Assumptions Without Questions 2.0

A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one. ~J. Pierpoint Morgan

I hoped I would not hear this term again from anyone for the rest of my life: "assumptions without questions." The first time a woman used that as a indirect way to claim she was the victim of misunderstanding (and that I did not even care to understand) was the same woman who not only did not recognize that her son stalking my daughter as wrong because he was "in love" at fourteen years old, but also she was encouraging him. This incident caused my daughter to deal with anxiety over being stalked for nearly two years and she still worries about it with any guy she has met. Whatever assumptions this woman thought I had she proved with her actions were quite on target. The second time was recently and I have to say, the circumstances were very different, but the intention was the same.

Using the term "assumptions without questions" is an accusation in an attempt to deflect any shame-blame on the person who has caused the misunderstanding and tries to place it on the persons who misunderstood. Personally, if someone misunderstands me, I apologize...even if I think I was clear enough. That is because I do not think everyone else is in the same frame of mind that I am when I say or write something. As a writer, I try to draw in my reader to see my perspective, because I know they are not coming from the same perspective, however there are times I fail to do that well or a person just is not seeing it the same way as I am.

Case in point, a Facebook friend who has rabbits wrote something quite simple that everyone else seemed to get as I read through the comments, but my first impression was slightly different because I was thinking of his rabbits. His first two lines were: "Doe down! Bear chased all the bucks away." I immediately thought the worse for his rabbits, but the rest just did not quite fit my understanding of the first two lines: "Now to go get her. Thank you lord for this harvest!!!!" I was thinking what would possibly be left of the doe get if bears attacked his rabbitry and he should be looking for the bucks that had ran away.

However, it all makes more sense if one is thinking the man was hunting deer. Did I make an assumption or did he leave out information because he assumed that everyone was on the same page with him thinking he would be hunting? Most truthful answer is both are correct.

This was not that incident; that is just an example. The incident happened over the word "program," more specifically "reporting program." This suggested to the rest of us who were not thinking on the same thing as she was and reading what she had written, that the entire system of reporting the statistics was a failure and that reporting system is managed by specific people. This person is rather smart with a degree in science, so she should be capable of describing things well enough that it does not cause confusion. Therefore, when she said she had no trust in "the program", it sounded like she did not trust the people reporting the statistics, on which I commented. Next thing, I knew I was accused of making assumptions without asking questions. Of course, she believes it takes all the attention off her own assumption that anyone else would have obviously known she was actually talking about a computer program even though it was not obvious to anyone else reading it. "Program" is not a term exclusive to computers.

It is not the misunderstanding with which I have a problem. Misunderstandings happen. It is how people handle it that shows their character. While using "assumptions without questions" seems to make the accuser blameless in his or her own eyes, it tends to make me focus on the accuser's issues of being self-righteous. If fact, I tend to feel set up so that the opportunity to make the accusation of making assumptions without questions is ever present and it just is with some people, sadly.

I can admit that I am still quite raw from the first experience with the term and it may be a hot button for me, but if I had not fallen into the pit this last time, someone else likely would have and I would have been far more confrontational. However, I chose to ignore the insults and simply thanked her for clarifying so that everyone understood what she really meant. Did she intentionally set it up? No, but she did intentionally take advantage of the situation to try to make me look bad...this is not the first time she has told me how wrong I am, yet she lets others off who would make the same references.

There is always things and people to pray about...one more of each on my list.

My Lord, help me to be forgiving of people who try to shame-blame me. I wish to pray for them to be able to see people from a different perspective and consider that they themselves are not without blame when it comes to making assumptions.

Not-Yet's and Not-Ever's

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

My daughter has friends who are raised quite differently than she has been. Many of her friends label us as over protective because they are allowed to do things that our daughter is not. Some things are just not-yet's and others are not-ever's, at least while she lives in our home.

One not-yet is getting her driver's license. Although many of her friends have gotten or are getting their driver's permits at fifteen years old so that they can get their licenses at sixteen, my husband and I decided years ago that we would not rush into getting her license just because she legally could, although our state has a tiered system with three stages depending on age and other provisions. There are several factors that play into this:

• Local driving is far away from Atlanta traffic, but many people here commute and by the time they drive that distance, they are short on patience and have a whole different idea of what a speed limit is other than what is posted on the signs. 
• The Atlanta area is one of the worst in the country for teenagers causing accidents and there are several reasons for that, but probably the main reason is that they are teenagers and do not take driving as seriously as they should and easily get distracted thanks to latest in tech. 
• Another reason is related to illegal immigrants...they are not licensed or insured so there are many stories of accidents when a number of them jump out of the vehicle and ran away from the accident and that the vehicle itself was not registered so there is no way to find them. 
• Such events have caused steep increases in our vehicle insurance over the past few years and adding a teen driver to the policy is not something we are eager to do. 
• Lastly, waiting until she is seventeen also means we do not have to pay for a driving course as the tiered laws requires presently. It is enough that our car insurance doubles either way!

Her friends may get the not-yet's better than our not-ever's. A seventeen year old boy with which the Princess has been friends for a few years is leaving for college at the beginning of August. He wanted to spend some time with her so he offered to pick her up to drive her to the skating rink he likes that is about a 45-minute drive away. Now we expect attractions at this age but the Princess will not ever be allowed to date and being alone with a young man in a car...that sounds like a date to me. Of course, that is never going to happen. 

We have strict rules about going out with friends and courting. We have done things with her friends that are boys, like hiked in a park or gone to a movie, but I was there with them. The Princess does not have but one good friend that is a girl and that would be because she finds most girls fickle, boy-crazy, and shallow, except for this one. 

She just does not connect with girls. Even as a young child, she liked playing with boys and doing the stuff boys were into more...and this when she would dress in a fancy dress for church and often for dinner just because! She was a tomboy and a girly-girl, depending on the setting and her mood. For a few years, when she was middle school age, I could barely get her in a dress except for recitals. Now she is swinging back to her former loves, although she does not dress for dinner, but now and then she will wear a dress or skirt to church or just because.

Anyway, when she was younger, I mostly had to worry about what she and the boys were going to dig up in the backyard or injuries from sword fighting and she has always had this fascination with all kinds of knives, like boys tend to do. Although she is aware that some of her friends are attracted to her, she rarely will talk to us about it. The bad experience with J-Void left its mark on us all, so I think that one side of her does not want to like a boy or even been liked by a boy, but the other...well, she is still a teenage girl. We see the conflict she tries to hide.

Our rules have some flexibility depending on the situation and persons involved and we do invite God's say in the matter. However, the Princess is never to get into a car alone with a boy or go off anywhere alone with a boy at any time...period! She is allowed to go with a mixed group of friends as long as there is a responsible chaperone. We, at times, will allow her to do something with a boy as long as one of her parents is with her or we really know and trust the chaperone.

We do not need to know everyone in the group, but when it comes down to a one-on-one situation, we like to meet the boy and his parents if possible, just to be sure we all are on the same page. We did not do this with J-Void because....well, they both were only fourteen at the time. From our point of view, they were too young for courtship.

Now that the Princess is sixteen (and still too young, but it is not unexpected at this age), should a boy profess his interest in her as anything more than a friend and she feel the same, we will treat it as a courting situation. We are not there yet, although we have had some boys expressing their feelings for her, she has been more careful to reciprocate since J-Void. When we think it is a mutual attraction, then we will handle it as a courtship, in that we be more involved with their time together and work on getting to know the parents also.

Although the Princess has been made aware of these rules most of her life, I think it is still difficult for her to see the pictures of the girls from her youth group in their formal dresses with their dates for homecomings and proms. One girl in particular has had the same boyfriend for over a year, yet her mother has said that she is immature for her age to me several times, so I am still wondering why she allows her to date...? Anyway, a few times the Princess has asked why she does not feel anything towards any boy other than friendship, as if she thinks she has something wrong with her. It breaks my heart that she thinks that about herself, but I just tell her it is because she has not yet met the one God has chosen for her.

