I know, because I checked today while having a fit of organizing.
And now I shall eat some chocolate.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Sunny Days
Hello All -
I hope you survived the holidays. Oh my.
And now we come to Winter. Real Winter. Winter without tinsel and a sugar-induced stupor.
Winter like you wake up in the morning to find that the sink pipes in your nearly 250 year old house have frozen solid and the Mr. has to rip the entire wall apart because the pipe actually just drains into the backyard (because it's Maine and that's how we roll) and therefore has to be completely removed and replaced. Winter like the frenzied stoking of the wood stove in order to keep the little bear from also freezing up and frantic rushing down the broken basement stairs (the stairs collapsed during the rain storm we had which flooded the basement) to make sure no other pipes are in danger of the frost.
I admire this sort of Winter. I do not like it, but I feel the more honorable for having decided to face it head on, with no whimpering or cowering or whining. Ok - sometimes whining - but I slap myself out of it.
This winter means business.
My rambling house feels tauntingly big and empty due to the fact that we are living in the kitchen, huddled around the stove in order to preserve furnace fuel. I feel a little cheated, but I enjoy the challenge.
I am constantly decluttering and cleansing and purging because even this spacious room gets a little claustrophobic around the edges by the end of the day and dinner is being made and there are toys scattered all over the floor and laundry tossed hither and yon (the washer and dryer are in the kitchen room) and the sun sets, completely closing us in at last. Sometimes I want to scream and run into the frozen woods - - but I don't.
So what's to do? The holidays are over, thank God, and Winter has set in forever, or so it feels.
Now I can get to the Winter activities I enjoy doing, such as:
*Drinking Lots of Tea
*Cooking up scrumptious things to eat with tea
*Reading a novel (I'm really feeling a Louisa May Alcott binge coming on)
*Knitting some thing(s) for my Little Men (did I say - we are expecting another man child?)
*Decluttering without Mercy
*Moisturizing. Everyone. Every day. Again, without mercy.
*Perusing Seed Catalogs
*Ordering Seeds - lots of them
*Planning out the garden(s) - I have 8 acres to fill with Eden if I so choose
*Being able to fully engage in preparing for this second child
*Learning something - this year I am tempted by greenhouses and four-season planting schemes
*Keeping Little Bear occupied
*Watching the days wax longer by minutes
How are you passing the whiles before Spring?
I hope you survived the holidays. Oh my.
And now we come to Winter. Real Winter. Winter without tinsel and a sugar-induced stupor.
Winter like you wake up in the morning to find that the sink pipes in your nearly 250 year old house have frozen solid and the Mr. has to rip the entire wall apart because the pipe actually just drains into the backyard (because it's Maine and that's how we roll) and therefore has to be completely removed and replaced. Winter like the frenzied stoking of the wood stove in order to keep the little bear from also freezing up and frantic rushing down the broken basement stairs (the stairs collapsed during the rain storm we had which flooded the basement) to make sure no other pipes are in danger of the frost.
I admire this sort of Winter. I do not like it, but I feel the more honorable for having decided to face it head on, with no whimpering or cowering or whining. Ok - sometimes whining - but I slap myself out of it.
This winter means business.
My rambling house feels tauntingly big and empty due to the fact that we are living in the kitchen, huddled around the stove in order to preserve furnace fuel. I feel a little cheated, but I enjoy the challenge.
I am constantly decluttering and cleansing and purging because even this spacious room gets a little claustrophobic around the edges by the end of the day and dinner is being made and there are toys scattered all over the floor and laundry tossed hither and yon (the washer and dryer are in the kitchen room) and the sun sets, completely closing us in at last. Sometimes I want to scream and run into the frozen woods - - but I don't.
So what's to do? The holidays are over, thank God, and Winter has set in forever, or so it feels.
Now I can get to the Winter activities I enjoy doing, such as:
*Drinking Lots of Tea
*Cooking up scrumptious things to eat with tea
*Reading a novel (I'm really feeling a Louisa May Alcott binge coming on)
*Knitting some thing(s) for my Little Men (did I say - we are expecting another man child?)
*Decluttering without Mercy
*Moisturizing. Everyone. Every day. Again, without mercy.
