outreach, global missions, and Encounter 2014 (which is an intense spiritual retreat, I think). I wanted to pray about these things, but my mind wandered more than usual or I kept running head first into this "love myself" thing as if God wants me to work through this with Him the most...and it did not help that I seem to want to avoid God on top of it, which He often reminded me of what I was doing as I did it.

I have always thought of myself as conceited and selfish, and I still think that. On the other hand, I feel that I have no worth except in the things that I do or provide for others. I think certain things contributed to this besides my childhood, like many of the churches I was in. This might explain why I have hurt feelings left over from some churches and even anger towards some church philosophies: mainly the ones that seem to beat down their congregation and perhaps, in particular, women. It is not that I disagree with the scriptures used, but just how they were used to shame and beat congregations into submission. This in contrast to encouraging people to learn to listen to God themselves and act on His leading rather than relying completely on pastoral leadership as the sole mouthpiece of God. Even some of the church members that talk the right talk, with amens and hallelujahs in the service, seem to not hear God's words in their daily lives and frowned on those that did.

So, I hid away in those "safe" churches and kept quiet most of the time. I tried to fit what they expected of me as a member, as a woman, and as a wife. Part of me used to scream inside that I was as much of a human being as any man, that I had worth, that I hear God speak to me who is the greatest authority, but after awhile even my internal screaming became silent and I became even more complacent just to get along with everyone else. It still did not win me any friends, so why did I bother to try? There was only one church that really showed my husband and me how much we were appreciated and loved, and would be missed when we moved from Florida. The good news is we are now in a church that is very like it: only nearly 17 years later did we get back what we were missing, but the church is only three years old so...I guess we had to wait. These people get into your life and invite you into theirs. There is a greater sense of community than we had before.

Anyway, this is not meant to be a another gripe about churches, but rather I am just analyzing the influences in my life trying to identify what is my issue with "loving myself" and what that really means from God's perspective. I have always been taught that loving yourself is wrong; loving others more is right; loving God the most is ideal. That self-sacrifice is the greatest good. That hating your life means you love God more. If you are last then you will be first...all those humbling things that Jesus Himself said. However, when the visiting pastor was praying over me months ago and was given the message to give to me that I think I am being humble but I am not, that if I did not love myself I could not really love others, I was so very confused and highly disturbed. I thought I was doing that part right but here this man was telling me that I should take off my sunglasses to see that it really was daytime not night time like I thought. It just flipped my world, but I was not ready to flip with it...and I am not sure I still am. And I do not know the source of this, but there seems to be a measure of fear involved with this thing also. 

So, here am I at the end of this fast...I feel I did not pray as I should have, as long as I should have, or about what I should have, nor did I get a final resolution about healing my heart, but I also know that sometimes what I need comes after the fast has ended, so here am I, my Lord, hoping this healing of my heart is yet coming.

~ My Lord, reveal to me what I need to understand so that it will heal my heart and I will learn to love as You wish of me. ~