Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Today is a milestone I suppose.... I love you more than you know Poppie

Today 36 years ago two scared 19 year olds started down a long road together.  I came to this day with the only hangover I ever had in my life.  My friend and her dad's idea of a wedding shower was that her and I should drink an entire bottle of black velvet, the one with the handle, still have no idea how much that is but I do know that I have never before or since drank whiskey and it makes your head really really hurt but I digress.  We had very few people at are wedding all of my siblings, at the time, the preacher and his wife, my great aunt and uncle, my friend of the whiskey escapade, her boy friend, one other of my friends and mom's friends the funeral home director and his family.  They all set as my dad walked me down the little funeral parlor chapels isle.  My brother made faces at Poppie and the little girls giggled.  It was quick and over in a few minutes, Poppie forgot his one line "yes" and had to be prompted. We went home to mom and dad's house for cake and a toast to the bride and groom. I had on the ugliest collar less polyester dress with roses on it that mom had picked out.  I did like the roses but nothing else about is poop brown over all color was special.  I had it for years but now have no idea what happened to it.   Shortly after the reception my brother Red drove us to the rented little house 47 miles away in the town we now call home and dropped us off.  We had started our life's together.  Poppie couldn't carry me over the threshold, number one he couldn't lift me, while I was not as heavy as I am now he was not either, and he had had a car wreck two days before and was barely able to walk to begin with.  So started out marriage, with that start things had to get better, and they did and have.  I am not saying there were not a lot of valleys and some mountains but the for the most part we figured out this thing called marriage and rather excelled at it.  I know there is nothing I would change and nothing I would do differently thought sometimes I might thinks so but if I did I wouldn't be in this place in time with the most loving man I know.  Nothing is worth changing the love and relationship I have day.  So here is to another 36 years with the man God made just for me.  I love you so much Poppie... tomorrow.     

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Both side of the same coin..... or besetting sins...

I had an interesting week. Two people I care about have had surgeries and I tried to help with what little I could to be of service in their lives. One has to have more surgery but the Lord moved in a massive way and healed a broken relationship and that is a miracle in it's self. The Lord be praised. I love when the Lord moves mountains.

I had been to goodwill, with all the back and forth I have been doing to Zootown of late, and have picked up three of C. S. Lewis books, Mere Christianity 1st, then The four Loves 2nd and then lastly The Screwtape letters. I really like all but didn't have anymore to read, though I plan on reading the Chronicles of Narina but that is another day, any way I was back at goodwill and found a book by
Randy Alcorn and since I had liked Heaven by him I picked it up without looking at the name or hype on the book cover.  I couldn't believe it when I sat down to read it the next day after finishing the Screwtape letters that it is called Foulgrins Letters and it is for all practically purposes a continuance of the Screwtape letter.  It is at worst a tribute to C. S. Lewis's Srcrewtape Letters and a best a better version.  Only God can move books in such a manner, I do not and never believe in coincidences.  I just love when God keeps you in his life plan for you.

This week at Church the young minister that gives a sermon, or lesson,on Sunday nights had a good message with a lot of thought provoking ideas from the word of God.  I do have some thoughts on his message.  His message was on sitting on the fence and a he spent a lot of time in his study to give the sermon it was all well thought out and had pure love behind his words.  I think that he gave a good sermon on besetting sins.  He chose as his last point to say that we as Christians should get off the fence on watching cable tv. because even if we don't watch the bad shows and only watch the good shows, or protect our children from the bad that we can, we are still guilty of all the bad that others see on the cable TV.  I for one am a sinner and TV has always been  apart of my life I grew up in the TV generation.  I have over the years stopped watching network TV because I believe it is a horrible place for my kids to be.  I am not sure the young man watches any TV so he might not know that for the most part network TV is worse than cable in my opinion. I have locks on my TV so there is no channels that I wouldn't allow my children to watch though to to his point that the commericals are still bad and their are pictures of girls in bikini's, that is true.  I know that I can't really keep that from my girls but I do the best I can so I am "on the fence" per his sermon.