*Perusing Seed Catalogs
*Ordering Seeds - lots of them
*Planning out the garden(s) - I have 8 acres to fill with Eden if I so choose
*Being able to fully engage in preparing for this second child
*Learning something - this year I am tempted by greenhouses and four-season planting schemes
*Keeping Little Bear occupied
*Watching the days wax longer by minutes
How are you passing the whiles before Spring?
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Oh, the books I could write...
My child has been sick for exactly one week and one hour.
Last Sunday he came down with a fever which we nursed until 2:30 Tuesday morning when it became a congested chest cold. Stuffy nose, cranky head, coughing... it's all here. Every morning he wakes up on the bright side, I've got his room so humidified it's like a cool sauna, but by 11 he's fallen apart once again.
I don't blame him - I HATE being sick. HATE. With violence. And so does my son. Thankfully, I make a better nurse than a sick person *and* I'm the adult, so we're getting along fair to middlin'. He's been smeared with eucalyptus infused oils, humidified, syringed, aspirated, wiped, hydrated, cuddled, coddled and fed copious amounts of oranges and pineapple while watching Pride and Prejudice. I hold him a great deal, but the Inside Baby doesn't care for that so much and makes his objections known by repeatedly beating my bladder until I move. Oh yeah.
Being of a literary bent, I've taken a few moments in-between nose wipings and tantrum soothings to imagine some of the books I could write using all the rich content I've been 'soaking in' the past few days.
"Everything is Covered in Snot; A Memoir"
by Mrs. Ann 'Nightingale'
"My Child Just Spewed Baby Tylenol All Over The Breakfast Table; and other adventures"
by Mrs. Ann 'Wet Rag'
"Somebody Smells Like Eucalyptus! A Guess-Who Book"
by Mrs. Ann 'Slather'
"Where's That Syringe?! An Eye-Spy Book"
by Mrs. Ann 'Hold-Him-Down'
"I Just Ate Half A Jar Of Gummy Vitamins; A Survival Guide"
by Mrs. Ann 'Confessional'
"Please Let Him Nap; A Book Of Common Prayers"
by Mrs. Ann 'Baby Tylenol'
"Don't Wipe Your Nose On THAT! A Book Of Every Day Objects"
by Mrs. Ann 'Grab-it-First'
"The Beast Below; Dealing With Early Sibling Rivalry"
by Mrs. Ann 'Gottapee'
Last Sunday he came down with a fever which we nursed until 2:30 Tuesday morning when it became a congested chest cold. Stuffy nose, cranky head, coughing... it's all here. Every morning he wakes up on the bright side, I've got his room so humidified it's like a cool sauna, but by 11 he's fallen apart once again.
I don't blame him - I HATE being sick. HATE. With violence. And so does my son. Thankfully, I make a better nurse than a sick person *and* I'm the adult, so we're getting along fair to middlin'. He's been smeared with eucalyptus infused oils, humidified, syringed, aspirated, wiped, hydrated, cuddled, coddled and fed copious amounts of oranges and pineapple while watching Pride and Prejudice. I hold him a great deal, but the Inside Baby doesn't care for that so much and makes his objections known by repeatedly beating my bladder until I move. Oh yeah.
Being of a literary bent, I've taken a few moments in-between nose wipings and tantrum soothings to imagine some of the books I could write using all the rich content I've been 'soaking in' the past few days.
"Everything is Covered in Snot; A Memoir"
by Mrs. Ann 'Nightingale'
"My Child Just Spewed Baby Tylenol All Over The Breakfast Table; and other adventures"
by Mrs. Ann 'Wet Rag'
"Somebody Smells Like Eucalyptus! A Guess-Who Book"
by Mrs. Ann 'Slather'
"Where's That Syringe?! An Eye-Spy Book"
by Mrs. Ann 'Hold-Him-Down'
"I Just Ate Half A Jar Of Gummy Vitamins; A Survival Guide"
by Mrs. Ann 'Confessional'
"Please Let Him Nap; A Book Of Common Prayers"
by Mrs. Ann 'Baby Tylenol'
"Don't Wipe Your Nose On THAT! A Book Of Every Day Objects"
by Mrs. Ann 'Grab-it-First'
"The Beast Below; Dealing With Early Sibling Rivalry"
by Mrs. Ann 'Gottapee'
So there you have it, from the trenches,
Ann
Sunday, December 21, 2014
Darcy Day
My son loves Pride and Prejudice almost as much as he loves Baby Einstein - in fact, I think it safe to say that they are tied in his affections.
