romance_writer's Xanga

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:34:21 GMT

It's done--Yay!!!

Actually, all that dread was for naught, because Dean did the lion's share of the work this year, mostly with the leaf blower. Peter and I put in mebbe three hours of work altogether! It looks good out there.

We also took in the dock and stacked three cords of firewood, and Dean took down a few dead trees--small ones. I'm thinking we're pretty much set for winter to come.

Our next-door neighbors, who now own the cabin that used to belong to Dean's brother, are preparing to build a garage. This week they took down a lot of trees, including the two huge basswoods that have been looming over the cabin for half a century. Those trees had to be 100 feet tall, maybe close to 100 years old, though I can't be sure of this. Our area was clear-cut sometime around 1890, so the oldest trees around here are about 120 years old. We have some white and Norway pines that must be nearly that old, though none that large on our property.

We're really enjoying our Wednesday night Bible study, which is on Galatians and titled, "How Do We Live Out the Gospel?" Much food for thought, particularly about the rules we Christians tend to set for ourselves then apply to others with a judgmental eye. What did Jesus answer when asked "How can I have eternal life?" He told the man to sell everything he had, give it to the poor, and follow. Is this literally what He requires of us? IMHO, His point was that everything we have and are belongs to God. It is not about setting certain levels of obedience and attaining them, but about surrendering everything, every day.

Quite a challenge.

Monday, November 02, 2009

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:57:05 GMT

I keep looking outside at all the leaves on the ground. . .and shuddering.

Can't evade it much longer--Rake Day is coming.

Yesterday, a nuthatch committed kamikazi on one of our quarter-round windows. Sadness! But actually this year the casualties have been low. We had no mass suicide of yellow-rumped warblers in September, for which I was grateful. In fact, we never saw the warblers at all this year. I wonder if word got around in their flock that our house eats little birdies?

Mimi is sitting on the fleece-topped desk, watching for birds at the feeder. I need to wake Peter up soon and get him started on the day, but it's nice to have these quiet moments in the morning.

I have become addicted to reading my Bible and devotional books on-line each day. It has a different feel, for some reason, and I see things I no longer notice in the actual books. Funny how a different format can do this to my brain.

I read one of Anne Elisabeth's manuscripts in two-page spread last night and saw it as an actual book--that was fun!

Perspective changes things!

Fallen

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:37:20 GMT

Well, it's official. Fall in the Northwoods is no longer even "falling." It is now "fallen." There are still some golden leaves in the forest across the street, but most of them are on the ground.

Once things dry out a bit, we start raking. *sigh*

Nice to reach the end of another school week. Pete took his 9-week exam for Lit and Grammar today and got strong A's. Now he's got an algebra test, and then we're done 'til Monday. Yay!

We went to lunch with my in-laws this morning, which brightened up a dreary day for all of us.

I really enjoyed the above movie. It looked to be depressed but ended good.

Also finished reading Bathsheba. I feel privileged to read it LONG before anyone else gets to, so I shall gloat. LOL Trust me--it's really good. Her series keeps getting better and better.

Looking forward to falling back.

Wisdom and Mercy

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:50:13 GMT

In my daily Bible reading, I'm in II Samuel, and I'm also reading a manuscript for my dear friend Jill Eileen, titled Bathsheba. Yes, my daily reading is parallel with the events in her book, which is doubling my concentration on the story. This book won't come out until 2011, but I highly recommend it.

In II Sam. 19, which I read today, David is returning to Jerusalem after the death of Absalom. On the way, he meets with various people, some who betrayed him and joined Absalom, others who were faithful to him--or supposedly so. Again and again he must pass judgment on people, some of whose stories conflict with other things he has been told. Again and again he chooses mercy over judgment. Why? Did he make the right choice in each of these situations? Some of these people had been two-faced and treacherous. Others had returned evil for good. Others, like Mephibosheth, claimed to have been faithful all along but slandered and betrayed by his servant.

How was David to know? It wasn't as if God gave him outright guidance or confirmation. Why was he merciful to so many people who did not deserve it?

I believe it was because God had been so incredibly merciful to him, sparing him from death after his adulterous and murderous acts. He was a humbled man.

Was he right to spare these guilty people? Did they appreciate him and reform their ways?

Well, the end of the chapter portrays Israel and Judah bickering again about which of them has most claim on the king, about which of them was most deserving of his time and favor. So, while perhaps some of the individuals he forgave learned mercy from the experience, others quite possibly simply lived to betray and slander another day. And the tribes were just as contentious as ever.

