This is our first official Fall themed Monday Messages. It would have been last week, but I was playing hooky as they say. First I was playing with my daughters newest edition, Willow, and then we went on actual vacation. While we didn’t go anywhere in the physical sense, my hubby and I have been deep in the heart of a computer generated game adventure. I saved up my play days for when I knew we had an incoming expansion to one of our games. It might not seem like a big thing to most, but for us, the down time was overdue.
My Tuesday theme has been consumed by a certain flurby, so it’s going to become Willows World until further notice. Join me on Tuesdays for a bit of fun from the perspective of a fur covered toddler.
Audio #2 of My Truths is available in the lobby for any who wish to listen.
Live Novel Friday brings the next chapter of Brutus, so stay tuned…
This weeks theme for our Live Wire Potluck Sunday is everything Caramel. Give a shout out with any ideas of what belongs at the table.
There are so many unbelievably wonderful things to choose for my favorite, that I am not sure it is possible to pick just one, so I shall go against the stream and say Passion is my favorite pastime.
The purpose of choosing Passion for my hobby stems from the idea of selecting anything I want for a pastime as long as it stokes the flames of my inner fire. That place within the soul that comes to life as you pursue your dreams… I am sure you know of what I speak.
My soul will rise to the surface of life’s waters, by passion brought about from activities of many kinds. I have traveled, I love to cook and bake, I can sew and crotchet, I have grown gardens, I homeschooled my three girls for nearly 5 years when they were small, I have bred and raised dogs, cats, and horses… see, the list goes on and on… Passions.
I am not able to do most of those things anymore, due to age and life interuptus, but that which does not kill us will make us stronger, as they say. Where there is a passion there is a way… and baby I got A LOT of Passion! Why? Cause I got Jesus, that’s why!
As you may have noticed, I have yet to included this blog or even the ability to write, among our choices and it’s for a very good reason. I suppose you could say writing is, in fact, considered a pastime or hobby… as I am sure, for some, this may be true… just not for this human.
For this woman of Faith, writing is so much more than a passion because of the one whom I am most often writing about… God! It’s my father in whom I find myself constantly writing about, talking about, singing about, and dreaming about, and I shall make no apologies for being a Jesus Spammer.
So, to sum things up for you… Jesus is who I am, and stays off the table for a pastime or hobby, and I choose Passion for my hobby so that I can pick whatever I want. I am such a rebel!
One of my favorite baking passions is Cheesecake, to be specific, my homemade Snickers Cheesecake. In honor of this we shall all share in some …
As I continue the journey into the life of Jacob and his sons, I keep finding myself back at the bottom of that well. I can only imagine how many times Joseph must have found his thoughts back there, as well.
How many times did he wonder what might have been, had his brothers not betrayed him the way they did? For that matter, how many times did Jacob go back over the suspicious disappearance of his favored son? I wondered about this when I read the part where Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain during the famine. He withheld Benjamin from going with the others, and the scriptures seem to only allude to his concerns for the safety of his only other son by Rachael.
I sort of think that Jacob realized the animosity present between his sons from the rivaling wives. Maybe he knew deep down in his gut that his own sons had something to do with things, back when he sent Joseph to check up on them that fateful day.
Then there is Reuben to consider… he had to live with the secret knowledge of what had happened for all those years, saying not a word. I bet he most certainly spent a good amount of his time wondering what might have been, had he tried to go to his father with the truth.
To even consider how or why Joseph was able to possess such all encompassing grace and mercy for the very ones that sought to end his life, one must look within themselves and their own pebbles cast. How many times have I looked back on my own ripples in life, wondering what might have been had I chosen a different path?
Trust me, I have thought on this many times, and I always end up at the same answer. I am not willing to risk sacrificing any of the good in my life, by altering or removing a past choice or mistake. It’s not worth it! Who I am is the result of all that came before, and I love the me God sees! I believe maybe this was true for Jacob, as well as any soul living with consequence. That means all of us, if you were wondering.