When we have a cranky day, an icky day, a sick day, a 'just can't get out of our own way' day, I pop on some P&P and things immediately begin to smooth out. Little Bear sways and hums along with the ever-inviting introductory theme and always enjoys the ball scenes, twirling and clapping with the Bennet Girls and their beaus. When Mrs. Bennet gets her bonnet strings in a whirl, Bear throws up his hands and issues a loud wail of his own and every time Lydia elopes with the infamous Wickham, he grieves with the family as if they were his own, faking tears and throwing himself into the chair cushion with great zeal.
He plays with his farm puzzles and blocks during most of the episodes, loving the dances and drama the best and stopping in the middle of whatever he is doing at the time to join in, but when each one ends he says, "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, mama! More?"
There is *always* more Pride and Prejudice. It's such gentle entertainment, we go about our day with the lilting British chatter in the background and feel we are very much among friends and neighbors.
Monday, December 15, 2014
"The Revolution Will Be Home-Baked" Soaked Bread - - Pilgrims with iPhones - - and other musings
Bread is simple, right? Wheat and water - the staff of life... you go to the store, buy a loaf, take it home and devour it with an infinite variety of toppings and applications. Bread is awesome.
The beautiful simplicity of bread must not be confused with the apparent ease with which it is commercially mass produced. Let's face it, folks, we have absolutely taken the loveliness of bread and sacrificed it upon the heathen altar of industrialization.
**Industrialization - good for things like indoor plumbing and penicillin, bad for things like food.**
Our ancestors would have taken our daily bread and stared at it in wonder and dismay.
What are you supposed to do with it? Build things? Wear it? Throw it at your enemies?
People are always musing on the idea of Pilgrims with iPhones and how funny that would be - I think Pilgrims would be much more interested in the plethora of non-food-foods we consume without a thought, just because someone put it on a shelf and told us it was to eat.
"Forget that little magic box, my dear, what on earth is that which you putteth in thy mouth???"
**Pilgrims - probably didn't talk like that.**
Bread is simple - but we have abused its simplicity and turned it into an unrecognizable nonfood our founding fathers would have refused to feed their livestock. I think it's safe to say that if they had eaten what we eat, we wouldn't be here today to eat what we're eating. How long can a civilization survive on nonfood? I guess we're going to find out.
**Steps down off soapbox and returns it the laundry room.**
There was a wisdom that these ancestors of ours possessed that we are lacking. A knowing. A rightness that worked with what God had naturally given them.
Before frankenfood and Wonderbread, there was sourdough. There was flat bread. There were community mills and genetically pure grain. It seemed like necessity and a lack of technology forced this wisdom on them - and maybe it did - but it worked. It had to work, because if it didn't there wasn't any Walmart up the street selling fake bread for $.99 a loaf. It worked and in many instances it worked better than what we have now.
It's simple because you can take the seed of a grass, some water and tiny, funky little creatures that live in the air we breathe and end up with BREAD. Bread, which sustained life for thousands of years. And people question the existence of God... when there's bread??
I love it. I love the science and the process and the endless possibilities it adds to my daily life. I want to honor the Old Ways while not being afraid to use some of the new ones too (thank you, refrigerator, oven and KitchenAid mixer!)
I've found that The Old Ways can be summed up with 3 S's:
Soaked
Sprouted and
Soured
The Ancients would either sprout their grain and then dry it before grinding it to flour and using it for bread, use a sourdough starter to leaven their bread or supposedly (this is a new one for me) soak their flour in an acidic medium before baking. I'm not pretending to be an expert in this, I read mostly before I go to bed which means I am deliriously tired and bleary-eyed. I absorb enough to make it work and make a mental note to go back and get sciency with it later.
Why all this trouble? Phytic Acid. It's something in wheat that makes it hard to digest. Yuppers.