Why does God give us so much freedom to do the wrong thing? Why does He not check us when we wander off the right path and bog ourselves down in sin and stupidity? Even when we beg Him to show us the right path and not let us deceive ourselves?

I wish I knew. For myself, I know that God allows me to hear both good and bad advice and to choose which I will follow. Sadly, I often choose the advice I want to hear. And that way, I end up learning wisdom through long and involved error.

But by God's grace, I do usually end up learning wisdom (and humility with it) in the end. And I am learning, slowly, which people in my life are most likely to advise me well.

A rule of thumb in general: Suspect advice from anyone who shares my particular weaknesses. When in doubt about something emotional, heed a godly man's advice.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:55:21 GMT

Heartless book cover!!!

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:26:12 GMT

Yup, I have already posted this on Facebook, and so has Anne Elisabeth--but it's just too pretty to post only once! I've had a close-up of Una as my computer wallpaper for about a month now but couldn't enthuse about it on-line until now. Very hard for a mother to keep something like this secret, you know!

July 1, 2010, is a long time to wait, but things are starting to move along now. Our friends in town who own a Christian bookstore were excited to see this cover--I think it will catch the eye of potential readers!

Soon the back cover copy will be out, and I will post that too, I'm sure.

Impulse

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:18:13 GMT

DIRECTION BY IMPULSE

"Building up yourselves on your most holy faith." Jude 20

There was nothing either of the nature of impulse or of cold-bloodedness about Our Lord, but only a calm strength that never got into panic. Most of us develop our Christianity along the line of our temperament, not along the line of God. Impulse is a trait in natural life, but Our Lord always ignores it, because it hinders the development of the life of a disciple. Watch how the Spirit of God checks impulse, His checks bring a rush of self-conscious foolishness which makes us instantly want to vindicate ourselves. Impulse is all right in a child, but it is disastrous in a man or woman; an impulsive man is always a petted man. Impulse has to be trained into intuition by discipline.

Discipleship is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. Walking on the water is easy to impulsive pluck, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Jesus Christ is a different thing. Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus, but he followed Him afar off on the land. We do not need the grace of God to stand crises, human nature and pride are sufficient, we can face the strain magnificently; but it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours in every day as a saint, to go through drudgery as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.

--from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers

So often lately I have found food for spiritual thought in Chambers--it tends to be heavy, and I prefer to skim over the stuff that doesn't say what I want it to say. These past few years have been a time of testing with a lot of failures for me, but this is exactly how God points out and checks the sin in my life. He doesn't stop me from acting on impulse, but He allows me to face the consequences of my behavior, which has often been deeply humiliating to me and to others.

Why doesn't He simply stop me from sinning in the first place? I am no theologian to answer this question with authority, but I know that until I am caught in a sin and faced with the depth of my sin nature and rebellion against God's authority, I will deny sinfulness in myself and refuse to face the extent of my pride. Repentance is HARD for me. It involves acknowledgement of my sin, not just human sinfulness in general, and I hate that. But if I will not humble myself before the Lord, He will--in His love--humble me, or allow me to humiliate myself through failure. But what if I still refuse to take responsibility for my sin? Then the cycle goes on again and in a more deeply painful way. . .because He loves me and refuses to leave me wallowing in my pride and misery. I don't enjoy it, but I am so very thankful that He doesn't give up on me. Ever.

What I have written above is just words that I've had repeated to me all my life, and words frequently roll off my back--or my tongue--without meaning anything. It takes MY pain and MY failure and MY repentance and MY experience of forgiveness to make them real to me.

Even if nobody else reads this, it has been good for me to write it down!

Friday, October 16, 2009

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:56:17 GMT

I've been writing like crazy lately, in case you've been wondering. I finally have the time, the setting, and the characters right, and I'm LOVING the story, at long last. Also busy teaching school to Peter, working on my Facebook farms (hard labor, let me tell you), and otherwise enjoying October. I have some photos to post, when I get around to loading them into my new laptop, of autumn color, but it is fading quickly. We've had a few snowfalls that tend to wilt things.

Today was our rotation at the local Food Pantry. We all three enjoy volunteering there once a month. Dean and I work out front, and Pete works in the back. I thought ahead this time and put soup in the crockpot, so we had a nice dinner waiting for us when we got home. And Jim came over to spend the evening.