I know that this may be hoping for too much, but I am still hoping that God's chosen mate for my daughter will be a man who recognizes that our strict rules are not against him but for him and that appreciates that we all worked to guard her virtue and her heart for him. That would be ideal, but I will try not to have that expectation. Still, I have heard God tell me that He has selected her husband, the one we have been praying about for all these years, and that we are going to love him. In someways I cannot wait to meet him and in others...well, that it changes so much that I am also not in a hurry to see change. I will trust God's timing.

My Lord, I look forward to my daughter coming into adulthood, but it is a bittersweet feeling. Please give us all patience and help us to really hear You as we all grow through this process.

Imagined Reality

Men should use the men’s bathroom and women should use the women’s bathroom. Just because a man may "feel" like a woman doesn’t mean he should be able to share a bathroom with my daughter, or yours. That used to be called common sense.
-Phil Robertson, patriarch of "Duck Dynasty"

Just before we left on vacation there was a serious transgender bathroom school policies controversy that was all the talk thanks to our end-term president threatening to pull federal funds out of schools that do not comply with his wishes for students to use whichever bathroom and locker room that they identify as their gender. While at the museum, we were in a Christian safe environment but I had begun to ask myself questions. What if my daughter at four years old had told me she was really a boy? What if, indeed. Well, children like to pretend lots of things. Some want to believe they are a super hero and wear costumes day after day and it can last for months in some cases. Even so, these are normal phases.

When a child puts on a superman costume, it is understandable that people will play along, but when that child jumps off a build believing he will fly, that would be going beyond what is normal behavior. Sometimes our playing along is too convincing, too supportive, too accommodating, too attentive, especially when the child has been enabled to alter his perception of reality. My reality check to the flying argument there would be that superman can take off from the ground, so if you cannot jump up and stay in the air from the ground, you are just going to fall going off a building. I remember as a young child jumping off a couple of steps repeatedly for an entire summer in the backyard believing that one of those times I would really fly...didn't happen, but I was determined I could do it just the right way once and I would fly. I even dreamed of flying, so it had to be true!

I do not get why it is demanded of everyone to not only play along with a child's imagination, but to encourage them to the point that they cross over to denying reality or trying to change themselves to fit what they want they believe is their little private reality that no one else sees yet. I remember wishing I was a boy when I was younger because boys were into taking apart bikes and having pocket knifes. It is not that girls cannot do those things, it was just not as common for girls to want to do those things. If I wanted to wear boy clothes and my brother wanted to wear girl clothes, it was for fun, but even with our messed up childhoods and abused hearts, we were not confused about our genders. I just cannot relate with this catering to men who have chosen to change their appearance and welcoming them to use the same public bathroom as my daughter and me. Sorry, but no.

What about the pedofile's little private reality, where a man or woman believes children are capable of consensual sex? Some would say that is completely different. Well, yes and no. They want it to be true and they acted on it as if it were and they were blinded by their own desires to see the harm it caused to others. People would argue that a transgender person does not cause harm to other people. I think that if you talk to the families of most, you would find some deeply hurting and struggling hearts there.

My daughter did tell me one thing when she was four years old. I do not remember what I had said to her, but in the sentence I addressed her as "Child" to which she quipped sternly and quite seriously, "I am not a child, I am a woman!" (It still makes me giggle thinking of how she said it.) She really meant it, maybe for a time she really believed it and wanted me to accept it also, but I still treated her like my four-year-old child. She is still highly imaginative and creativity, but she also has accepted and learned to work through life within this: reality is the reality.

My Lord, this is such a fallen world. How much longer can You endure it?

Some Expectations are Necessary

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises. ~William Shakespeare (All's Well That Ends Well)

Friends who know me well, know that I have a philosophy that expectations are what allow us to be hurt by other people so I usually have no or, at least, very low expectations of other people. That being said, before I had devised the new homeschool plan described in my last post, my daughter and I were still hashing it out over trying to fit into the old one. At one point, she screamed that my expectations of her were too high. It was during this time that I was beginning to accept what we had been doing was not working well for either of us. Her perception was not entirely accurate, but it also had some truth.

We sat down and talked about those expectations during one of our morning devotions, because the reality was that she was not meeting mine, but she also was mistaken in what my expectations were. She also knows my philosophy, so this was her teenage gotcha-now way of finding fault in practicing my own ideology on expectations, spurring our discussion about reasonable vs. unreasonable expectations.

People we trust the most are the ones on which we have the most expectations and most are reasonable. This is practically inescapable in human nature. As parents, we expect our children to obey us. When children disobey, there is a consequence, a punishment, to remind them and help train them to comply with the rules that are set for their protection and to train them to behave. You cannot explain to a toddler why he should not run out into the street, because he will not fully understand that he will be in harm's way, that he could be injured or killed by a car, but he will remember the spanking of a repeat offense. (For those against spanking, I feel it is better than letting them learn this one by experience.)

Unreasonable expectations are the ones that we have not communicated to the other person, like I might expect my husband to call me if he is going to be home late, but his idea of late maybe 9:00 pm and mine might be 6:30 pm. It is unreasonable to think he just knows what I have in mind without talking with him and coming to an agreement on the time.

Another unreasonable expectation is to want someone to be different than they are. This is something that cannot be agreed upon and cannot be changed by the person who has the expectation. Imposing an expectation, even one that you have communicated to the other person, is not going to change him and is only going to hurt you because it is continually unmet. I had such a relationship with my mother; she just never was and never was going to be the mother I needed her to be, but once I identified that expectation and let go of it, I was finally free to love and enjoy her for the person she was. We were never close, but I was no longer hurt by her casual remarks; in fact, I often laughed about the things she said that used to feel like stabbing into old wounds and upset me for days afterwards.

I explain to my daughter that with education, there will always be some expectations, that is why there are test scores. Her father must at least meet most of the expectations of his employer to keep his job and exceed them to be considered for promotion. This is just how the world works. Likewise, I, as both her mother and her teacher, have some expectations of her when it comes to homeschooling. I cannot hug her and and comfort her because she felt the teacher was mean to her at school as her mother, because I am also the teacher. I cannot be detached about the quality of the work she hands in and I grade as her teacher, because I am also her mother, who can be disappointed.

So, I am not lowering the bar on my expectations of my daughter because I do believe I should have some, but not unreasonable ones. I do not see her as an "A" student in math, but I still want her to strive to do her best and she has earned some A's. I do see her as an off-the-charts student in Language Arts because she is and I do expect very few grades lower than A's there. Mostly, I expect her to learn, really learn, the material she is assigned. I also expect her to be a teenager, who one minute wants her independence and the next the security of her parents. Now that we have a chart and daily communication about assignments so that there are no unspoken expectations, things are much better...and probably as good as they can be between a teen and a homeschooling mama. 

My Lord, help my daughter to understand that expectations are a part of life, but how she deals with them is very important. Let her not be crushed by the weight of expectations place on her by others, let her set her own reasonable expectations on herself, keeping ones on others very low.

A Tough Read for My Creative-Sensitive Mind

Thoughts are like an open ocean, they can either move you forward within its waves, or sink you under deep into its abyss.
~Anthony Liccione

I started a book called Strong-willed Child or Dreamer? that was given to me by a friend. She is the mother of my daughter's bestest friend that she met last year in her science class. The mother has given this book to many parents because it changed her perspective so much about her own daughter and how she thinks: She knew her child was not strong-willed, she is too selfless of a peacemaker to fit in that category.