And then there is the fact that commercially produced yeast wasn't available as leavening, and refrigerators weren't available to keep things from spoiling - neither was the cocktail of chemical preservatives, softeners and conditioners.
Food had to be tough (in a good, 'I can handle this' sort of way). And as it is with a lot of things in this life, sometimes a little *good* toughness does us a whole lot of good.
Preparing bread The Old Way pretty effectively solved these problems. It was easier to digest, lasted longer and was satisfying to eat.
**I am a Pilgrim, and I approve of this bread.**
I'm working my way up to a no-yeast sourdough bread (and variations) for us for every day and the next step was trying a soaked bread where the flour was mixed with water and an acidic medium (I used whey) and then left to culture for 15 hours before preparing. HERE is the recipe and method I used. I did NOT use the ascorbic acid, simply because I don't have any - - - and it turned out just fine.
This recipe uses yeast (and she explains all about that in her article) but it seemed to be as easy to digest as the bread I've been making - and it took One day instead of Six. It was also nice to have a not sour wheat bread instead of a white sourdough for a change. This is definitely an excellent sandwich loaf I will make again!! Let me know what you think...
The beautiful simplicity of bread must not be confused with the apparent ease with which it is commercially mass produced. Let's face it, folks, we have absolutely taken the loveliness of bread and sacrificed it upon the heathen altar of industrialization.
**Industrialization - good for things like indoor plumbing and penicillin, bad for things like food.**
Our ancestors would have taken our daily bread and stared at it in wonder and dismay.
What are you supposed to do with it? Build things? Wear it? Throw it at your enemies?
People are always musing on the idea of Pilgrims with iPhones and how funny that would be - I think Pilgrims would be much more interested in the plethora of non-food-foods we consume without a thought, just because someone put it on a shelf and told us it was to eat.
"Forget that little magic box, my dear, what on earth is that which you putteth in thy mouth???"
**Pilgrims - probably didn't talk like that.**
Bread is simple - but we have abused its simplicity and turned it into an unrecognizable nonfood our founding fathers would have refused to feed their livestock. I think it's safe to say that if they had eaten what we eat, we wouldn't be here today to eat what we're eating. How long can a civilization survive on nonfood? I guess we're going to find out.
**Steps down off soapbox and returns it the laundry room.**
There was a wisdom that these ancestors of ours possessed that we are lacking. A knowing. A rightness that worked with what God had naturally given them.
Before frankenfood and Wonderbread, there was sourdough. There was flat bread. There were community mills and genetically pure grain. It seemed like necessity and a lack of technology forced this wisdom on them - and maybe it did - but it worked. It had to work, because if it didn't there wasn't any Walmart up the street selling fake bread for $.99 a loaf. It worked and in many instances it worked better than what we have now.
It's simple because you can take the seed of a grass, some water and tiny, funky little creatures that live in the air we breathe and end up with BREAD. Bread, which sustained life for thousands of years. And people question the existence of God... when there's bread??
I love it. I love the science and the process and the endless possibilities it adds to my daily life. I want to honor the Old Ways while not being afraid to use some of the new ones too (thank you, refrigerator, oven and KitchenAid mixer!)
I've found that The Old Ways can be summed up with 3 S's:
Soaked
Sprouted and
Soured
The Ancients would either sprout their grain and then dry it before grinding it to flour and using it for bread, use a sourdough starter to leaven their bread or supposedly (this is a new one for me) soak their flour in an acidic medium before baking. I'm not pretending to be an expert in this, I read mostly before I go to bed which means I am deliriously tired and bleary-eyed. I absorb enough to make it work and make a mental note to go back and get sciency with it later.
Why all this trouble? Phytic Acid. It's something in wheat that makes it hard to digest. Yuppers.
And then there is the fact that commercially produced yeast wasn't available as leavening, and refrigerators weren't available to keep things from spoiling - neither was the cocktail of chemical preservatives, softeners and conditioners.
Food had to be tough (in a good, 'I can handle this' sort of way). And as it is with a lot of things in this life, sometimes a little *good* toughness does us a whole lot of good.
Preparing bread The Old Way pretty effectively solved these problems. It was easier to digest, lasted longer and was satisfying to eat.
