If I look down and see my feet and the rocky ground beneath — or look down and see not my feet but shifting waves crashing all around me, a wave of panic washes over me and I fear I will sink or be washed away in the flood of fear. But, in the most peculiar of all, the most wonderful of all experiences I know is the sweet peace that washes over when I look not down but up — when I lift my eyes and see that not only am I not in perilous straits or not only…
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It’s always hard to blog a post when it’s been some time since the previous. It’s sort of like exercising. There are a million and one excuses for not doing so or for avoiding the task, but once begun, it’s always a refreshing thing. And, like exercise with many breaks between, blogging is awkward and probably painful to the reader of the flabby blogger. I marveled at this Spurgeon quote: We have come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right mayhap our children and our children’s children will go that way; but if we…
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I think one of the problems with simply borrowing books from libraries instead of buying copies for our own libraries is that we can’t go back and revisit a chapter or even a meaningful sentence very easily. That, and it’s frowned upon to mark up borrowed books. =o) So I was browsing book availability (read: eBay, Half and Craig’sList) and a book title popped up – a book I’d read last year and found to be encouraging. Now, the trouble with books I read last year (or, rather, my memory of the content) is that I had had surgery and…
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So, I’m still going through our home… regathering, resorting, redistributing, refusing and recycling. But the one thing I don’t want to spend anymore time on is rearranging the same stuff – trying to figure out how to keep the same stuff I still won’t need later. It’s been good… I’m thinking that at the end of the week I will finally get down to some serious paring down. Now, paring down for me or for us would be like drowning in cluttered chaos for a few of our friends who are the epitome of order and define minimalist decor. But…
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You know… I am finally getting why children take so long to grow up. It’s mothers who need about this long to get the hang of the deal. And then when we get the hang of the deal, we get calls or letters like this: Well, we finally got here.. the car is actually looking quite well considering all it went through, i guess it wasn’t built to roll… So praise the Lord I’m just kidding. We made it here safely with no problems despite the Mount Hood pass being quite icy. Thank you for all of your prayers! –tim…
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I’m often surprised at the events or changes each season brings. Sort of like knowing that snow’s coming but not realizing how cold it will feel or how distracting it will be. Bcz this isn’t the first time or the second or the third… I knew it would be hard to say another goodbye-for-now to Timothy this morning. I knew the children would be sad and we’d all go through the litany of wouldda-shouldda-couldda dones. And, I knew I’d run the gamut of emotions as I helped with last minute stuff and stood on the porch waving i-love-you’s and goodbyes.…
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A phase of motherhood I was never prepared to experience is how quickly I would become sort of a spectator –or that I would become a spectator at all. I just guess I thought I’d always be the mother. The mother-mother. I didn’t even see the spectator-mother signs coming. When the oldest of the two trainer children began to court his wife, I think I was still so wrapped up in the childbearing phase of motherhood that I didn’t even see it coming. I didn’t see the “game over” light flashing in front of me. I just thought of it…
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I always feel like 1 Thessalonians is like lingering over a great cup of coffee and fresh hot bread with butter and jam and then glancing at the clock: and it’s like a race to get out the door to catch a plane. You know what I mean; the times you linger in pleasant conversation and then suddenly it hits you: you’ve got to leave –right now! 1 Thess starts like a soothing chat and ends like… well, sort of like that moment when you’re standing in the doorway of a train and hear the PA system: please step away…
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A Mother Worthy of Remembrance… No matter who you are, where you live, what your age… the very mention of the word “mother” likely conjures up many emotions. Even when we mothers look at ourselves in the mirror, we undoubtedly have mixed emotions as to who we are, what we do, what we hoped we’d be and what we are becoming. We may think back on memories of our mothers with bittersweet emotion… loving them for who they were or tried to be, cringing with regret for taking them for granted, regretting things they did that hurt us or things…