Life is about endurance and how you endure......

This morning I read a heart felt email posted by someone that I have never meant, well not physically, but have great respect for.  She is the VAC for BBFC.  She is a kind loving person from all accounts and from the limited perspective I have seen of her.  She is a loving mother, an upcycler ( I like that in a person), a mother and a mother again much like myself.  She has a big job taking care of all of us at BBFC, she hears our wants does the best she can to give us our wants and has to endure our whining when all of her "children" can't have what they want all at the same time.  She is a hero for BBFC and we are the better for having her. 

Her email made me contemplative, that and that in Bible study this morning we are reading James chapter 1, both spoke of enduring.  What do we endure in this life?  We start by endure our families as a whole, our siblings specifically.  We learn who we are from them, we mold our personalities with them.  We learn to love, hate, fight, bicker, gossip, our compassion, our role in society and hopefully our belief in God.  They prepare us for the world as a whole and can, and should, be a sanctuary from the world when needed.  We also endure our families.  We develop our endurance from our friends, acquaintances and casual encounters in our lives. 

Do we prize endurance in our lives in this day and age?  We live in a I wanted it yesterday world so is endurance honored or prized?  Do we really teach or even try to teach our children endurance?  I think for the most part less and less than at one time.  Do we teach our children to be slow to anger?  Do we teach them to be less about what I want and more about what you can do for others?  Do we as adults still have a 2 year olds need to be the Me in our worlds?  Do we put ourselves above the needs or our families, friends, children, spouses and God?  Does being right outweigh the compromise that comes from working out a problem together?  Do we expect others to endure our rights and wants with no consideration for the input of their wants and needs?  Do we even know how to stop being "me first"?  Can we stop for one moment in this fast paced day and age and say "what can I do to make some one else's life less hectic?  Do I really have to have it my way each and every time?  Could I endure letting some one else lead me, can I wait for gratification, can I step back and comply to the needs of some one else?  Does my needs out weigh those of my friends, family, or spouse.  Is there room in my life to say what can I do to make others lives better? can I give of myself quietly with out having to blow in like a hurricane and fix it? is enduring compassion something I have in me?  Is being humble and allowing others to blossom something I can give?  Can my child's life be something they lead and not something I control?  Is my will always more important than the will of those around me?" No, my will, my life, my needs, my anything is not more important that anyone else's, each and everyone of us have the same needs, the same wants and the same basic desires, to live our life the best we can and endure.  We want to survive this life.  Alone we struggle and our endurance wanes.  We need others, we need their acceptance, we need so many things that we can not endure with out,  but to endure we make so many mistakes to the goal of enduring. 

I have heard so many people disdain enduring, they see it as drudgery and as a negative.  They endure their lives as if it were a punishment when they should embrace the ability to endure.  Patience is one of the best things we can aspire to have in this life.  Patience and endurance, the patience to endure, are blessings and goals to work to.  I know that I have worked my whole life just trying to embrace patience and endurance, they both will hold us in good standing in our golden years.  

Here's to the heroic efforts and endurance of our beloved VAC, your endurance blesses BBFC, blesses all the peoples that get to have the coop in their communities due to your tireless work, and blesses the lives of those you touch.  Thank you for your efforts and example...tomorrow. 

The world of ME such a sad path.....

I heard it said last week, and I can't remember who said it or I would give them credit here, that we were once a Judeo-Christian culture in America and now we are a ME first society. I have contemplated long and hard on what that means.  Here are my thoughts on that.....  We once celebrated  God in our lives, in our politics, in our whole way of doing and being.  Now we are no longer a Judeo-Christian country we are only a country of ME. The ME now drives our culture, our politics and our way of life.  We have thrown out the life of obeying, living for and by God's Word.  We now live for ME only, what can I get for nothing, what can I get by walking over someone else on the way up, what disgusting lustful, greedy or evil can I put forth and make others accept as my right to do in the public because I can.  We no longer honor anything but our need to have it, get it or push it down the throats of some one else, well except if you are Judeo-Christian and then your right are to offensive for the public.  Judeo-Christians can't publicly speak of God or we offend some one so the needs of the thousands are not allowed because of that one single voice that doesn't like God being spoken of in their presence.  Teachers can make a class of students step on Jesus but you can't offend an atheist or a muslim, is that equal rights or is that the new persecution of Judeo-Christians?  The country of ME allows everyone their rights but not the Judeo-Christians, ironic that the country of ME owes its very existence to the Judeo-Christians need to have freedom of worship isn't it?

One of the biggest things I see in the country of me is the total lack of discipline.  It starts at the top, the government and it representative BO couldn't balance the budget if he tried but then he has never tried he likes the spend, spend, spent way.... Communities follow their lead, just today a giant city was allowed to go bankrupt because they have spent all their money.  What happened to financial responsibility?  How do you teach a child to spend and save his pennies right when he sees no one in government doing it?  Financial responsibility is not the only place of no discipline the current generation of parents, doctors, teachers, and psychologist do not, or are not allowed, to discipline children.  Children is some cases, a lot of cases, rule the roost in their homes.  They have never heard the word no.  Little Johnny is allowed the freedom to be ME, he has never gotten a spanking, spent time in a corner or didn't get everything he ever wanted, maybe he will grow up to be a senator, a representative or president some day, something to look forward to I am sure. 

Hebrews 12:7-8
⁷ If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
⁸ But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

It is sad the we no longer live in the Judeo-Christian country that was so good for us, it made us a super power in the world.  Other countries looked to us as an example.  We now are a declining country, the country of ME, bastards and unloved by the Lord.  We need to wake up, repent, seek the Lord and seek to be again the sons of the father that loved us.  If we stay the unchastised, unloved, undisciplined bastards , we are, we will continue to our own destruction as a country, how sad, how completely needless and how reversible..... tomorrow.

April fools day, last day of kids off, moving and more remodeling...

I find it ironic that this year Christians resurrection day, Easter, and the atheist holiday of April fools day fall one day apart.  Think this week we all celebrate our most precious holidays.  We, Christians, celebrate that the Lord arose, the most glorious of all events in man kind.  Jesus birth was wonderful but his death and resurrection was our salvation, literally.  His resurrection was the completion of God's promise,  the promise of salvation paid for on the cross and completed at Christ's resurrection. 

Today is the last day the kids are off, my girls had a good time but with the grands here everyday we didn't get any real time just to be us.  Yogie and Booboo are going to go help their dad pack up stuff at Bugs.  They have to move most of it to storage.  Mokie and Son will help out his week as well.  Some of it will be going to Mokie's and some of it to our house but the rest to a unit. It will be a lot of work to get it all moved but it will help Bug out a lot.  He will be back again in May.

Belle gave me a table, it was once an old table from the USFS it is really cool,  it has a plywood top on it, I don't know if it originally had the top but the bottom is really cool.  I may tile the top.  We have decided it is so close in size to the isle ,we wanted, to make changes to our plans to accommodate it as the isle.  We are going to have to raise it up about five inches and put a shelf on it but for the most part it is very like what we wanted the isle to be.  Now to figure out how to make it taller and sturdy.  It was most defiantly a blessing.  So hopefully we can get it figured out soon.

Grands in the house so have to go and make sure they get all straightened out.  I hope you have a great day.  I hope God blesses you, I hope he answers your prayers and that you are ready for his answers in your life..... tomorrow.