The ripples playing out in my pond, are the very things that give fuel to my empathy, my passion to share love, and my efforts to heal others. This has only happened because God interceded on my behalf, and has begun using every hurt for His good purpose. My heart tells me that this kind of restorative love, is by divine nature alone! Most deeply cast stones can only be retrieved by One who carries All authority! As you may know, the One who does the retrieving, also does not erase the ripple, but instead changes the end result… in my humble opinion.
Another thing I understand about ripples… some we cause ourselves, and some are caused by no fault of our own. I cannot say what went through Josephs’ mind and heart, as I am just speculating. Whatever he might have thought, I believe that Joseph didn’t choose his situation, nor did he do anything to apparently deserve what was done to him. He did however, make a decision as to how he would respond to what he was experiencing. This spirit of humility and forgiveness, however Joseph acquired it, was apparent throughout the entire story, as he grew to be the man God planned.
At the moment, I am right at the part of the story where Joseph has been testing his brothers before revealing his identity. I laugh at myself for coming up with the hairbrained idea of reading through the whole bible again from start to finish… It has been nearly a month now, and I am still in Genesis… lol. I am going to be in study til I am called home… hey, wait… that’s a win win in my playbook. What do you think?
I will not bore you with another day of history on our story after Covid, but I will say that I have learned to start storing up my possessions with the Bank of Almighty. Once I started putting my important treasures into this Safe Deposit Box, I have not had issues with losing things anymore. You should consider trying it!
I have adopted a different viewpoint in regards to possessions, as I literally had to, if truth be told. Letting go of material things is hard to do, so hard in fact, it took loosing everything to discover I had misplaced my priorities of what was truly important on my journey. My walk with God, my marriage to my best friend, loving my children and grandchildren with all my heart, and writing to you every day… these things are really all I care about.
I find it sort of funny that the acronym KISS is actually the best way to consider the whole affair… the God part, the possessions part, and the life part. Keep it Simple Stupid!
Some days I read my bible and feel like the words were left there just for me… not just figuratively but literally! Perhaps this is God’s intent. It talks in 2 Timothy of how the words are living and breathing, and they certainly do come alive right off the page when I am in study.
Personally, I am the type of learner that has to read something, watch how it’s done, and then write it out to be sure I have understood what I should remember. My favorite method of scripture memorization, is to write out a verse on a 3 x 5 card with the exact words written on the front, and a personalized version to me on the back of the card.
When I put together this particular Note to Self, I chose to personalize this verse because, in honesty, when I am really struggling with something… hearing God speak directly to me is just what I need! It gives me pause to look up and acknowledge God sitting right beside me, supporting this child who is totally incapable of managing things solo.
Note to Self #8 – God, your grace is sufficient for me, for Your power is made perfect in my weakness.
This note comes from 2 Corinthians, and since I took the liberty of inserting myself into the message, I’ve also shared the actual verse, word for word…
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 2 Corinthians 12:9
The song For God is With Us, by King and Country should encourage you regarding God being right here to carry us through with His power, not ours… https://youtu.be/9HErRFLapu4?si=vDoEb7oVxuc6mBgh
When my husband and I married 17 years ago, one of the first places we lived in was a mobile home. No, I am not going to talk smack about the industry itself… just the houses we actually lived in. Throughout the years we lived in a good many places… some regular houses and some with wheels, as I like to say. I decided early on that I wanted a REAL house… NO WHEELS.
I have written before of some past experiences in trailers… you know… the Kool-Aid Ant Party in my mouth, or the spider and the shoe, and we can’t forget the hole beneath the bunkbed story. After those days, I actually remember saying that I would NEVER live in a House with Wheels ever again!