After reading just two chapters, I had to step away for a little while for a couple of reasons. One, I am still working through my remaining feelings from all that transpired since the beginning of September. We went from the Princess' deepening funk to finding out she was not turning but half her schoolwork to a boy with a crush on her to the high school retreat to losing the lead role in the play to leaving the school to my husband being away from home for four weeks all with the holidays creeping in. I am thankful that the Princess is now a pretty normal teenager with the up and down moods that go with it, but at least there are the up ones and laughter now. I, on the other hand, have been walking on the edge of the emotional abyss and I slipped down into it a little ways so I am trying to climb out, but also I keep losing footholds and progress is hampered.

So, as I began reading the book weeks ago, the introduction of the workings inside the creative-sensitive mind, I am meeting myself in every page and I began slipping down again. It is not like I do not know who I am and how I think. I have known me for a very long time. I think what began hurting is that even though I know who I am, how I think, and what I need, being well aware of the all three does not ensure the third one: what I need.

What I need I have pushed aside for many good reasons, like homeschooling my daughter is my highest priority in this season my my life. That is a good one, right? Half of the inside my house is in a needs-renovation state because of damage to the walls from the window replacements so that has a priority. Another good one, right? The Princess needs more space and organization so she explore and refine her creative talents. That one is important for creative-sensitive minds...but that is the one that gives me a pinch.

Just two chapters in and instead of being thrilled to better understand myself or my child, I only feel confirmation of what I already knew about both of us. But, worse, I realize more keenly than before that I have been denying myself what I would never want to deny my own daughter. How many years has it been? There have been moments, but most of my life I have pushed back, pushed aside, and even given completely up the very things I am trying to make sure my daughter has, what I did not and still do not allow myself to have. I am every bit of the creative dreamer that she is. I am not jealous...well, maybe I am, not of her but of the encouraging mother she has—twisted as it sounds. I am jealous of myself for being the mother I wish I had, but I am also jealous that I do not allow myself the creative time that I allow for my daughter.

I just have not been able to continue the book without a loosing a foothold. The book is very good, but I may have to take it in by small bits. I believe my Lord placed it in my hands to help me understand what I have done to myself, what has become a habit for me for many years. The book was not so much for me to better understand my daughter, although I am sure I will glean some good from it, and it was not so much for me to better understand myself, I know me, but to better understand how I deny my own desires to use the gifts He created in me for His pleasure, as well as my own. If I take pleasure seeing my daughter use her creative gifts, certainly I have been denying my Lord that pleasure.

My Lord has made it clear to me that I need to go through this, to come to terms with it. I do not want these underlying feelings to taint the relationship I have with my daughter nor our creative workings. I want us to enjoy creating together and apart from each other as well. We have different styles, but we can appreciate the differences and learn from each other because of them.

There is one other thing I wonder: If I am the mother I wish I had, does that also get twisted around that my daughter is the daughter I wish I had been able to be? I catch my thoughts going that way sometimes. I was given a vision mentioned in Just One Year Ago that suggested that when my daughter was just a year old. I feel I also must be very careful not to place such an expectation on her.

My Lord, lead me on this walk. Let me place my feet only on the solid places You show me so I no longer slip down on my way up and out.

People Need People

People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities. -Linda Ellerbee

My muse Ganieda wrote a post titled Introverts 4 Christ in response to another blog post Reading in the Day written by another friend, who described the guilt she feels as an introvert, particularly as a Christian introvert. I have quite a few introverts for friends, most of whom I have met through the Internet, and I have a few extroverts for friends, most of whom I have met in person. Yes, I think there is a correlation.

Introverts are usually more self sufficient types who can stimulate and entertain themselves with their own thoughts and can even feel rudely interrupted by a person's chatter or presence while they are submerged in a thought. They need time to process, not what is obvious, but what is beneath it and when there is much going on, it is overwhelming. While introverts obviously feel more comfortable not being in the presence of people doing the day-to-day business of people, they need people in the forms of individuals. Even those who would rather tune out the world enraptured in a book needed someone to write the book, someone who expressed his thoughts or told the story. In short, they had a deep desire for persons to connect with them and for them to connect with persons, more to the point, the subsurface of each person: how the person thinks, what he believes, the condition of his soul. Introverts usually are starved to share their thoughts with individuals of the same persuasion, but introverts, being what they are, have trouble finding each other because they shun the presence of people; the Internet has provided introverts the perfect meeting grounds.

Extroverts, on the other hand, are people who need people to just be the day-to-day people they are. They absolutely need the stimulation and entertainment that others provide. They want to experience life through people. They want to be involved and to interact. They feel connected to people by their presence. They use technology as a means to stay connected when outside of the presence of people and to arrange get-togethers. They feel lonely without people. Many are quite dependent on people: I have extroverted friends who are not motivated unless they are doing something for someone else or have someone with them while they are doing it.

What am I? Both and neither, but not something in between, either. I am something even more complicated. I have struggled with feeling guilty about not being what I thought I should be, but somewhere along the way I changed my thinking to just being as God wishes and I find peace. I am not in that "God made me that way so I can just be...ME" crowd either. We all have had different experiences that challenged us, even injured us, that resulted in shaping us and when we are seeking God's guidance all those things, bad and good, works toward His good, which means we are not meant to stay the way we were when we found God, but to walk a journey with Him and be changed by Him.

Beyond the introverted and extroverted concerns, I am empathic, creative...and so much more so all those things wrapped up together make me more like a cross-over chameleon. To my extroverted friends, I am extroverted in appearance, sometimes drawing on my creativity which covers an introverted undercurrent. My introverted friends recognize me as one of their own, one who sees beneath the veil. It is not that I am trying to fool anyone, but rather that I have found special niches in which I can happily flourish and honor my Lord.

For instance, I often offer to face paint at large get-togethers with children. This way even adult introverts and extroverts have an opportunity to meet me while the crowd is funneled down to just a few at a time doing something creative that I enjoy. Everyone thinks I am as friendly as I really am (after that initial meeting), but I did not have to think of a way to approach them, which is where I trip awkwardly over my introverted tendencies. In the end, everyone benefits. I also do well on stage as a speaker or acting, even singing or playing a guitar, it is better for me than sitting in the audience. The reason is because being empathic the closeness of so many people can really affect me, strong emotions added to the aches and pains that I can feel from so many; although I try not to think about it, sometimes it is very distracting. I know I am suppose to pray for those people, but sometimes I just want to be left alone while I am watching a play or listening to a preacher. So, I am drawn to things where I use my creativity as a buffer with crowds, but am still contributing and even interacting with everyone.

We all like to think we had something in common with Jesus and I am no exception. I believe Jesus keenly felt the sufferings of people but He was also driven by His love for people. I believe that once in awhile also He needed to commune with God alone. I believe that He was neither introverted nor extroverted but something more complex and yet so very simple: He is God. I believe God made us all unique and gave us the Holy Spirit, not just so we would be saved, comforted, and have His gifts, but also because God could experience the uniqueness of each of us.

As to feeling guilty, that is simply a person placing a judgement upon himself. The only guilt one should ever feel is as a warning when one is disobeying or not acting on what God wishes him or her to do at any time, when we are being self serving rather than God serving. We can judge ourselves so harshly but the only judgement that is true is God's.

Thank you, my Lord, for the differences in people and the two things we all have in common: the need for You and for each other.

My Love Bracelet

...Love your neighbor as yourself.
~Matthew 22:39

A friend just told me that she did not know if I had noticed how different I am from the way I was last year at this time. My Lord has blessed me with the ability to completely forget the bad or at least not remember bad things that have happened in my life in any kind of sequential order—quite a feat considering I am a sequential kind of gal. Thankfully, I have this blog to keep a record not just of events but of my spiritual state of being as well. I have not forgotten the burden I felt for my former church that became so keen and overpowered every thought and prayer I had at the time. I nearly lost myself in the quagmire between wrestling with what God wanted and what the church wanted, and what I might have wanted, other than trying to please my Lord rather than fight with Him, was completely pushed aside. I believe there were many reasons I had to go through that short season of my life, but one in particular now is far more evident than before.