 I understand how my watching TV and allowing my children to watch the supervised TV does, as he says, contribute and pays for the continuance in his estimation of the evils of TV being brought to others and helps support the evils of TV in general. I think that he probably has the right of it in the strictest sense.  I would asked to that same thought why my TV watching, in my governed way, is any different than he and any other Christians use of the internet.  Isn't paying of the internet for our innocent usage paying for the terrorist ability to indoctrinate young peoples of this world to terrorism?  Isn't our innocent use of the internet not also pay for the sex traffickers use of the same internet?  Isn't our innocent use allowing the sexually predators of this world a platform to use because we pay to use ours? The reality is, yes. My paying for TV and internet give the abusers a platform for their evil uses. I would also say that voting for and having an elected governments allows that we might elect a criminals to office that might do illegal things while there, and they have and do.  Allowing visa's to the US allows for peoples like our forefathers an escape from persecution but can, and does, allow for a terrorist to come in among them.  Driving a car allows us to move forward in this country to become a better nation for having the car, or the plane for that matter, but it only takes one drunk driver to make it bad, or one plane flown into a building to make us know that evil can come of the good things that we pay to use on, any, and all levels.  I understand the good of the sermon and I understand that TV can and is an evil tool in the hands of the wrong person but then the pharisees saw fit to bring an adulteress to the Lord and asked her to be condemned for misuse of her body.....  What did Jesus say in John 8:7 so when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, he that is without sin among you, let him cast a stone at her......  We all have a besetting sin and mine just might be TV, or gluttony (not just the kind that means eating but the one that mean I consume to much of this world, or worry about my self more that others) but then we all do and the best we can do it to repent of our sins, but when we point out others sins with our finger we must remember that our other three fingers are pointing out our sins to them just as loudly.

I pray that you are walking in the Lord, and Jesus is the master of your life. There is nothing more important in this life than the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ's way of salvation and grace... tomorrow.


Monday, February 15, 2016

Just a simple busy kinda day.....

  I woke up and read my Bible early this morning knowing that at 6:30 ish I would get the first of the 4 grands this morning.  Dimple arrived, followed shortly there after by Bubbles who was not happy she had been left so was happy that Booboo had gone over and got her. Cubbie and Boy came when their dad left for work.  I made them all oatmeal and my day began.  I took the wet flour dough I made yesterday out to warm to room temp.  It was made out of wheat Poppie had ground for me.  I had made my first wet flour bread, that was not sourdough bread, a couple weeks ago and was really impressed with it.  I was at the Amish store last week and picked up some dough conditioner to try.  I bought a pound because I didn't look like all that much and I hadn't read the recipe to see how much it takes.  I takes 1 teaspoon for every four loaves, so I have enough for 456 loaves give or take.  I digress.  I got it out of the frig to warm to room temp and then made them into 4 loaves. I put all of the veggie scraps, that Yogie had been bagging and putting into my little freezer for the last month, and three packages of turkey neck in as well into my double decker pressure canner called Sarah and put it on the boil.  I got Poppie to peel apples with the apple peeler he is much better at it than I am and I intend for it to stay that way.  I made sandwiches for him and the kids and popped the bread in the oven.  They ate while I put the apples on the boil.  I got a call from Mokie telling me sure enough the produce manager at the local market had a case of tomatoes for me, she over ordered.  I went to pick them up and drop off soap at the hospital for a fundraiser they are doing for local kids in the local schools. Yogie needed dropped off at the Assisted living to visit with one of the elderly ladies of our Church. I got the tomatoes just in time to come home and Poppie had taken my bread out of the oven.   The apples were done and ready for thicken.  I thickened them jarred them and 7 of the 14 are in the waterbath as we speak.  The pressure canner is rattling away telling me in 8 minutes that the stock will be done and ready to jar.  It has been a busy Presidents day, and to think the ladies and I had thought about sneaking away today with Lady for a road trip.... the best laid plans of mice and men somehow never come to fruition at this house.  I pray for you and I pray for your salvation, there really is nothing more important in this life. You really need to get your salvation settled no plans are set in stone and tomorrow is not a promise or something we can set the details for with certainty so today is the day of salvation... tomorrow. 

Friday, February 12, 2016

Me being fat is not a surprise to God, after all he made me with love knowing what I would be....