Let’s do a quick pic of the way things went since then. We spent 5 years living on wheels, with my husband driving a Semi Tractor Trailer from one end of this beautiful country to the other… coast to coast. I thought that it would be hard, but in truth, we made some wonderful memories and I loved the freedom of movement. We eventually bought our first real home… no wheels… in a small town outside of Roanoke, Virginia. It was small and did not have even one matching doorway… I was in love! I called it my crooked house!
When Covid forced the shutdown, my husbands company decided to take this opportunity to file false claims of termination for over a third of their employees… trying to slow the process of paying out benefits to those that earned them. Unemployment stopped answering their phones… money dried up… local resources became exhausted. We fell through every legal gap there was to be found in this country. We were not finished paying off our Rent to Own home, so we were evicted when it was not even legal. I will always feel a pang of sorrow, every time I remember that Sherriff posting our 72 hour notice on the front door of my tiny crooked house.
We gave away everything we possessed to any local person willing to walk through and take what they wanted. I was not about to let anybody sell and make money off kicking us to the curb, so we gave it all away.
It was literally less than a week after loosing everything we had, Unemployment called back… thanks for nothing guys! We never received even half of what we were owed from the government, and my husband was desperate for a way to survive this garbage. He took what we got from his unemployment and bought us an RV.
WHEELS! Why does it always have to have wheels God?
I won’t bore you with details anymore, but needless to say, I have come full circle since that day we moved away from the Kool-aid ant hole house with wheels. Not only do we still live in that same old RV we bought, but guess where we live? We rest our heads not 5 blocks away from where we started years before.
Not only have we ended up back where we started, I find that I would not want to live any other way, besides traveling in our house with wheels! I can say without a doubt that I have changed my mind on this issue… It’s WHEELS FOR ME!
Have a traveling snack…
Photo by Anna Tukhfatullina Food Photographer/Stylist on Pexels.com
From the time I was a small girl, I felt out of place… like I didn’t fit into this world. It did not help being raised in a dysfunctional family, and then having the world ignore it. Add to that, the fact that my family were of a certain religious belief, that we didn’t celebrate a single secular holiday… not one! I got teases, picked on, beat up and ostracized by everyone that I encountered in public, yay me!
That being said, the daily prompt question brought about a different thought for me, and I will share…
Look at the life of Jesus. Can you imagine being born into a world where everyone around you knew that your mom got pregnant, but not by her soon to be hubby. I know that there were a good many years of difference in the way society functions, but I am sure that gossip was still gossip no matter how far back we want to go.
Jesus was not only born with this little blip on his moms record, but then he arrived into our world in a barn. The babe could not even crawl yet and there was a king already trying to kill him… just for being born. The God of ages stepped down from glory to change the world, and they wanted to kill him.
Jesus walked his entire life with folks wanting to discredit him, make him look a fool, and finally just kill him to make Him go away. And yet He saved the world, walking a life of perfection and love!
If Jesus could walk his whole life in the skin he was born with, for a purpose not his own, then I too can walk my life in this skin I was born wearing. Besides, with Jesus always walking with me… my skin feels pretty good!
That is the purpose of The Lobby… a place for anyone to visit and never feel out of place. I may not have a full understanding of what Christ went through in his life, but I know enough about feeling like the odd man out all the time. God is always in my lobby and no one will ever feel out of place when they are in His presence…
This is a shout out for all those weary parents out there… you know who you are… for all those times you have to face a grocery store with a cranky and/or unruly toddler on board… you are of the most staunch warriors out there!
Somehow, through the tantrums, the inconsolable crying, and the nasty looks from fellow shoppers whose only desire is to verbalize how they would handle it if, “it were my child”… you make it home with most if not all of your list.
When I was small, my parents just left us in the car the whole time… to fight with our siblings, or simply point at old people leaving the store, exclaiming “your gonna marry him/her” to each other.
This is the place where gum got stuck in hair, or maybe a sucker… and if one was still in diapers, all bets were off if they made an “icky”… all the car doors got left open, and we would beg complete strangers to retrieve our parents from the establishment.