A few weeks ago I did something I have been wanting to do for a long time since even before we began visiting other churches in January, even though I still was wrestling with God to just do it. A visiting pastor invited anyone who needed healing to come up and let him pray for them. I wanted to be healed of a few minor physical things, but there I was standing next to a man, who of all the people there, had the greatest need for healing; a man on oxygen and barely able to stand. Immediately, I felt selfish for coming up as I knew this man needed healing far more than I did. I also felt terribly sad because I just knew God had another plan and he would not be receiving it at that time as much as he wanted it. (I did not know him or the situation, but I just knew his time was short—the very next Sunday, we were celebrating his passing on to be with his Lord.) So, I am standing there wanting to go back to my seat thinking of how my needs are so little in comparison to him and probably everyone else there...as if no one should waste a prayer on me.

The pastor did not just pray for me but passed on words of knowledge from the Holy Spirit. He talked to me about how I did not love myself. It is still very difficult for me to accept this. I always feel that I am rather selfish and even demanding, but this pastor was sharing what my Lord wished for me to hear so I tried to listen and accept them. He also said that being humble is not what I was doing, although I might believed it to be that. If I am to love my neighbor as I do myself, yet I do not love myself, then my neighbor is in trouble. That hit me very hard. I have never thought of it that way.

Although I did not know it at the time, that was a pivotal point for me and I have yet to grasp it completely. For the last few months, I think I have been in a very slow recovery of a lifetime of denying myself that I had come to begin to recognize almost a year ago yet it got kicked up a few notches that day. Even as I write that I still hear the denial of it in my mind as I try to convince myself I really have not been doing this. I survived poverty and abuse in my childhood, but continued in a self-imposed semi-state of self-denial and self-degradation. I write a semi-state, because I have fought against going too far and slipping back into a clinical depression. I have lived through such a depression once in my life for nearly two years and I just refuse to allow myself to be in that debilitating hell on earth ever again. However, the few times I began to make peace with identifying my self-worth, something would happen that would make me pull myself back down to that point of not being depressed yet not really enjoying my life either...as if whatever changed was a sign from God to make sure I did not become too full of myself, so I led myself to believe. Now I am thinking that I was attributing something to my Lord that was not from or of Him. If you have read my blog for some time, you may have recognized this struggle in my writings...at least, I am seeing it for myself now.

So, recently, I have noticed that I have been doing some little things that I just like to do for myself...and others too. I have been more generous, not because I feel I should be, but because I really want to be, which has been growing in me as well. It is not just giving to others, but also allowing myself to enjoy things as well—I really did not realize how much I do not allow myself to enjoy things, all kinds of things...I probably still do not fully realize it. 

This glass bead bracelet has become my personal symbol of love. I saw bracelets like this a few weeks ago on display at the studio of the Princess' piano teacher. One of her "piano moms," as she calls the mothers of her students, makes these Pandora style bracelets to sell for $20, who can pass up a price like that with beads that look like this! I decided they would make nice gifts for a couple of friends and also for me, as it was around the time of my birthday.

I met the jewelry maker at her home a few weeks ago and pick out bracelets for the others and had decided that even though I am not much of a jewelry kind of girl that I really liked these and I was determined to get one for myself. Now here is where my struggle usually begins. First of all, I will choose the most difficult path, which in this case was to pick out my own beads from a selection that would boggle the brain. The jewelry maker told me that she has a friend that can never make up her mind on which beads she wants and I warned her that I would probably be that way as well. Since she is well practiced with situation, she told me to pick from the bracelets she had made and then we could exchange beads according to my wishes.

I still struggled with just selecting a color! At this point I normally would talk myself out of it completely just because I could not make a choice so I must not want it enough to make this worthwhile. Perhaps that is just my excuse to say I am not worth it? Then I consciously made a decision instead of finding the one I think I should get to justify my reasons for wanting it in the first place, I would pick out the one that I just want, the one that catches my attention most. My eyes immediately fell again upon the one I first liked so much it at the piano studio with some beads of stemmed flowers on a black background. Then I tried to talk myself out of it: It is bulky and heavy so would I really wear it? I could not use the metal allergy since most of it is made with glass beads, probably from China so maybe I should not get it because of lead? I do not wear the black and purples to match it really. In fact, I am a pretty drab dresser with denims, whites, and earth tones except for a few hot pink T-shirts, so I was telling myself I should go for the browns or something else that I could match.

However, I surprised myself and picked the one I really liked and asked her to add some green beads, matching those green flower stems. I even had her pick them and when she put it together...I just loved it! Next thing I knew, just a few hours later that day I found a cute black top for around $6 with the Kohl's price tag of $46.00 still on it at a nearby (to the piano studio) SERV store and a black sweater for around $5 at Goodwill so now I am liking black along with some other colors I have not dared to wear. I have always liked short black boots, black tops, and black belts with a light denim jeans, but I cannot think of any time I have ever had such an outfit of my own...yet.

I know it is just a bracelet and the bracelet did not change my life, but it is symbolic of a change in my life...and I am allowing myself to really enjoy the bracelet and the love for myself that it symbolizes.

~ My Lord, thank you for simple pleasures. I know they do not last, but while they last please remind me that it is You Who allows me to enjoy them.~

No Do-Overs

If I had it all to do over again, I would do most all things differently. However, how would I know that if, I had not had the opportunity to do them the first time.
 ~Janice Markowitz

Googling for information about a certain homeschool product, I came across this intriguing blog post entitled "If I Were Starting Homeschooling Over From Scratch." As I scanned through it, I began thinking about how much the homeschool market has changed since I began and how much my daughter and I have changed as well. So many materials were not available at the time when we started that I might have liked to use or at least had considered before making a final choice. I am sure that there are some newer products that I might have preferred over what I decided on at the time, but the ones I picked were tried and true, still available today and I rarely ever find myself thinking "I wish this was available years ago."

I have this philosophy to purposely not look back at my life with regret, which is not to say that I do not have regrets or I never wished I had done some things differently or not at all, but I have always been one to believe that in the same circumstances with the same information and same emotions in play I had at the time, I would have done exactly what I did. It is very rare that I say or even think if I had it to do over again...

I simply do not believe in do-overs. They are the illusions for when we cannot face up to the worst we have done, but they are not reality. I don't believe in examining my past and thinking about how things would have turned out if I had done this or that differently. Those are empty wishes on which I simply do not spend time and effort. It is better to spend that time and effort in making good decisions right here and now. I believe in going on from where I am. I believe in the possibly of tomorrows. I even believe that all my history—the good, the bad, and the ugly—made me into the person I am today and what I do today will make me into the person I will be tomorrow. 

Some would argue with me that when we accepted Jesus, we became new persons in Christ. Yes, but this did not erase my history, it became part of it. Jesus did not give me a new past, but a new future. I do not believe in do-overs, just in new days, each being a beginning of the rest of my life as the cliché goes. This very moment is the first of the rest of my life, even though there have been 50-some years of moments before this one.

Homeschooling has tested these philosophical convictions of mine. There have been more than a few things I have questioned. There have been more than a few things I planned to do that we have not done, at least not the way I planned. I have, am, and will be holding myself responsible for the failures within my daughter's education. What I do, actually all that I have ever done because it makes me who I am today, has a direct influence on who she has been, is, and will be. All of it is her education.

There have been times I simply had to surrender and rely on God's guidance, even unschooling because of circumstances and being unable to control the Princess' education—as if such a thing can be controlled! (I think "control" is another illusion with which we delude ourselves.) There have been times I was more organize and strict with her lessons as reminded myself that there are no do-overs. Still, I learned this most wondrous secret: either way she learned. Yet, most of the time, I fluctuate between the two extremes at points in our lives and even differing between subjects, but it has had little bearing on how fast she learned whatever she learned with a few exceptions like Greek and Latin.

