Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Recognizing the beauty and bounty of small mercies!

There is very little, more beautiful than watching the important discoveries that little ones are making. Watching the light of knowledge and understanding turn on in the minds of our dear little ones is becoming diminished under the scrutiny of data. Isn't that the most important data there is? Documenting those first little steps of mind and feet and hands in our own hearts and prayers are a treasure chest of jewels shut up for us in earth and in heaven. Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal, we know. But, Earth has no greater treasure than the beauty of the children's growth.
I am so glad you have taught me that!
Keep filling your hope chest with the most important things first.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

How do we speak to those we respect, but have not the responsibility of submission?

Women and men on the tennis court have different ways of evoking intimidation from an opponent. In law and in the workplace there are rules of interaction. If sexual harassment is a man's sensitivity, provocation and deliberate instigation, may be a woman's. Yet, on this situation there are few accusers of the women. Men suck it up and chalk it up to their own sensitivities. Men fire women for temperamental reasons sometimes. Men may change locations because of a quote, unquote Personality conflict, that may be the emotional tendency of a woman to cut him down to size on a regular basis. Some women do this to everyone, male and female and some take a peculiar delight, it seems to find the jugular of males that are their counterparts.
If we find ourselves in the cultural bent of the extremity of feministic expression, we must find a way to come back to the center of the court and become more civil in our verbal expressions to all in the work place. We mustn't let our intimidation or our cultural habits take authority. We must learn to utilize our femininity in other ways than to manipulate and subjugate our masculine counterparts. Perhaps, a pair of gloves could remind me to put on my femininity, were I in the situations of playing male tennis on a regular basis. Were I equal to them in ability, I would still wish to retain the femininity that God had blessed me with. I would not want to be the monster of a masculine expression of strength and ability. It would not give me any sense of accomplishment to win the match, should I lose my feminine identity.

I needn't apologize for needing to correct a peer. I needn't cowtow and genuflect to their masculinity. I need only use the correct inflections and cadence to accomplish the goal. My anger and my desire to fiercely defend my point and uncover the truth of an investigation must never ever forget the position and age and respectability of the target of that investigation. I have a different responsibility to my President in my tenor and tone than to my newsboy. We must never speak to an elder in the same tone as our babies. Sometimes the feminism of our age has erased the importance of polite society. The use of feminine intonations is not an expression of weakness, but an expression of the distinction of our point of view which is different from our masculine counterparts. If we want them to respect that difference and that vantage point, we must respect it and their vantage point, as well.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Time to put your head down and time to pick your head up?

Isn't "there a time for everything" and haven't you found that to be so?
Yesterday, your father and I walked around Bailey Rd. Park about a mile and I was happy that I could accomplish it. There was a short span of the walk that my eyes saw from a distance as being beyond me. It seemed straight up. I had said to myself, the old knees are not going to like that hill. I convinced myself that if I didn't look at it, the knees wouldn't know what hit them. That turned out to be the case. I put my head down and trudged on, just one step at a time. The knees ached, but I didn't give them any creedance. Your father's talk was at its height and so I didn't have time to say, owwwww.

I lived with my head down for years and years. Feelings of lesser than and humiliation from situations and grief. Perhaps those were also times of walking up a steep hill to "find the worth of my own soul". {A meditation from the Christmas Cantada- Oh Holy Night} "The soul found it's worth" When you find that Christ's birth and sacrifice was a loving gift there is awe and humility, but when you own His sacrifice you may grow to see that Christ's sacrifice is for the lifting of the head.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

It took me a couple of weeks to meditate on this personal perception of a people group.