     I have spent a life time in the never ending diet traps. Yes, a life time because long before it should have been my issue I was introduced, however innocently to "food issues". One of my early memories was realizing my mom thought she was fat, was she I didn't think so to me she was perfect. She had given birth to 5 children by the time I was 3 and half, I am the oldest child, and she was after all a great big size 8, maybe.

The sixties came after the advent of the 1920-1930's revolution in food industry.  The dietary oils were changed (not for the better I might add), due to big marketing in the dietary oil industry.  Our flour was now white, due to steel mills replacing stone mills so we could have pretty white bread, so we lost the important fiber and minerals it once gave us.  We no longer had to eat fresh vegetables and fruits, we could refrigerate and can goods became the norm. So many food changes totally changed and destroyed our diets and these are only a fraction of the ones those two decades began... but I digress.  The 1940's was all about the war, the 50's about the rebirth of our world and by the 60's we were fat and it was becoming apparent something was causing the changes in our bodies as a nation.  It was the "wonder years' to some, the coming of age to others, the first generation of dieters to still others.  It was the decade when diets and all things diet became part of the national conscience. The TV was no longer just black and white, people could see people from all over the world, our world became a little smaller and we were more aware of all peoples.  The TV added 10 pounds and that was almost more important than the many other things the TV brought to our worlds.

Diets became the norm in America.  Weight Watchers was born telling us we needed them to look better. It was followed by so many Jennies, and Craig's that one looses count. Diet Aid became an over the counter "diet pill" it was harmless and it worked (Sound familiar to anyone). NO one questioned how or why it worked. I am not sure anyone did it back then for health reasons. It was all about looking good, fitting into those jeans or a little black dress. It was about making your man look at you anew.

So began the diet cycle that has gripped our nation, has never left and is now really really big business. Everyone had saccharine on their table in a clear pretty bottle, did anyone know what was really in it?  The 1970's followed and I grew up knowing mom was on a diet, always, never realizing eating was a diet, you know the one we are suppose to live and not be on.  I needless to say grew up with food issues.  I was sure I was fat, after all my mom was or why would she be dieting, and I was surely bigger than someone I knew and bigger means you are fat, doesn't it?  I grew up with lots of friends in my life, the cabbage diet, the cottage cheese diet, the grapefruit diet (that was my Grandma's favorite), and the list is endless and one followed the other. Smoking made you thin and by all mean woman should do that too, it was no longer just for men.  We, after all, were in the throws of the generation of equality.

I became an adult and was fat, I wore a 10 and I was bigger than my mom who was fat, just ask her. I was horrible and should do something about it, shouldn't I, every one and every ad on TV said so. I became a Mother and my friends joined, weight watcher (they had a new plan, even better than the last), food anonymous, Jenny Craig, more diet pills but not the ones our moms took.  Did you know they were really amphetamines? Did you know the saccharine and cigarettes cause cancer? On to the next one with unknown repercussion.  We knew better this time, we took ephedrine,  phen-phen and some of us became anorexic and other bulimic. Girls were killing themselves to be the perfect weight, no mater that age and having babies change the body by God's plan, we wanted to be perfect in the perfect bikini. Oprah yo-yoed, and still is, down a 100 and back up a 100. Never ending cycles of dieting.

Incidentally, and as and aside, I personally lost and regained a 100 pounds more than once, so don't think I am to stupid to know how to do it. I lost and yo-yoed as well and that little sentence is much more than an after thought of things past. I lost a hundred pounds in my late 20's through never ending obsession of my caloric intake and continuously exercising. This is not a simple quick process it is a long term 3 to 5 year cycle. Sound familiar? I am sure it does if you have ever successfully lost weight. Or are you on the first one and you have it all figures out, come see me in 5 years. One would also think 5 years would be a life time, not a cycle but not so. It was never a quick miraculous happenstance. It was always months and years of work, and in the end I never just stopped and became fat again over night. I lost weight by giving up all of my spare time and much of my time with my children, which was not mine to give, ever obsessing over everything I put in my mouth and how to account for it. I gave up all of my Bible reading time and most of the mommie time I owed my children, but I was thin and looked good everyone said so. My three older kids paid for my vanity but I was thin and that made me acceptable to society.  Did God love that I was being selfish and not giving to those who need me? The second time I lost 100 lbs it was again my bible time (I usually spent 2-3 hours reading in the early morning) so instead of waking up to the Lord I spent that time walking seven miles daily, that took my reading time and most of my mornings,  and my mommy time.  Yes, sometime I took them with me but they were 2-3 and the best I could get them to walk was one mile, a long ways for them, one of them quite often needed carrying all the better, that helped me loose faster.  I did teach them to love to exercise but I am so glad not my obsession and the cycle of dieting but in the end they only have one childhood and stealing it for my own self-absorbed uses was wrong both times.  Thank God they can't remember that time in their lifes, unlike my older kids, they can. Christians might call my weight loss a conquering of my gluttony and to some that is true and I am happy for them, but for me it became at what cost is my victory? I find no where in the Bible where all my waking endeavors should be about myself. No matter if the result is the conquering of ones sin, especially if the conquering of that sin brought me to commit so many others.   I have digressed to long on me....