I was thinking about all these things this week after I reviewed the Elementary Greek curriculum that arrived a few days ago. It is very different from Greek 'n' Stuff - Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! which is for what I hoped, but it is not quite what I was expecting either. It is good, probably just what we need at this point, but does not have as much practice as I would like to see. The lessons are short, but meant to be done daily. Hey, Andrew! lessons could be done daily, but they were very uneven in their time demands, and since it was the same with the Greek 'n' Stuff Latin, I chose to do two pages of Greek on one day alternating with two pages of Latin on the next day, which even out the time somewhat better. Some lessons were taking about an hour, but the organization of these programs was adding to our difficulty of really learning the material. From what I am seeing with the Elementary Greek, there is the possibility that I may need to supplement its lessons with some exercises from Hey, Andrew!

Elementary Greek was available when I was choosing our Greek curriculum, but I was right in my assessment at that time. Had we started with Elementary Greek when she was younger, it would move too fast for us to really process and grasp the information well. I think it would have been a hard cold start even for her at this age considering she is learning other languages also. My plan to "train her brain" to accept the concepts of other languages very early, while she was still learning our own language, did fulfill its purpose and she is rather good with this. I do not know why I feel this is so important at this time, nor even why it was to me then, although I had my reasoning, but I believe my plan must be working within God's plan.

With Elementary Greek, much of the first year will be review and because it lacks some of the things we have covered with Hey, Andrew!, I am assuming that those things will be covered in Year 2 or even 3. The benefit of Elementary Greek not aligning with Hey, Andrew!, is that we will have enough review to cover our weak areas and ease us into the new routine. In addition, there are some vocabulary words that will be new to us and some concepts also so it will not be boring. I also was a bit astonished to find that from Hey, Andrew! we learned a few wrong pronunciations in simple things like the alphabet letter names. Omicron is not /OM-i-cron/ but /om-EE-cron/ and pi is not /PIE/ but /PEE/—How well would that have gone over in my geometry class, I wonder?

Do I regret using Hey, Andrew! for all these years? Not at all. I used to think we could have moved along faster as we took more than a year for each level, which is why we are only in Level 4, but in reality what it was was as good as it could be with the lesson loads the Princess has had and our crazy schedules. I initially had hoped to switch to Elementary Greek after Level 3 or 4 of Hey, Andrew!, but as we used it, I changed my mind concerned about how the two would not align. Now, here I am implementing the original plan and seeing the change as beneficial. Actually, I am quite pleased with my choice: The timing is good as to her age and quickness to understanding. Hey, Andrew! did well for introducing us both to Greek, so that we could do well with the faster start pace of Elementary Greek and I will be keeping Hey, Andrew! on hand as it still may be a good supplement. 

This change in our Greek curriculum works so well it is almost as if it was planned for this particular time, and I do not mean by me. I have always asked my Lord to be the one in control of my daughter's education and that I would be guided by Him. If it is His plan then it cannot be wrong.

So, if I had it to do over again...I would do it exactly as I have. If I were starting homeschooling now, I probably would have used the same plan, at least for Greek, as I did because there are no other overly impressive Greek curricula for young children that I have seen so far.

Today we will work with what we have and move on with our sights set on the future. Whatever the Princess lacks in her education at this point, God will provide along the way. I have seen that happen many times, so I have faith that He will continue within or despite my plans and failures.

~ My Lord, keep us looking forward, learning from mistakes but not wishing we had done things differently, and making better choices today for our tomorrow. May all our chosen paths be the ones You have chosen for us. ~

One Blog, Two Blog, Three Blog, Four

Your blog is your unedited version of yourself.
~Joshua Porter

Some friends of mine have more than one blog. To be honest, I have more than one myself, but the other two...well, I just never got around to starting them so I have them in name only, so to speak. One was to be devoted to homeschooling and the other was to be a daily devotional...but there is not one post on either one of them.

I frequently warn my readers that I am a mass of conflicted ideas. I like to organize, set up schedules, and even compartmentalize...but I get bored with the daily maintenance of keeping things organized, I tire of routines quickly, and I often feel compartments are too disconnected. Bottom line, I like setting up blogs, but I barely have enough motivation or time to keep up with just one...so how would I do three or even just two?

Knowing this about myself, I was surprised some weeks ago that I was again thinking that some people might be more interested in just homeschooling and less about the journaling of my daily life. Maybe I would snag more readers if I organized my blogs according to these main interests...it always sounds like a good idea. I have added book and product reviews because I enjoy doing them, but I was thinking that these things should have a separate blog perhaps. I recently disclosed one of my gifts and some of my thoughts on healing--a very big leap for me fearing I would yet again lose friends or at least readers. Oh, what about my favorite recipes, face painting, and art projects?

The more I thought about having multiple blogs, the more indecisive I became. Most people who have more than one usually do majority of their posting on one and the other(s) are not given much attention. Sometimes I wish I would just go have a talk with my Lord about such things first. I would waste much less time and spend time better focusing on what is important to Him. At some point I finally did that and God told me simply I am who I am. I am a Christian, a wife, a mother, a homeschooling parent, a writer (and blogger), a healer, an artist, a health and fasting advocate, and more. You see, the real thing was that I wanted to put that healer thing in another blog with a different identity, and even though I would disclose to some of my close friends of the other blog, I would (in my mind) still have a wall of secrecy about the whole thing.

Did my Lord think that was a good idea too? No. Why would He give a gift to any person and wish it to be hidden? How can God be glorified with gifts kept in secret?

As I read the first chapters of Healing is a Choice, a book I will review later, I had one of those moments of realization when I could see something from a differing perspective as if I were seeing if for the very first time. I was reading about how God always used people to bring about healing, that there was a connection between people for healing to occur. Throughout the book, thus far, connection is a key theme to all healing. I see this as an answer to a question that has plagued me for years.

Does God need people to heal people? Probably not any more than He needs us to pray when He already knows our needs better than we do, but how would it glorify Him if ordinary people could not do extraordinary things in His name?

My blog is ordinary and not popular, but it is about this one ordinary woman with many interests, gifts, talents, thoughts, beliefs, fears, desires, hopes, worries, activities, and duties, who has at times been a part of some very extraordinary things. If I separate the extraordinary from the ordinary, how can it really glorify God? How can I show people the gifts of the Spirit are real in the here and now if I do not use them or tell others about them? How can I help others to learn to listen to God if I keep silent about what my Lord has said to me? If I never report any of the signs and visions I have been given, who will believe God gave them and praise Him for answers to prayers?

~ My Lord, blogging has been one of those things that I hope I do to glorify You. Please let it continue to do so on this one ordinary blog. ~

Living Without TV

If you came and you found a strange man... teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of the house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don't think twice about it. ~Jerome Singer

Long ago, before the Princess was born, my husband thought it would be nice to have a TV in our bedroom. He thought I would like it..."Not unless you are planning to sleep with it alone," said I. One TV in the home was enough I felt, even during football season, which holds far more interest for my husband than for me. We have been in agreement about this ever since. Although we do have an excellent surround sound system, we also still have a twenty or so year old TV set. No sleek, flat, wide screen. No HD. Let's not even talk about Blu-Ray! Not that I would not like to have these things, I just know they are not really necessary.

Average Number of TVs per U.S. Household: 2.5
Percentage of Americans with 4 or more TVs: 31%

There have been a few times we had no TV. Just before we bought this last TV set, when the one before gave out, we were without a working TV set for months. Another few months without TV service, when we first moved here about fifteen years ago. I have been without a TV set or service several times for long periods before I met my husband and did not watch much of it as a teenager even when it was available.

About a year ago, we made the decision to turn off our TV service temporarily: Taking a Break from the Regular Scheduled Programming. I planned to bring it back on sometime in autumn, but finances were at a greater crunch due to the double tithe commitment we made then. Because the service will only allow suspension for six months in a twelve month period, it came back on the week before Christmas and I thought that would be nice to watch Christmas specials and movies especially since it was dark so early and the weather so cold outside.