**I am a Pilgrim, and I approve of this bread.**
I'm working my way up to a no-yeast sourdough bread (and variations) for us for every day and the next step was trying a soaked bread where the flour was mixed with water and an acidic medium (I used whey) and then left to culture for 15 hours before preparing. HERE is the recipe and method I used. I did NOT use the ascorbic acid, simply because I don't have any - - - and it turned out just fine.
This recipe uses yeast (and she explains all about that in her article) but it seemed to be as easy to digest as the bread I've been making - and it took One day instead of Six. It was also nice to have a not sour wheat bread instead of a white sourdough for a change. This is definitely an excellent sandwich loaf I will make again!! Let me know what you think...
The soaking
The rising
The cooling (after baking)
The consuming
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Reading Through The Bible 2015
This is going to become a habit with me, isn't it?
I thought the whole 'Writing Bug' had gone and died, but alas, it has not.
So, my one and only resolution for this upcoming new year is this: I want to read through the Bible chronologically.
I have read the entire Bible, mostly as part of a dare I accepted as a 10 year old, years before I actually became born again. Yes, I was unsaved, but among the churched and that's the sort of thing we dared each other to do - read Leviticus. It bewilders me and I wish I now had a tenth of the time I wasted fulfilling dares in order to *really* read Leviticus as a believer.
But that's what this resolution is all about.
All my life I've made lists of self-improving or world-improving resolutions at the beginning of the year and I feel in some small way as though I've gotten over that.
There really is only One thing that is going to improve anything - either in myself or the world around me - and that's God's word. Improve in that and everything else will fall into line - I am convinced.
I don't want to do a 365 devotional because I don't want to be spoon fed anything. I don't want to make assumptions and gloss over things. I don't want to be interrupted. Having said that, I do plan on getting some good study tools and dusting off the ones I used in high school when Bible Study was an actual course - heavens how I loved that. My seeking soul just longed for understanding. I wore out my mini-concordance and fell head-over-heels in love with Strong's - and not the handy little Strong's App I now have on my phone, no sir, I mean the tie-yourself-to-it-in-a-twister volume that took up half my desk and had print so tiny it strained my eyes. Good times.
I have a couple of sturdy old Bible history books I plan on rereading and I'm going to be all about charts and maps.
I am so excited.
My favorite Sunday School Teacher - ever - was Mrs. McKay. She was a slightly older, southern-styled, honest to goodness Lady like they just don't make them any more. She was traditional, she was domestic, she was sweet and kind and she was the most exhaustive Bible scholar I've ever known. In my circle, that wasn't always encouraged. We were supposed to know the good wife scriptures and scriptures to support whether or not we covered our heads and wore long dresses, but we honestly weren't too into things like prophecy or Old Testament Chronology. Mrs. McKay was, and how! I thank God at least monthly for the 3 years I learned from her, not only about how to be a godly wife and mother and how to defend a conviction with scripture, but about the glories and infinite mysteries of the Word of God for its own sake.
Mrs. M read the Bible like it was honeyed poetry, the words dripped off her lips in a way that made me ache - it was so beautiful. She loved the Word of God with a blazing passion, she was infatuated with it and she radiated that enthusiasm to everyone around her. She loved the God behind the words- that was the key. Anything *He* said was the most important, gorgeous, worthy thing in the universe. Anything He recorded - she memorized. Anything He repeated - she studied until she understood why. Anything He mentioned - she paid attention to and loved. Think of a love-struck woman hanging on to, agreeing with and immediately adopting everything her fiancé says - it was like that.
In our tiny church, Mrs. M taught the young adult group - six of us sitting in a line in front of her desk, our knees and farm boots stuck out at odd angles due to the tininess of the chairs we had. For an hour we listened and read and sometimes talked. While every other youth Sunday school I'd ever attended focused on things like dressing appropriately, giving up dating, obeying your parents, seeking the Lord's will for your life after high school and the like, Mrs. McKay scooped us up and dove without reservation into the book of Isaiah for a full year. We didn't come up for breath Once.
Have you ever read Isaiah?