In the opinion of Pickering, the Siamese are undoubtedly Malay; but a majority of the intelligent Europeans who have lived long among them regard the native population as mainly Mongolian. They are generally of medium stature, the face broad, the forehead low, the eyes black, the cheekbones prominent, the chin retreating, the mouth large, the lips thick, and the beard scanty. In common with most of the Asiatic races, they are apt to be indolent, improvident, greedy, intemperate, servile, cruel, vain, inquisitive, superstitious, and cowardly; but individual variations from the more repulsive types are happily not rare. In public they are scrupulously polite and decorous according to their own notions of good manners, respectful to the aged, affectionate to their kindred, and bountiful to their priests, of whom more than twenty thousand are supported by voluntary contributions in Bangkok alone. Marriage is contracted at sixteen for males, and fourteen for females, and polygamy is the common practice, without limit to the number of wives except such as may be imposed by the humble estate or poverty of the husband; the women are generally treated with consideration. from Anna's Book that Elyse and I are reading
This is Pickering's perception, but the fact that she felt obliged to give the reader this generalization is curious to me. She had the emotional crushing experiencing of having been taken advantage and used in her service, with no real protection over her. I cannot imagine the vulnerability that she experienced, but I am very sensitive to the European need to categorize people groups in terms of their standards, especially in those days. This is not a Gospel aimed observation, but it did become an evangelical purpose eventually. Can we evangelize minus our ethnic sensitivities? Maybe we can now, but the 1800's were another time and circumstance.

When I got to these observations in BB Warfield's writings, it turned me off to doctrine altogether for a time. How could someone of such high mental acumen in doctrinal terms have such a negative view of the service of another human race? How could he not have seen the dehumanization of his practice and perspective? Well, it didn't daunt my pursuit of truth, altogether; though it did make me despise a certain time period of readings. Now Anna became BB to me and I had to change my perception of her reason for writing and for going to Siam. I overcame my antipathy and read on to find the real woman that everyone else saw and reasoned to myself that I am just like that when I am angry at my circumstance. My anger then turned to myself for my prejudices and misperceptions of peoples because I don't know them individually yet. Praise God that He overlooks such prejudices in our hearts and answers our prayers on peoples behalf anyway.

Saturday, February 3, 2018

This is Day 2 after Emma's passing!

The pungent and sour odor that was our consistent experience these past few weeks, is just starting to dissipate. Her sad whines and cries are becoming a faint memory for the sound of silent sighs of each of us as we pass the bathroom that had become her ICU room. Her male nurses have gone back to being my sons and husband. She really had their hearts for those weeks. I couldn't really sympathize, myself. I thought that we should have ended it awhile ago. I said, she is a dog. I loved her, but she is not my child or a human.

Emily and I were in agreement about this. Day after day, I looked in on her, but I didn't go in and I didn't do much, except bring her water from time to time on a flat plate so she didn't have to lift her head too high.

She was on a plastic pallet, with pillows and blanket comforting her, in the end. She had to be cleaned a couple of times a day, for the stench of her excrement. That dulled the odor a bit, but it was putrid. We will be doing the cleaning regularly to completely clear it out.

On the last day, I felt it, but I wanted to feel that feeling each day of the ordeal. I looked in and we looked eye to eye, but I didn't say anything and neither did she. I felt bad about that later in the day, when I heard that she had been completely alone, when it happened. I felt angry that my boy had to be the one to find her. Is that his preparation for adulthood, Lord? What does that mean about this poor boy's experience to be 14 and seeing the dog die in our bathroom? I would have spared him that. This thought quickly faded into the guilt of not even saying goodbye to her and the thought that I couldn't have been there to direct the final process. That faded into relief that they were grown enough to complete that task without my intervention, even in the least. I have become the final clean up person. After they do their best to clean up the mess, I am the sterilizer. I pour the last bottle of bleach on the situation and hope that there is nothing else to pick up from there. Oh, what a beautiful teamwork to observe of my men, doing their thing. That made me glad.

Emily and I did our usual grousing and grumping on the way home. That has become our female bonding and commiserating that our female sensitivities had been taken to their limit on this situation. We were ready to take her to the vet weeks ago and we were no longer sympathetic to the loss as we would have been, had the whole house not wreaked.

I thought I was going to get to say goodbye. And I was nearly crying about that, but I didn't let on. That disappointment hit me, as we pulled into the driveway. I couldn't let on, the depth of my disappointment because the boys and Ben had had the brunt of the responsibility. My eyes looked to the sky, as it often does as I agonize my knees out of the vehicle and I saw a cloud that looked like a dog's head, right above me. There is her goodbye, I said to myself relieved that God didn't leave me to feel so incomplete in this part of the relationship. I offered a little prayer to be able to keep my composure and at least show my strong side, in this funeral like moment.