Instead I found that there was so much, so very much, that shocked my senses and much of it was the commercials. My husband and I decided we did not need it at all: This is Not a Test. Within a month, I called to have it turned off permanently, while the representative offered all sorts of very enticing deals and I have to say I was so tempted. I finally told him that they were very good deals and I was very happy with the service itself, but that I was not going to another competitor, just turning off the TV altogether because we did not like what was on it.

It is said that the best way to know whether or not you really need something is to put it away for a few weeks and see if you go looking for it during that time. Yes, there have been times I wanted to sit down on the couch, just turn on the remote, and browse the list of available shows and pick, not necessarily what I want to see, but whatever seemed the most interesting out of whatever is available. Often it was just so much wasted time on deciding on and watching the least of evils.

Hours per year
the average American youth spends in school: 900 hours
the average American youth watches television: 1500 hours

I really do not think we realize how much is on TV that our children (and ourselves) do not really need to see, actually would not be exposed to at all as we go about our days and yet we invite this assault right into our homes. We become desensitized by these things when the tube is on so much of the time. Even at the most innocent level, there was all the ads about the latest and greatest toys and gadgets that my daughter did not really need but then wanted just because she saw them. Advertising works and when you think about the irony of it, here we are often paying for TV service, so that we will want to buy more things.

TV not only gives a false sense of reality, but it influences our reality. It makes us desire to be entertained more and more. I believe that desire to be entertained has shaped the way church services are done these days as well! Not that it is a bad thing to have an enjoyable service, but I am not so sure that so much effort needs to go into the staging of a service...and I might be saying this in part as the wife of the media/sound man of my church, because I miss him sitting with my daughter and me.

We think we decide what we will watch when we sit down in front of the TV, but how many times did we leave it on after the show we wanted to watch ended so that we end up watching something else we did not really plan on and we should have been doing something productive? How many times have we seen things that would embarrass us to be watching if Jesus was sitting next to us? How many times have I heard conversations among Christians about certain shows or movies and I thought that maybe they were not such good ones? (And yet the reason I knew about them is because I had actually seen some of them myself!)

Average number of hours the TV set is on during the day:
7 hours and 12 minutes.

We suspended the TV service a year ago because we just had too much to do and would not be watching it much during the summer and had plenty of DVDs and VHS movies and seasons of shows like the Waltons (my daughter's current favorite), Little House on the Prairie, and the Andy Griffith Show. I thought I was busy enough last summer, but since then we have added the rabbitry and food gardens! I rarely sit on my cozy couch these days, but when I do, it is not just something out of habit that I do every day. I have purpose in sitting there. I choose to watch either a DVD or VHS tape...or read a book or play a game or just pray or blog with my laptop. With it being summer, my living room has become more of a parlor because we have so much to do outside.

I wanted to begin exercising regularly and I am doing just that. Most days I go to bed tired because I have been doing more physical stuff all day. Actually, doing all kinds exercises just cleaning up gardens and the yard. I have been using my body to work in all kinds of ways I did not think I would ever be able to do because of my former back problems and I am also stronger than I was so that I can, thankfully.

56% of American children between 8 and 16 have a television in their bedroom.

Plenty of time to watch TV and all those reruns of the shows I missed, if I want to watch them, when I am quite old sitting in a favorite chair and unable to get around. If the Lord takes me before I get to that point, I would count it as no lost. I like my life much better this way. I love the creative things my daughter thinks up to entertain herself and me because she is not wasting her mind away being entertained on the couch. Even though many of her friends have TVs in their bedrooms, my Princess was not one to watch much TV anyway, naturally preferring creative pursuits, and I am glad that we have made the decision to just do without it completely. It has freed up time to spend on more worthy interests, skills, thoughts, and prayers!

I think a TV fast now and then could be a good thing for any family. We sit watching people act out scripted lives on a screen and do not think about how we live our own lives in front of it. I mean, how interesting would it be to watch someone zoned out on a couch watching TV? You know, that just may be the very reason you do not see shows and movies with people watching TV.

Just a thought....

~ My Lord, thank you for giving us a life full for worthy pursuits and understanding that TV was not a necessity in our lives. ~

My Master Gardener

I always think of my sins when I weed. They grow apace in the same way and are harder still to get rid of. ~Helena Rutherfurd Ely, A Woman's Hardy Garden, 1903

I know that most of my problems are ones that I allowed to be problems. For instance, the poison ivy growing absolutely wild entwined with my lovely patch of English ivy, my back yard of moss and weeds instead of grass, my one garden bed of filled with dandelions, and all those sprouts of a diseased tree determined to resurrect itself on roots that should have died months ago after we cut it down and treated the stump.

In our backyard we have a kind of sink hole. The kind that is caused when the builder clears the land and buries all the wood debris. Eventually, it rots away and the ground sinks. Plus, we have exposed wires that were meant to be buried, because they just buried them by placing sod over them and now, because of the drought killing off the grass and soil erosion when it does rain, some wires can be seen on top of the ground. We have such huge areas that need our attention and lots of hard, hard work.

I have worked hard in small areas taking one garden bed or more often a portion of a garden bed at a time. Although the ones I have done look nice, to keep them nice takes work and then there is another one to tackle. The poison ivy entwined with my lovely patch of English ivy...well, we might just have to give up on cutting and treating it a bit at a time, because the stuff is so resilient with such a strong defense against human intervention, and just kill off everything in the area, saving some English ivy to start over.

I have been hand watering the food and herb gardens with rain water caught in our barrels, but it really needs to rain again. The grass is thinning and browning among growing bare dirt patches in the front yard. Yesterday the wind kicked up and we hoped, but no rain fell.

A few days ago, I found myself sitting down on the shaded landing of our back stairway to rest and cool off in the quiet of nature. My husband did such a lovely job on the deck and I really do like that landing he added, but that deck will need to be varnished again soon too. Everything we have requires work to maintain, get into shape, or just to keep from falling apart. And, even when you do all those things, something will break, or a weed will grow where you do not want it, or things will rot. It is neverending!

There I was crying softly all alone, feeling sorry for myself, and thinking everything was dust in the wind. What will it matter if we clean up all the yards and gardens, my Lord? Weeds will encroach again. Bugs will eat the plants. It may take years to clear the wooded area of the poison ivy, if we ever can. It is all futile. It has no lasting value at all.

I feel God has been telling me to do with what we have and I have been trying to do just that and be content with the work I must do, but I allowed myself to explore the depths of my heart to reveal what has value to me right now. Not much of anything...well, there are some things. Maybe I was just...tired. I looked over to my herb garden, now looking so well cared for, and thought about how the things that make me happiest are things I work to produce. While they are not everlasting, they are pleasing for a time. I can now, at least for this time, enjoy the appearance of my herb garden. God must feel the same about us at times...perhaps those times are too short-lived for Him as well.

He works on us, has His angels help us, and for a time we might meet His expectations of us. He may even sit back and enjoy watching us as we grow for a time, but just like my garden, He must attend to us repeatedly because some are not as resistant to the pests that steal away from our spiritual vitality, weeds crowd in, and we wilt without His Light and Water of Life. He does not give up, but must continually be the Master Gardener.

So, I continue watering, weeding, and working my gardens....

~ My Lord, thank you for never giving up on me and thank you for this encouraging thought gift that I will keep close to my heart while I work in my gardens. ~

Surviving Blogland

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.
~P. L. Travers

There are many blogs with tips about how to have a successful blog that start with something like this: Choose the purpose or subject matter for your blog, attract your visitors to your blog, and so on. My blog is mostly a personal journal of events and thoughts along my life's journey to my Lord; staying on a particular subject or attracting a large number of readers is not my goal. However, I do very much appreciate the few readers I have; it is very encouraging for me to continue my journal.