Are you kidding… it would be a dream for me, you see… traveling around in our house with wheels. Wherever we travel, there would be libraries filled with those seeking knowledge and adventure… no computers to glean research, read about other people and places in the world, or travel virtually to get away from it all, as they say.
Without computer technology there would be no smart phones, so it is safe for one to assume that mobile phones are also on the no fly list here. Can you imagine having a house of 3 to 5 kids with only a television and public school for child size learning. You are going to look forward to my visits to your community, aren’t you?
I can just imagine being able to hold a book in my hand… slowly turning the pages as I read. Young minds on fire with the adventurous tales I weave, head home to build their own pirate ships in backyards and neighborhood parks… usually with blankets, sticks, and anything in the garage that looks like it might work.
I must admit that I have had a love affair with books for my whole life… well, for as long as I can remember anyways. I spent as much time as possible in either the school library or the public one. I even had a job once in a library, but it was mutually agreed upon that I was not suited for that work… I would get so comfortable and cozy every time I put books away, I simply fell asleep on the rolling chair that pushed me back and forth along the rows of books. This occurred numerous times. Don’t judge! It was just so doggone quiet!
As I am a writer and do pretty much all of my storytelling on my computer, I will admit that it would take some adjusting for me to switch back to writing with pen and ink, but F.Y.I. I would do in in a heartbeat gladly. Well, that is if you all showed up at your local book hub to join me when I came to town. We could go back to the days where a trip to the library was an event… mine usually kicked off with a trip to A&W for burgers fries and a root beer float. Then it was off to the library for a fill up on the maximum number of books allowed for check out. There was often a librarian reading out loud in the children’s section, for any little ones curious enough to gather around.
I continued this tradition with my children for all of their young years, trying to imprint the same emotions and memories for them… dragging them to the library each week. I say dragging them because, apart from them checking out the books they wanted, they were bored to tears. Where I had memories of wonderful adventures, there was now a cell phone. Unfortunately, as useful as computer technology is, there are many not so useful side effects of such advancement.
We are LAZY by nature folks… and I will admit that I am not immune, which is why I said WE! Currently we are in a time where an Artificial Human can live inside your smart phone or system and do pretty much anything you want it to, and you don’t even have to type… SIRI what time is it? Alexa what is on the news? See what I mean?
Humans scare easy too! All one has to do is imagine life without a computer and the panic sets in… you mean we might have to engage in face to face human interaction to get anything accomplished? Lord have mercy… what will things come to if we did that? Then again distance is what probably keeps more world peace… because sometimes people do things that make me want to flick their ear.
Back to the prompt question I was supposed to be answering, perhaps if we went to a place of no computers, we could undo many of our own bad habits… perhaps not! Humans will be humans in whatever form we allow the world to shape us into, both good or bad. The goal should be to become better, smarter and healthier regardless of how far we can advance technology.
Here have a CHIP… hahahahahahahahaha… get it… computer chip…
I am sitting in bed watching my husband single handedly replace the whole floor in our RV. He is also replacing the desk area so I have more of an office to work.
I want to help, but I would be more in the way than any help. Still, though, it hardly seems fair to just watch.
If it were possible, I would really like to know how to utilize household tools and such… to be more helpful.
It’s funny that he just happened to drop a new Samsung Tablet into the grocery food bag on the kitchen counter last week. This is the only way I can work right now, so I think he was planning ahead.
In a way, I guess I have learned a new skill… using this tiny lightweight wonder has been my schoolwork this last week. It’s pretty amazing, and I can even type on a little separate keyboard.
While it can’t handle all of my writing, it certainly works in a pinch for answering prompts, as well as navigating the reader with great ease.
As far as learning tools, maybe I will just let my husband handle the big stuff, and I will stick to the power of the pen!
As for the new floor, I will take pictures for you… it is so beautiful!
Journey With Me! 