Oh, maybe not quite, I think the thing that bugs me the most with this cycle that I would like to address, and find to be a particularly vicious part of this cycle of wonder diets,  is the event of the internet.  We have always had commercials in our faces about the newest diets.  This time around, and I am sure for all the times to come, we have social media and now the inundations comes on a much more personal lever and unrelenting so. Which I know we have measures to stop but I hate to have to come to using them. I hate to have to give up a friend, that I love, to stop the never-ending promotion of their obsession. I understand, and will regret, to have take the ultimate step of blocking someone I love. That should be the end of it but alas stopping the bombardments of social media is not the end.  Imagine, it gets worse, imaging opening your personal email, yes, you the fat lady, and you get an email that says.... "I think that you are in need of my help and could use my service and my products..." bad enough the first time you get it but when it goes on and on and on, and becomes a personal spam attach it is no longer forgivable.  I know I can call the police when people harass me personally with phone calls, can I when they do it with email?  This, I thank God did not happen to me but is, and is on going, to my sister. #1 my sister like me has and does know how to loose weight, 100 up and down, but unlike me she has health issues and her Dr has told her under no circumstances to us the products being pushed at her.  Just because you mean well, and think you are helping the poor fat people out, you know nothing about her health, her medical issues and her problems.  NO should be no, and that is the scariest part of the new cycle to me, total personal invasion that they can't or won't stop even when asked nicely... climbing down off the soap box now....

I am a glutton to some Christians and so be it, Jack Lalane says I am not exercising enough. Now we have this wrap thing, nutri-system and on and on and on every day some mother sets her little girl up for a life time of food issues. She doesn't realize the never ending obsession with food can  and does start with her in her daughters eyes. My idol, my momma does this!

I for one am standing up and saying no.  NO I will not create the next generation of dieters in my daughters. I will teach them to have a diet and not be on a diet. Nothing is off limits, all in moderation teaching them the knowledge and respect of a lifestyle of health. I will never be on a diet again. God wants me to do more import work than self absorbed never-ending worrying about my body. I am to be sharing salvation and raising daughters not more worried about how they look but how they treat others. I choose to be healthy (and yes, fat people can be and are healthy.  It does not take any more maintenance to maintain a 120 pound body or a 500 pound body, it just takes a whole lot of time to reduce to a smaller size.) not over consumed with something that takes me up and down and destroys my body, in a never ending destructive cycle, the body God entrusted to me, not you for all your good advice while judging my choices.  

So please look to God, look to Jesus for salvation stop worrying about the vanity for this world and get on with the work that leads to God and his eternal glory with you in him.... tomorrow.    

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Glenda gives us a half and half.....

Yesterday we were blessed with a new baby goat here in Nannyland.  She decided to come in the afternoon, at around three, incidentally most baby goats are born around 2 in the afternoon though most goat herders will assure you they make their entrances in the middle of the night, I digress.  Poppie had gone to pick up the littles which takes him around an hour, I still have no idea why you have to got at 3 when school doesn't get out until 3:30 unless it is the social interchange with all the other parents that is the highlight of the whole trip..... okay done digressing.  He returned around 3:45; and awaiting him were the Jehovah's Witnesses that regularly come to talk with Poppie, again a social interchange that has little to do with the normal conversations that one would expect from Jehovah's Witnesses, they have been interchanging for about 20 years.  I was looking out the window as Poppie interchanged and noticed that a foot was sticking out with no apparent progress.  I was making bread so called Mokie to come help.  She came over and sure enough one of the legs were in the wrong place, one little pull and a nice healthy she goat hit the ground.  She is the cutest little thing, her head and one should dark brown like her daddy and the rest of her is pure white like momma.  She literally has a straight line on color change around her middle.  She started trying to get up immediately and in a short time was on her feet following mom about the yard.  The Ladies came home after basketball practice and immediately determined her name to be HalfnHalf,  so much for my well laid plans of naming babies after their mom's first inertial.  She should have been a Greidhl or Gurnheilda..... okay not so much.  Spring has arrived at Nannyland......