I wasn't ready for my room to become the wake for the dog. But it did. We shared our good memories of her. Ethan shed his very well hidden tears in a moment of reminiscing, but very maturely. Hand over the face and not even a whimper. They are learning that our griefs have gradations. Our dog touched us deeply, but nothing like the sympathy that we feel for humans in their suffering. That is a wonderful lesson for children and I am sorry that I didn't know that as a lesson for my children earlier.

Title- The Studious One!

Title-  The Studious One!
artwork by Elyse

Of biscuits and syrup

Of biscuits and syrup
tasty treats

Happy Saturday!

Happy Saturday!
a day at the Raptor Center.

Widdle Emmie in outer space school

Emmie jumped on the bus and off it flew out into the atmosphere. There was a set of clouds with turbulence right above the house and it took a few minutes for my Emmie to buckle her seatbelt. They hit the bump hard and it knocked my Emmie out of her seat and she bumped her head. The video camera came on and the monitor looked through and stated, Ms. Emmie, where are you? You are not in your seat. Where are you? I am alright I fell because I hadn’t buckled correctly. Well jump up Emmie we have a long way to go and you have to be buckled there is entirely too much turbulence in the stratosphere for you to unbuckle now. As soon as we are through this weather system there will be straight sailing but right now you must buckle. Emmie scrambled into the seat with intensity and purpose now. She watched every cloud pass her window and her nose was pressed to the window trying to see the top of the house as it drifted slowly out of sight. Soon they were not only out of sight of the house, the sun came out brightly and just as quickly they were putting on the atmospherical breathing apparatus and the outerspherical lights. The ABA and the OL. These precautions were to make them appear to be satellites to the radar as they were out in the ionosphere. Emmie knew all about this now. She had gone to the orientation and had a good breakfast and it took them 20 minutes for her to get out past the atmospherical pull and to feel the zero gravity. It would be 15 minutes before the gravity simulators would take effect, a glitch in the system which was being worked on. Until then, they enjoyed the couple of minutes of floatation, while being connected to the seats by belt. The first thing they saw everyday was the strataflotsam. The items which had been dumped into the atmosphere by earlier generations. What would their generation do about this ecological waste area that remained floating above their heads? This was a question for the generations. For now it was the area that they had to guide through on the way to school.

Midnight at the OASIS

Midnight at the OASIS
Sunset in Huntersville

My little Emmie

ran to the bus on the first day of the last year of school. 2 buns on the side of her head. She kissed me and ran at dawn to the bus. She was starting the adventure of a lifetime. I would never see that little girl again, she was going to woman school!

My Father and I 1989

My Father and I 1989

to the tune of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

A VISIT TO PAPA











Are you going to Mary Immaculate?

Apricots, Chocolate Cherries and Pie,



Remember me to the one who lived there,



He once was a true love of mine,



Tell him to buy me an acre of land,



Apricots, Chocolate Cherries and Pie,



Between the muddy Hudson in Jamaica Bay,



Then, He’ll be a true love of mine,

Tell him to sow in it seeds of pure cream,



Apricots, Chocolate Cherries and Pie,



And build Ice cream mountains and buildings of whipped cream,

Then, He’ll be a true love of mine,



Tell him to reap them with sickles of M&M’s,



Apricots, Chocolate Cherries and Pie,



And chew bubble gum and eat till we’re done,



Then, He’ll be a true love of mine.



Tell him to run it off down the motor parkway,



Apricots, Chocolate Cherries and Pie,



After your done 50 pushups



and jog down the West Side Highway,



Then he’ll be a true love of mine…

(Don’t wait for me today dad, The kids are sick again, My tummy’s bulging again, My heart is aching again, And now there’s no love there…)





He once was, a true love of mine….So, Girls, I do beg you don't miss your Daddy,Apricots, Chocolate cherries and Pie,You have one short chance to see him on this side, Go visit him and let your light shine.