Monday Morning

I loved this image because I remember when I was a little girl and leaning in close to get my hair fixed. I think you could call it a rite of passage. If you asked my girls they would give you stories of me doing their hair and burning them with a curling iron. I am and have always been sort of a klutz when it comes to doing hair.

Well, today is our last day of November. I feel like a horse I had once, she had a very hard mouth and liked nothing better to work until she could get the bridle between her teeth and just the moment you weren't paying attention, she would jerk that bit in her teeth and off she would run, her mouth was so hard that you had to jerk until you jerked it out so you could finally stop her from running away, it was always a contest of wills.
I am like that today, I want to do things my own way, and God keeps jerking the the bit out of my hands. Today, I find that trial is like a long tunnel, I do not want to walk down the path, but God keeps telling me I must go, but that he is with me, with a flashlight, shining just enough for the next step. I am afraid.
I want also to look at Christmas and keep my eyes on that and ignore the trial. So this morning I read this:
A sign of secularism among Christians is our focus on problems and our insistence on instant solutions. (Ouch!) Why did Jesus Christ save us? To solve our problems? No. He saved us in order that we may live in company with Him.
" He died for us that , whether we are awake of asleep. we may live together with him."
1 Thess. 5:10

So today, instead of trying to get away from the trial, I will wait on Him and know that I am blessed.
Happy Monday

Christmas Lights

We put up our Christmas lights today. I am so glad, it is so nice to do normal. My husband and I were Christmas shopping and we were talking about how much has happened in the last two weeks. We traveled 3000 miles, we got home, did the shopping for Thanksgiving, had 30 people over for Thanksgiving and today we put up the lights, put up the Christmas tree and did our Christmas shopping and just have a few odds and ends which we hope to do tomorrow and we will be finished. I would like to have everything finished before the first of December.
The doctors have said that there is nothing more they can do so they are talking of sending my Mom home to hospice and she will die in 1 to 5 days because she won't be able to be given food or water. I have kept busy because I just don't know what else to do. I keep thinking that only Doctors can legally get away with murder. I know this is wrong thinking because the the degree of her cancer but still I have never had to walk though anything quite like this. I am so sick within my soul.
So my prayer has been for the Lord to be merciful. My faith in Him is absolute and unwavering because I know that our God is in heaven and if anything was ever out of His control He would cease to be God. I can rest in that this is His perfect will and His purpose and that He will be glorified. He promises that He is in the midst of it when you pass through the fire.
Today I thought, I must keep my attention on all of the little things I am thankful for and sometimes as I sit in that age long minute I look at His greatness and not the chaos.
So I am happy for Christmas Lights today because they remind me that long ago, a Father sent His Son to be the Light of the World for us. We have so much to be thankful for.

What is Love?

I was thinking today about love. I think what triggered it was watching my dog. I was wondering if a dog loves or if it is just a fond expression because I feed her. Then as so often as my mind goes down these rabbit trails. I thought about feeling love myself. When I met my husband, it was like nothing I had ever experienced, where I rushed to give up all that I was to another human being, but being a human, I think it was mainly a very selfish kind of love. Then I had my first child and love took me deeper than I ever dreamed.
I then became a Christian and I began learning about Gods love for us. It being the Christmas season, always causes me to think about God, the creator of the universe and all that is in it and that nothing was made that was made and thinking of him putting himself at the mercy of the human race. It just blows my mind. I ran across this little thing written about love and I thought I would share it because that is what I am thinking about this morning.
"Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving kindness I have drawn thee. (Jer. 31:3)
If ever human love was tender, self-sacrificing, and devoted; if ever if could bear and forbear;
if ever it could suffer gladly for its loved ones; if ever it was willing to pour itself out in a lavish abandonment for the comfort or pleasure of its objects; then infinitely more it is Divine love tender, and self-sacrificing, and devoted, and glad to bear and forebear, and to suffer, and to lavish its best of gifts and blessings upon the objects of its love. Put together all of the tenderest love you know of, the deepest you have ever felt, and the strongest that has ever been poured out upon you, and heap upon it all the love of all the loving human hearts in the world, and then multiply it by infinity, and you will begin, perhaps, to have some faint glimpse of what the love of God is. H.W.S.

Someday, and I say someday, I might be able to get a teeny-tiny glimpse of what love is, So Christmas to me always reminds me that God was willing to give up everything for us, and I ask myself today, what am I willing to give up for him?

Restful Friday

I think today's post will really be called random thoughts on Friday. I plan on resting today. Food fills the refrigerator, the house is clean because I knew I wanted to rest today, so I cleaned before I went to bed. This morning, the sky promised a storm. ( Which of course, I have become a cynic when it comes to red sky in the morning.)
My niece and nephews stayed over late so I know the kids will be in bed late. My husband is home today so all is well.

Thanksgiving was a wonderful day and we had so many people here and tons of food. We had babies everywhere and I don't know if the two year olds, walked very much. Every time I saw one they were being carried and the little babies I am sure were kissed up all day. It was really one of those days I have searched for all of my life, the kind of day right out of Norman Rockwell painting. Isn't it funny, that when you give, you are way more blessed in return.

Just one story though, as I am in a story mood. I got up early to bake my turkey. It was a larger turkey than I normally cook, in fact maybe the largest turkey I have ever baked. I get it all ready and my oven is preheated and I get it into the foil pan. I had bought two because I had the idea of using the extra to put the meat in while it was being carved. I try to lift the foil pan with this huge turkey and the foil pan just crumples...well like foil. So I quickly grab my extra foil pan and put it under the pan with the turkey in it.
Then I pick it up and walk over to the oven, all the while juggling it because both pans are threatening to crumple. I set it down on the counter and open the oven door. Now I must have shrunk since I got back from my trip because the oven seems really tall to me. I pick up the foil pan and try to lift the turkey over the door but I can't make it into the oven, which is hot because it has been preheated. So I am sort of in a quandary as I stand there and puzzle it out. Well, I get the bright idea to toss the turkey in the oven. So I pick it up and throw it at the oven and it goes in but the bottom rack falls off and become wedged on the heating element. I take the turkey out put it on the counter, grab my pot holders and start grabbing the rack but it really is stuck on the heating element.
My pot holders catch on fire, so I shake them and blow on them, thinking " this is not good because now the house is going to smell like I burned something. So I keep working on the rack, when they catch on fire again. ( I think I am going to have ask for new potholders for Christmas.)
I finally get the rack up where it is supposed to be and then my husband comes in and asks me what am I doing and what is that smell of burning? :)
So I tell him and so he helps me get the turkey in the oven but it did take both of us to do it and it did take two of us to get it out, but it was a wonderful tasting turkey.

So that was my turkey trial. I hope it is a nice and restful day for everyone.

Happy Friday!