I pray that you are saved or have the had a chance to have heard the gossip and are on your way to accepting salvation for the Lord, if not, I pray that you will seek salvation, nothing on this earth is more important. Today could be your day of salvation or your first step down the path to Jesus....tomorrow.  

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Judging is judging and a hat is a hat.... and both not what Christianity is really about.....

My girl is home very sick this morning so I have time to blog. I must say I have some venting to do so before warned. I must amend that I am not sure venting is the right word so much as disappointed that something should be made something when so much and so many things are so much, much more important. Here goes, and remember that truth is to be my focus for the year, or so Facebook's, algorithms think so...lol

I find in our age, as any-other age, caught up in the trivial and choosing to take a stand on, and show no diversion to the things we decide not to obey or show reverence to.  Christians have always been this way and I think until we are in the new heaven and the new earth we will stay thus, sinners.

I think hot button items move people to change, and or to give up on, their belief of what the Bible says and incorporate it in as an acceptable behavior. That is why the "hot button" sins of one age become part of the established values of the next. I think that we see this many times over, in the Bible.  Samuel, who was a lifetime worshipper of God, who by any standards lived as closely as possible for God, had sons who were totally corrupt. We, as did, the children of Israel, pay the price for disobeying the Lord.  The wilderness became the burial grounds of all of the men over the age of accountability because they, all but Joshua and Caleb, sinned over and over until God decided they would never enter into the promised land. Moses and Aaron each died with the rest because of sin, their children learned and honored God until Joshua died and then the next generation went right back to being corrupt, more so with each generation, the next building on the sins of his fathers so to speak.   I believe as God says in the Bible, each man has to come to the Lord for himself of himself. We are after all called to be sons of God not his grandsons. Salvation is a personal relationship with God, non-transferable. Each generation, as each person, must come to God on their own as best we can.

Having said this I have spoke in the past about the hot button issues, our current buttons are many and not my focus in this blog. I have said before hot button issues of a hundred years ago, that were horrible sins are now acceptable and for the most part are part of most Christians lives. A hundred years ago abortion and homosexuality were not on our radar.  They were in an up roar about mortgages, pensions and having credit. Surprised? you should not be, and for the record if they were a sin back then they are still a sin now. God does not change.  Just contemplate that thought, maybe we should have stayed the course and our country would be the better for it, but alas I digress....  We as Christians have changed, interesting is it?  We have forgotten what God wants most from us, faith, hope and charity/love. He wants us to have mercy on and care for our fellow man.  He wants us to worry more about helping our neighbor succeed than us having huge fancy houses, new cars, clothes that fill up those houses and innumerable luxuries. God not only doesn't care how much you gather and have he, in more than one place in the Bible, warns women to not wear gold, braid their hair or wear fancy clothes while in his tabernacle. He says the flowers and birds are nothing and he never forgets to make sure they are fed, have nests and so, as he loves us more than they, we should never worry that God will supply our needs.  Funny how we have gotten so far away from that thought.... Do we as Christians see to our fellowman or are we to busy getting and paying our mortgages to care what our neighbor does?

Do we help others, or are we worried about something that they are wearing, or not wearing is something we must judge. Do we judge without knowing what we judge?  Do we care that a homeless man has no clothes, or only that he stinks and is making our building stink?  Do we see something some one is wearing as they see it or through the stereotype that this age has become famous for?  Do we ask why someone is wearing something or do we judge and know we are in the right of it and God is on our side? Do we even care what the reason is that someone is wearing something or wearing nothing at all?  Is that really what God want for us? Shouldn't we help or at least ask why before we know that something is a sin and we are going to address that persons short comings?