I was thinking that I have not seen any advice on how to survive the other side of blogging. You see, some of my favorite bloggers have been posting less often of late, including myself. Some are observing Lent and some are just particularly busy in their real life and some may just not be in the mood to write. It is like an infectious illness putting the skids on my blog world and I may even be helping it along! My husband calls me a high maintenance woman, but I believe I am only high maintenance in my need for communication and if I feel cut off, I get...uh, moody, even needy.

It is no one's fault. I firmly believe happiness is a choice and I do not expect people to make me happy...but lately I have felt like my support group is...ungrouping. Yes, I know it is not a real word and to be honest these individuals are not in a real group, except in my little cyber world. I have come to realize that I handpicked a support group for my needs, but is it a small group and rather fragile. If just one is not posting for a few days, I feel unbalanced. If for more than a few, I feel the loss deeply of the people themselves, of course. However, I recognize there is this need that reading their blog fills in me also.

So, I have given this some thought and believe that I have a recipe for a good blogger's support group:

1. Sharing faith. This is my top priority for the majority of blogs I read that they are written by Christians, but that is not to say that I would not be interested in a blog of a differing faith so I could learn about it in a personal way.
2. Like interests or similar lifestyle. An obvious given! Everyone looks for people to whom she can relate.
3. Enough differences in interests or lifestyle to be interesting but not irritating. Let's face it, there is enough peace-stealing conflict just in real life, so I do not need to add more purposely, however I do like hearing opinions that differ from my own and getting to know a person.
4. A balance of blogs with deeper insights to challenge emotional and/or spiritual growth and those that are generally lighthearted and uplifting. Now this one is the most important to me personally. I need a balance in this because I am not the lighthearted and uplifting type—I know I am not shocking anyone with this confession—so I need that in my support group. On the other hand, I am more drawn to blogs that challenge me, so I tend to have more of them than the other.
5. A good pinch of motivating and educating to spice it up. I need to know what others people are doing, reading, or learning to help me decide if that is something I would want to do, read, or learn, and maybe add to my own lifestyle. I also like learning in the way people teach people, not in a boring uninvolved textbook style, but with a person's own opinions on the matter. It makes it far more enjoyable and memorable for me.
6. Inspirational in that they prompt me to write in turn. When I write "inspirational" I do not necessarily mean that pat-you-on-the-back kind nor that how-to-write kind, but something that motivates me to write, even if on an unrelated subject.

I think this list covers the main things, but if you have some to add please do.

The thing that make it all worth the while is not to survive in Blogland but to thrive in it and that requires a balance with your real life too.

~ My Lord, thank you for the people You have brought into my life through their writing. I appreciate them all very much, very much indeed! ~

Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

Is the glass half full, or half empty? It depends on whether you're pouring, or drinking. ~Bill Cosby

I am sure you have been asked this question. If you respond that the glass is half-full, you are a positive thinker. If you respond it is half-empty, you are a negative thinker...or some would prefer saying it is simply a half glass of water because they are more realistic thinkers.

I considered myself a realistic thinker although I have been described by others as a glass-is-half-empty type, but what I think now is far less simplistic. You see, it is my nature to make things more complicated than that, to skew one's perspective to think outside the box...or glass as it were: Sometime ago now, I came to the conclusion that the glass is always full! God created some things before He created the earth: space, time, light/energy, and matter. The glass has space and space is usually filled with some kind of matter. Now, it may only be filled half-way with water, but the other half is filled with air, that stuff we breathe well enough but tends to elude the senses of seeing, feeling, tasting, touching, or smelling; even so we cannot live but a few minutes without air—it is actually more important than water. So, I say the glass is always full, but it just may not be full of what one wants it to be.

Now let's look at the glass from an entirely different angle. Let's view the glass as a container of life as air and water are essential to life, but let's look at it from a more spiritual perspective. The glass could be my life or your life, and God is the One looking at it. Does He see it as half a glass of life or always full but just not filled with what He would like it to be?

That is how life is. We fill it up with things. They may not be the things that please God, but we like keeping it full...full of things. Some of those things may make us feel partially empty because we have not filled it with the life supporting things we should or we do not recognize them as having purpose at the time as with air, but even the emptiness within us is filled, just not with what God would like to have there.

I have been clearing out some things in our lives here, emptying areas of our lives and our home to fill them with what really should be here. When my husband was in the U.K., I cleaned up the workout space in our garage so we can exercise and the homeschool/office area in our basement so that we can used it more efficiently. I am going to again tackle cleaning out the art/craft room in the basement and be brutal about what will be kept or not, because I need the space. It is filled with the things I really do not desire and I have this desire to fill it with doing my own artwork again. The Princess needs that influence in her life as well; she draws nearly every day. She is turning ten years old at the end of the month and I am realizing that she has much to develop and learn in the next six to eight years before she finishes our homeschool. I am hoping that she will learn how to be filled up with the things that are pleasing to God.

~ My Lord, fill our emptiness with Your Life and not just fill it but let it run over. ~

Where is Your Happy Place?

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
~Abraham Lincoln

I often hear something about finding your happy place or having happy thoughts and I just really want to know:

What was the very first thing that came into your mind when you read this title? Honestly, where is your happy place or what would be your ideal happy place?

And the second thing, if there were any second thoughts?

I promise to reveal my own later on!

(Okay, here it is: My Own Happy Place.)

~ My Lord, help us see the truth in ourselves as You see it. ~

Nana Niecie's Wisdom

Only an Aunt can give hugs like a mother, can keep secrets like a sister, and share love like a friend. ~Spanish Proverb

I asked my aunt recently to explain to our Princess about how important it is to have priorities and to put things back into their proper places so she does not waste time later either cleaning up a pile of stuff all in the wrong place or that she can find it quickly, which is quite handy when she is in a hurry to do something. You see, my aunt has this kind of lifestyle down to a very precise science. She always knew exactly what she was going to do at the beginning of each day and where something should be for these very reasons.

My aunt wanted time to think it out and write it down so the Princess would have it to read over again when she wanted or needed to do so. This is the email she sent:

Dear [Princess],

Just a first letter to make sure you are getting my Email?

Your Mommie said you were having some problems with trying to organize your time? Do you feel this is a problem? Or are you just distracted with what is most important to you and then run out of time.

I was probably about your age when I had this awesome thought. There are rich people and poor people, there are people with a lot of talent and some who can focus on one thing and do it well because they have only a few interests. If you have a lot of things you want to do it is a matter of learning to focus on the most important and do it first without letting yourself get distracted. I am writing this as though you are very smart, as I think you are or you are a little older in your thoughts. If it does not make a good picture to you at this time just keep this letter for a little while and read it again later.

When I was thinking of rich and poor people I was filled with a thought that even if I was not rich there was one thing I had just the same amount of as everyone in the whole world. Even all the people I read about in History and that was each of us have just 24 hours a day! So how I use those hours are up to me! I began to organize my thoughts and learn to put my plans for each day and each week into groups.
What was the most important-What was just for me-What did I need to do to help someone else each day-How much time did I need to pray or talk to God-How much sleep did I need-and as you get older there will be more thoughts.

Just remember in the amount of time you have YOU ARE RICH! No one has more hours each day. So don't let the minutes slip by in confusion of what to choose. Remember to leave some down time when you plan nothing this is important so God can lead you to what He feels is important. I love to read and have to be careful that my love of reading does not push everything else out. Some people spend hours every day watching television, being on the phone, or some other interest that they need to watch for.

One thing I am beginning to rely on more and more is That I never hang up the imaginary phone that I am on when I need to talk to and listen to what God wants. I just never hang that phone up and have little sentence prayers all through the day and also listen to what He is saying to me. It is surprising how often he will help you to choose what is the most important today. When you stay in touch with Him.

Nana Niecie

Now you have a glimpse at why my aunt is one of my favorite people in the world!