Tomorrow we're going to lunch with Dean's folks. So, you can tell that there isn't must of excitement to write about around here! But that's a good thing. Annie will be flying back to NC from Okinawa on the 17th. All on the 17th, since she will be going backwards in time. Strange thought.

We're now hosting a small group Bible study at our house on Wednesday evenings. Really enjoying that! Since we moved all the furniture out of the family room and into Annie's apartment and Jim's apartment, we had a great big empty family room available that is just perfect for setting up folding chairs and a card table with munchies on it, and the study is on Galatians. Yessss! Finally using this big house for something cool!

Pete and I are quite hooked on the show Good Eats. It's about the only television show I watch. Problem is, it usually plays at 10:00 p.m., and after watching Alton Brown cook all those good eats, we tend to get hungry! The other night, Peter fried up some eggs for a late-night snack. Made me laugh. But hey, he's learning how to cook, and we laugh a lot, since (as the star puts it) the show is part Julia Child, part Mr. Wizard and part Monty Python. Gotta like that.

I've got to take my contacts out and hit the sack. Myles has already hit the sack. . .in my lap. Too bad he's got to be disturbed. But not that too bad. Here we go. . . .

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:30:13 GMT

I have a new computer! A nice Dell laptop. I'm gradually getting used to the new keyboard, though I tend to make a lot of typos. Hopefully you will see none of these, since I try to catch them!

Can't believe it is October 1st. Can't believe it is five years since Fritz died--yes, I will probably remember that date for a long time, since that dog was like part of me. And more than four years since I started this xanga account.

I've been writing a bit again, although I need to do some outlining again and keep putting that off. I think I just might finish this book, which would be an accomplishment. It's been more than three years since I last finished a book! That's pretty bad.

Loving, loving Annie's book in its newest form--people who read it two years ago will hardly recognize it now. Yes, it has changed that much! And all for the better. She has her cover now but can't put it on the Internet until the Bethany House catalog is released later this month.

Tomorrow, Annie will fly to Okinawa to visit Tom for a few weeks! It will be so much fun to Skype them together--so strange! And yes, we now have Skype.

Jim drops in once or twice a week to pick up his mail and his accumulated hugs. He's doing well--new challenges all the time, but the boy is growing.

Peter and I are enjoying his school year. He loves biology, even now while we're studying botany. He was surprised to discover how much he enjoys learning about plants. Heh. That's my boy, for sure. He and I are reading biographies for our reading each morning. We just finished George Muller's bio. I found it quite challenging to me spiritually, since I tend to be a quitter when it comes to prayer. If the answers don't come quickly, I figure that's a "no" and move on. I was amazed to learn that Mr. Muller prayed for many years sometimes before the answers came.

We watched Twilight the other night. It wasn't quite as bad as I had expected, though I wouldn't go as far as to say that I liked it. We did, however, watch it all the way through. We just considered it a new twist on the superhero genre. A rather silly one in many respects, but there you go.

Bye!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:32:46 GMT

Okay, I've been back from NC for two weeks now, and just the other day I finally uploaded the photos from my trip, and a few others. Here ya go!

Here's one from back in early August, first of all. I caught Lily in the act:

See that glassy-eyed expression of guilt?

He/she is awfully cute, though.

Now the fawns have their winter coats--I'm glad I got a photo when they were still spotted.

Now for our trip. I flew down to NC while Dean and Peter drove the truck and hauled a trailer containing our piano and some furniture Dean's parents no longer wanted since they downsized to a condo. Here is Annie's place with her new things:

And her new dinette set, a gift from her grandparents:

Dean and Pete stayed for several days--long enough to have some fun and enjoy Annie's cats!

Pete and Rilla always did love each other.

And Dean enjoyed wrestling Minerva:

All too soon it was time to say goodbye

to Annie:

and to the kitties:

Then the guys headed back home. I stayed for another week to help Annie get entirely unpacked and settled in. We worked on her dollhouse for the first time in many years, and Molly approved our work.

She also approved of the new full-sized furniture:

Minerva is a sweet kitty!

We had two fun visits with Daniel, Erin, and Jack:

Jack is such a cutie!

And Daniel and Jack treated us to a piano duet:

It was hard to say goodbye to our girl, but she has fun adventures coming up--such as a trip to Okinawa. . .

Next time I'll post about our quick visit from Russ & Phyllis.

Bye!