And we didn't just *read* it, we studied it. We got intimately acquainted with it. We memorized its ins and outs, its kings and sins and all the stuff we couldn't hardly understand. We read what great saints from times past had gleaned from the Lord concerning its content. I fell in love over and over and over again. I went home and preached to my mom (the other and original Great Bible Lover in my life) hollering and crying and trying to make her understand what was going on. It was exhausting, challenging, mind-blowing and the best Bible Study experience I'd ever had. I learned more about how the Lord desired that I live my life from that study than from all the youth-centered studies I've ever read or seen. She didn't ladle anything out - she didn't bend or coddle or sweeten or cajole or make it 'relevant to our lives'. She was having the time of her life and if we wanted to go along, that was great, but we had to keep up. God's word is ALWAYS relevant. To everyone - so listen up.
And I say, "Amen."
I really want to study the Bible like that again. Maybe I can - maybe the time for me has passed? I hate to think that's true - I have child(ren) to raise and teach and I am as in desperate need of learning as they are.
Lord, if I show up - if I press on and pay attention and listen - will you teach me like that again this year?
I thought the whole 'Writing Bug' had gone and died, but alas, it has not.
So, my one and only resolution for this upcoming new year is this: I want to read through the Bible chronologically.
I have read the entire Bible, mostly as part of a dare I accepted as a 10 year old, years before I actually became born again. Yes, I was unsaved, but among the churched and that's the sort of thing we dared each other to do - read Leviticus. It bewilders me and I wish I now had a tenth of the time I wasted fulfilling dares in order to *really* read Leviticus as a believer.
But that's what this resolution is all about.
All my life I've made lists of self-improving or world-improving resolutions at the beginning of the year and I feel in some small way as though I've gotten over that.
There really is only One thing that is going to improve anything - either in myself or the world around me - and that's God's word. Improve in that and everything else will fall into line - I am convinced.
I don't want to do a 365 devotional because I don't want to be spoon fed anything. I don't want to make assumptions and gloss over things. I don't want to be interrupted. Having said that, I do plan on getting some good study tools and dusting off the ones I used in high school when Bible Study was an actual course - heavens how I loved that. My seeking soul just longed for understanding. I wore out my mini-concordance and fell head-over-heels in love with Strong's - and not the handy little Strong's App I now have on my phone, no sir, I mean the tie-yourself-to-it-in-a-twister volume that took up half my desk and had print so tiny it strained my eyes. Good times.
I have a couple of sturdy old Bible history books I plan on rereading and I'm going to be all about charts and maps.
I am so excited.
My favorite Sunday School Teacher - ever - was Mrs. McKay. She was a slightly older, southern-styled, honest to goodness Lady like they just don't make them any more. She was traditional, she was domestic, she was sweet and kind and she was the most exhaustive Bible scholar I've ever known. In my circle, that wasn't always encouraged. We were supposed to know the good wife scriptures and scriptures to support whether or not we covered our heads and wore long dresses, but we honestly weren't too into things like prophecy or Old Testament Chronology. Mrs. McKay was, and how! I thank God at least monthly for the 3 years I learned from her, not only about how to be a godly wife and mother and how to defend a conviction with scripture, but about the glories and infinite mysteries of the Word of God for its own sake.
Mrs. M read the Bible like it was honeyed poetry, the words dripped off her lips in a way that made me ache - it was so beautiful. She loved the Word of God with a blazing passion, she was infatuated with it and she radiated that enthusiasm to everyone around her. She loved the God behind the words- that was the key. Anything *He* said was the most important, gorgeous, worthy thing in the universe. Anything He recorded - she memorized. Anything He repeated - she studied until she understood why. Anything He mentioned - she paid attention to and loved. Think of a love-struck woman hanging on to, agreeing with and immediately adopting everything her fiancé says - it was like that.
In our tiny church, Mrs. M taught the young adult group - six of us sitting in a line in front of her desk, our knees and farm boots stuck out at odd angles due to the tininess of the chairs we had. For an hour we listened and read and sometimes talked. While every other youth Sunday school I'd ever attended focused on things like dressing appropriately, giving up dating, obeying your parents, seeking the Lord's will for your life after high school and the like, Mrs. McKay scooped us up and dove without reservation into the book of Isaiah for a full year. We didn't come up for breath Once.