~ Thank you, my Lord, for my aunt and uncle, who have been so kind to me all my life and now to my daughter too. May my daughter and I both hold to this wisdom she has passed down to us. ~

Relationships

Loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named, not good. ~John Milton

Last night my husband and I watched the movie "The Blind Side," which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. It is about a family taking in a gentle giant of a high-schooler without home or family. I had already been thinking about relationships with friends and families quite a bit of late. I am not good with some types of relationships....

Perhaps, I should say that it is casual relationships that I have to work at the hardest. I very much like people, but in general I find them draining much of the time. I do not do well with shallow conversations that always include talking about the weather unless the weather is doing something quite extraordinary or caused plans to be altered. Although I like to hear about what others are doing, I am not one to enjoy a this-is-what-I-did-today list all the time. It is difficult for me to feel comfort with anyone until I know how the person feels and the purposes for the things being done. That is when I feel connected.

Unfortunately, not everyone is wired the same way as I am. Some people feel far more comfortable just talking about the stuff they are doing or the weather or what their neighbors are doing. Even though I find such relationships unfulfilling, I remind myself that their needs are being fulfilled.

I had such with my mother for the last years of her life and it was difficult to maintain a surface relationship like that for me, but I was glad that it made her happy. We only talked about what she wanted to talk about; we had problems if I brought up any subjects of my own free will. She would only answer questions she wanted to answer; she expected me to answer all of hers, though. She expected me to be interested in her, but she would only allow me to share my life in answer to her questions. Basically, she controlled the conversations and there were times that I only said about five sentences during an hour phone conversation—she would then praise those as the best conversations we ever had to other family members! I worked hard at putting my desires aside to make her comfortable and happy with this. To me, it seemed to be an illusion, but that was exactly what she wanted: the illusion that we had a close relationship without her having to work at having a real one.

My problem is when I have these types of relationships overwhelming the ones that I need, because I end up burning out good friends, basically dumping on them because I have been holding back with others. I am usually not one to have many friends...in part, I guess I am rather particular and rather peculiar in my particulars, for lack of a better term. I like friends who challenge me in some way, who I look up to and respect, those who give me something without knowing they gave me anything just because they are who they are.

I was never the popular girl and often sat with the loneliest looking person I could find...I still do that. They are the ones who usually tell you how they feel. I find it incredibly sad that I can connect with a stranger more in a few minutes than I could with my own mother in years.

Which brings me back to the Princess, I want a good relationship with her. Not just for now, but a good one when she is grown up. I want to be included in her life, family to her husband, and involved with her children. I want us to have special days when we sit together having tea and I listen to her feelings and I know the purposes behind her choices. I do not want our relationship to be an illusion we try to maintain. I know that she will make choices that would differ from mine. I know her husband will be a greater influence on her life then. I know our relationship will change, but I want to be available to her and I am hoping she will be one of the best friends I ever had.

In my last post, I mentioned that I might make a new year's resolution and this is my purpose behind that decision. This is how I feel about it. Are you feeling just a little connection here?

~ My Lord, relationships are so complicated and yet could be so simple. Help me to keep mine simple in fulfilling my needs and yet make others feel comfortable. Thank you for good friends, who forgive me when I dump on them. ~

She Dreamed of a White Christmas

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~Charles Dickens

After gifts had been unwrapped and during a phone call to the Princess made to her grandmother, it began to snow very lightly. It would snow more heavily and all the rest of the day, something not that common in Georgia. The temperatures were above freezing, but cold enough to allow much of it to stick and the mercury would drop well below freezing line in the evening. We all are thankful for our new slippers from Santa Claus, although my daughter now says she knows he is not real, but she chooses to believe in him!

Christmas Eve, my husband woke our daughter very early and took her out on property we leased for hunting and camping. Later they also went together to deliver presents she had bought herself to her friends in the neighborhood. We prepared for services that evening and worshiped with three other families. Nearly everyone contributed something to the service itself as our pastor was away visiting his children and grandchildren. The poor Princess was not in bed until 11:00 PM. Now typically, she can still be awake at that time, but not when she wakes up so early and has such a full day.

We were already awake and just waiting for her, when the Princess joined us in bed on Christmas morning. She was eager to start the day with feeding rabbits, the daily cleaning of the hamster cage and cat box, and even eating breakfast. The night before my husband and I made our traditional cranberry breakfast cake, but this time I tried a different recipe and I used more cranberry sauce than it suggested. This one was not as sweet as the ones in the past. I usually like sweeter foods and my husband does not, but this one we both liked very much as there were plenty of sweeter sweets for later in the day. I have already considered how it might be improved upon.

It was a good Christmas. The Princess received things she actually would use and that part pleased me very much. These were not excessive additions that would add to the clogging collections of stuff in her room. She did get one game called Herd Your Horses from her grandmother (although we were given money to choose the gifts ourselves) that we played together today...after she began making thank you notes and after she played outside in the snow, which should last another day before the temperature rises high enough to melt it away completely.

The church board, what few members were not away, were called Christmas evening agreeing to cancel morning services for today because the roads might be slick and our guest pastor could not make it in, being from part of the state further north and icy. I was relieved as the two people who take turns leading in our praise time were away and I had been asked to do it. It is not my strongest gift to lead in singing, but my husband and I are known to fill in as the need arises, so I was willing...and knowing there would only be a few people there helped also.

The one thing that surprised me about Christmas this year was how perfect it seemed to be.

• It was not just the snow, although that was a fine addition pleasing the Princess very much and she was out in it with her brand new pink leopard print rubber boots!
• It certainly was not that our TV service was again on, although it was nice that my husband was able to watch his favorite Christmas movie "A Christmas Story" about Ralphie's desire for a Red Ryder BB Gun since we cannot find the DVD we know we had.
• It was not that I had a brand new Charles Wysoki jigsaw puzzle that I spread out on the dining room table on a special felt so I could roll it up and move it when necessary to prepare a meal.
• It was not that we planned a simple meal:

hickory smoked turkey out on our grill after the turkey had been soaking in a brine all night in the cold on our deck (and was the tenderest and juiciest my husband ever has done);

my Baked Sweet 3-P's of sweet potatoes with pears and pecans that also is not very sweet;

King Hawaiian rolls this time instead of my sourdough bread, mostly because I did not realized there were not any left in the freezer;

a fresh, spring greens salad with sourdough croutons (instead of my more tradition holiday cole slaw this time);

and my husband's homemade whole cranberry sauce.

• It was not just that my concerns about my husband's mother being alone for the first time this Christmas or about my brother and sisters, who do not even send cards, I put aside to enjoy precious moments with the ones who are closest to me.

It simply was I chose to see the good in everything and not allow myself to build up internal pressures. That and the people dearest to me, my husband and my daughter, were also happy. The Princess never seems to be disappointed in any gift she receives nor focuses on the things she does not get. I have had some very good Christmases, but I have to say that this Christmas for me was the best one ever and I really would like to have that feeling every day so....

I am thinking that I might just make a New Year's Resolution...yes, I just might. It is something I rarely do! I might make one about finding at least one thing each day is enjoyable about life and to let go of those things that drag my attitude down, as I am seeing I may have been passing on some undesirable traits to my daughter unintentionally. I will pray about them and trust God with them and not allow myself to be concerned about that which what I have entrusted Him. I also might make a resolution to try to find one thing each day to do to make someone else have enjoyment, even if it—no, especially if it requires that I make a sacrifice of sorts from what I want. Maybe I will be a better person, a happier person. Maybe God has been trying to get me to see this. May be this was His special gift to me this Christmas. Maybe...it came along with the snow.

~ My Lord, in the last few months I have become keenly aware of how unhappy I am and how I seem to be waiting on something before I will be happy, but that something really comes from within myself. It is a gift You have already given, but that I have not really opened up and used. Let this not be something that I take out and put on a shelf to look upon and dust off once in awhile, but something I use daily. Thank you, my Lord, for the gift and thank you for making it obvious to me how much I need it. ~