Crazy Life

Thanksgiving (the holiday) is now over - the day we talk about being grateful for our blessings. I hope we all do recognize them more than one day a year! My father's parents (Ethel and Carson) prayed a blessing over every meal. One of my strongest memories is them both in their old age kneeling together nightly in front of the couch praying aloud together. I understand now why they did it in front of the couch. My joints have reached the age of needing assistance to arise also. In the Bible the word bless appears 127 times, the word blessed 302 and the word blessing over 600. It is a recurring theme in the Bible. The Hebrew verb barak means kneel or who respect. A related word is berakhah meaning gift or present. So, to bring a gift while kneeling out of respect. That makes me think of three guys who traveled to see a certain baby. Meanings of words often change over time. The word faggot at one time was a small bundle of sticks for burning. The word fag was referring to a ...

I read repeatedly and  hear Christians saying that we need God in our schools. I believe what they are really saying is that they wish their particular brand of religion to be taught in the classroom. I was shocked several years ago to learn that my son was being indoctrinated in Islam at his Charter school by a Muslim teacher. I learned this at dinner one night when he started telling me what a great religion it is!  There you go! Religion in school. I do not think religion belongs in school. Teaching religion is a parent's right, responsibility and decision. If religious teaching is allowed in school, then whose religion should be taught? If I were Jewish I would choose Judaism, other parents might choose Islam, Wicken, Pagan, Jehovah Witness, or Church of the F.S.M. (Flying Spaghetti Monster). I am a protestant but do not feel the school should educate my child in any religion. Home and Sunday School are the proper venues for this. The Bible instructs parents repeated...

When I was young we had a very large rectangle mirror that hung over the couch. I must have been reading Alice in Wonderland because I would climb on the back of the couch and stare deeply into the mirror looking for another world to jump into. As much as I flattened my face against the mirror and as hard as I wished, I remained in my own living room. Have you ever been all gussied up, looking your best and ready for an evening out and stopped to look in the mirror? I always think "Oh, No!" I thought I looked thinner, that my hair looked better, and I did not realize my eye makeup made me resemble a raccoon. I believe the mirror forces us to see things as they are and not as we wish. This is an interesting poem I found on Tumblr. I hope you like it Weighing  Shaving, I wonder how much the mirror would weigh with nothing in it. I step away, step back, touch glass with fingertips. Every day I do this, looking at the face I’ve earned with countless joys an...

Those of you who know me well probably rolled your eyes as soon as you saw the title. As I keep telling you, my past is more about how NOT to be a Christian. I am still working hard at how to BE one. In Ephesians 4:2-3 men get some basic instructions on marriage. For husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her. All well and good. He should love you enough to die for you. Nothing in there about dishes or toilets. 1 Peter 3:1   “Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives." I am not going to be bossed around!  Hold up. Read the whole verse. This isn't about being bossed around. It is about showing your husband the same love you get from Jesus so he can see what it is about. Witnessing through action. There are some others that tell the expectations of a wife. Titus 2:4-5 and Timothy 3:11.  No...

Shoplifting, oh dear you might start to think this is a family trait. I was in the fourth grade, I had recently gone to live with just my mother and attend a new school. Parkway for you locals, which sadly has been torn down. It was a wonderful neighborhood full of families with children, heaven for an only child. There was a candy store we all called Red's at one end of our division and tennis courts and a drug store on the other end. The drug store was called Salvins and it had a soda fountain inside. I had ice cream there once when my Uncle Clifford gave us some money. But you could get a Popsicle at Reds for seven cents and share it with a friend. I have a cousin (you know who you are) and she has been my nemesis most of our lives until after high school, which we attended together. She is six months younger than I and from the time she learned to walk our relationship was toy snatching, shoving, hair pulling, sand in the mouth, bad mouthing,, and that was all her of cour...

I .have four children. The second one was a little more...well, just a little more than the others. We went through a lying stage (I'll save that for another time) a fist fighting stage and a shoplifting stage. It started out harmlessly enough. We had been at the K-marx (as my beloved Pauline called it) and when we got in the car he had a few stickers that he did not have before we went into the store. It turns out the package was already opened and so he helped himself to a few. I explained that even though the package was open, and some were already missing, that since we didn't pay for it, they did not belong to us. I thought we were good. A bit later we were out and about and I needed to stop by the bank. They were having a promotion 'Your Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow' with a kettle of rocks spray painted gold. I did my bank business and put my small boys back in the car and they buckled up. This was the days before they had to ride in car seats...

What precisely is a valley? One definition: Low area of land between hills or mountains, typically a river or stream flows through it. It is a popular theme in poetry. The poet Theodore Roethke wrote, "Over every mountain there is a path although it may not be seen from the valley." Former President Richard Nixon said, "Only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be at the top." We all have valleys in our lives. Depression is kind of like a life of valley living. Once, while I was living in Colorado in my twenties I was driving home one night. I felt such despair. I could not remember a single happy event in my life. Now I assure you I had happy events but the darkness of depression covered everything good. Years later in my 30's I suffered post partum depression after the birth of my second child. My marriage was failing and we had big financial issues. Each day as I drove home from work it required superhuman...