Have you ever read Isaiah?
And we didn't just *read* it, we studied it. We got intimately acquainted with it. We memorized its ins and outs, its kings and sins and all the stuff we couldn't hardly understand. We read what great saints from times past had gleaned from the Lord concerning its content. I fell in love over and over and over again. I went home and preached to my mom (the other and original Great Bible Lover in my life) hollering and crying and trying to make her understand what was going on. It was exhausting, challenging, mind-blowing and the best Bible Study experience I'd ever had. I learned more about how the Lord desired that I live my life from that study than from all the youth-centered studies I've ever read or seen. She didn't ladle anything out - she didn't bend or coddle or sweeten or cajole or make it 'relevant to our lives'. She was having the time of her life and if we wanted to go along, that was great, but we had to keep up. God's word is ALWAYS relevant. To everyone - so listen up.
And I say, "Amen."
I really want to study the Bible like that again. Maybe I can - maybe the time for me has passed? I hate to think that's true - I have child(ren) to raise and teach and I am as in desperate need of learning as they are.
Lord, if I show up - if I press on and pay attention and listen - will you teach me like that again this year?
Desiring daily bread from heaven itself,
Because I cannot live on earthly bread alone -
My soul is famished.
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Me Today; them lying hormones
This is how I feel Today:
And somehow, writing about it is going to cure me. I need to laugh at myself - bear with me. I know of no other remedy so perfect for a funky mood.
Little Bear is fed, changed and taking his afternoon siesta, The Mr. is sleeping after a long night at work and I am sitting here in my kitchen sipping cold coffee, wondering what to do with myself.
I personally identify with this screaming, cleaning war dwarf. I'm convinced this is what my brothers picture when remembering me as a teenager. I am the oldest girl - I have three younger brothers - we lived on a farm with as many as three indoor dogs and up to five indoor cats. Mopping was intense. I stand by any actions I took while completing the task.
This is how I feel - machete raised, hair aflame, spit-flying.
I am embarrassed to admit this publicly, but I really am only now learning that how I *feel* isn't necessarily how I *am*. Seems like something you learn in day school, not during one's second pregnancy. My last pregnancy (and, honestly, this one too) was a bit of a nightmare internally because my feelings and moods and thoughts were so intense, so out of control and overwhelming it almost drove me crazy. I thought I *was* crazy.
I live at an intensity most people can only experience while under the influence of untoward substances. I have this idea nestled inside that if my Whole Being isn't 100% - none of me is. I know this is a horrid fault to confess in front of people I have only just met - - - but it's true. If I *feel* like a raging dwarf, I must be a raging dwarf, no matter how I act or KNOW otherwise. And this brings on guilt and despair and dismay and discouragement and confusion... and every bad thing.
Sometimes I do stupid or sinful things while channeling my war dwarf, but most of the time I just go on as I must and let the war rage on inside and unseen by anyone but me.
Here's the truth - This is actually me today:
I sat in the rocking chair holding my sobbing Little Bear who was in a good bit of distress for most of the morning. It was just one of those days. He was heartbroken when Dad went upstairs to go to bed. He was heartbroken when he couldn't get the book to shut. He was heartbroken when his cup was empty. He was heartbroken when my shoes wouldn't fit his tiny feet. He was heartbroken when Jane Eyre had to flee Mr. Rochester - - and he's never read that book. I tried to tell him it ends well, but he would not be consoled. He's pretty intense too... Hmmm.
So I put my plans for the day aside and we hunkered down. I dried his little tears, we watched three episodes of A&E's Pride and Prejudice (which is second only to Baby Einstein in his affections), we talked, we cuddled, we played with his ball and his farm animal puzzle. Then I made lunch and we ate. And here I am.
There was no screaming, no sobbing on my end, no machetes, no war.
My adrenal glands were ready to charge into the fray, my mind was racing and tumultuous with battle plans, my entire being felt panicked and on the edge of desperation. But it was just hormones.
Useful hormones, necessary hormones, but they lie, lie, LIE.
And now I must go. Baby #2 is jumping on my bladder - and that's a feeling that needs to be believed and acted upon rather urgently.
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