I was asked yesterday to not represent my Church while wearing a "witch hat".  I was completely taken off guard and aback. I must say in defense of this person they know nothing about Facebook and are not on it.  He does not know that liking something in an open group or business does not make me a representative of the group. I was asked to like the group, did, and like I often do I asked others to like it so that the group gets out there never assuming I represented the group. If it had been a closed group I might have considered in a remote way that I was representing the group, or had I been one of the administrators of the group I would have been representing the group, but as a person asked will you like this? I was not a representative of the group which is the Church I go to.  I simple liked the group with my Facebook profile and that is what set up the beginning of the problem.

That being said several months ago, for work, I was asked to wear a hat.  I saw it as a hat. I don't believe witches, real witches have any real part in the stereotypical "witch hat".  I actually looked into the history of 'witch hats' and they are a relatively new creation with most of our current thoughts and ideas coming straight out of the movie Wizard of Oz. Okay, I must admit I love the Wizard of Oz but don't consider it to have any real dark arts or occult, any more than any of the fairy tales with witches, princesses or princes.  I did also find that most witches, real ones, have worn crowns, conical, pointed hats with antlers or horns.  On that note, if witch hats are evil? Ever see a crown worn in church? Would it be considered like gold or braids? Is it occult? Does any of that come to mind?  Maybe it should or maybe this should be a stereotype and dismissed as the nonsense such thoughts are.  Okay, doesn't that bring to mind the pettiness of all of it?  Yes and I meant it to be to make a point. I have digressed so going on.... During the dark ages there was a time when our stereotypical witch hat was the height of societal fashion and rich people wore them but like any other fad they went out of style and eventually the country folk got into wearing them but since that was so last year by then they were called what a modern person would call a "hick". The country woman who were herbalist and took care of  their families and friend with herbs became known as "wise woman" or witches, never the satanic kind. I can relate to this currently doing just this for my family and friends, and I am not a satanic witch any more than the woman who healed their families and like them, so maybe the hat is appropriate for me more than I had dreamed.  I think I can feel proud about wearing a hat once sported by my sister herbalist.  To make a long story sort of short.....

My friend took a photo of me, with the hat on and gifted it to me.  The expression on my face clearly says I am skeptical of wearing the hat.  As I was.  However the picture of me, not the hat, is one of the best I have ever had taken of me. I was honored that my friend gave me the photo and the Lord saw fit to have my father looking out of my face back at me, in the photo. I never thought I looked so like he.  The photo came to represent the Love of God, my father's, and my friends to me; not some one's idea of a stereotype. It is me wearing a hat and  it is just a hat.  I am not changing my Facebook profile photo, which means a lot to me now on many level, so I can like a page that I do not represent, but did have a lot of respect for and wanted to joyously share with my friends.

In an aside, and it is sort of a bazaar thing, the person who objects to the hat admittedly hates halloween.   I was truly surprise, when I accidentally found out the first year I knew him, that he bought candy and distributed it at halloween.  My sister asked me if I had taken the kids by his house I said no I thought he would have had his lights out (the universal message that you don't believe in halloween) but no he didn't to my utter shock.  I am proud to say he didn't distribute candy this year  he took his wife out and did not participate in something that was so hard on his soul. That begs the question in, my mind, how is it that me wearing a hat, he calls a witch hat, which I never did, in a photo and liking a page on face book make me a representative of my church but distributing candy to a whole years worth of trick or treater's doesn't make you a representative of your church, especially when you believe halloween is satanic? I say it is really not any of my business and don't for moment want an answer because no one should ever have to answer to me, unless you are my child and you did something I need to know about..... I say a hat is a hat, and judging, either is always wrong if you don't want your own actions to be condemned by the one who truly has the right to judge your heart and actions.

In closing I want to say we Christians get so caught up about a tree that we miss the beauty of the forest. Being a Christian is so rewarding.  I feel so loved of God that his glory keeps my soul in unspeakable joy. A joy that can't stay closed up in my little dust of the earth body, it has to seep out and tell all of the glory of Salvation in Christ Jesus. Today could be the day of your salvation, wouldn't that be something glorious to blog about, imagine you saved and know that heaven will be your home.... tomorrow.