Then I Thought of Home

I'm having so much fun hearing from so many of you. I love hearing what your favorite part of the book is. Waitin on a Farmer and So You Want to Date A Farmer, seem to be ringing  a lot of bells. But by far the most common thing people are saying to me is, "Remove Yourself From Yourself" I love that because it's my favorite line too. You have no idea how often I do that. My life has became so much easier since I remove myself so often. I don't mean I stick my head in the sand, or that I don't deal with things, I mean I have learned to be slower to act and to try to see things differently. One way it's helped is..... I don't get as mad at Mark. Now days I almost always, not always, but almost always,  stop and try to remove myself from myself, I pretend I'm not me... but that I'm watching what's going on as if I were someone else.... and you know what I've found out? Mark isn't always wrong. Sometimes when I rem...

Sometimes when we read the Bible we feel distant from it. It seems like it's for someone else, like it doesn't really apply to us personally. Tonight I was reminded of 2 Chronicles 7:14. You might not recognize  that reference, but you will when I tell you what it says, "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and heal their land." We hear this verse all the time. It's all over facebook. It's the Word of God and it's truth. The thing is though before this particular truth can be realized in the land it has to realized individually. We will never be a land of humble people turning from the wickedness of our ways until we are individuals turning from our wicked ways. We won't be a forgiven nation of God's people until we become forgiven individuals. 2 Chronicles is a pretty sounding ve...

When it comes to homemaking or being a wife or being a mother we're always looking for answers. We buy books, read blogs, talk to friends, watch tv shows all in an attempt to find encouragement and strength for the job. There's nothing wrong with that, over the last four weeks we've been in a study about the Proverbs 31 Women and as only God could do he has delivered all of the help we need in 31 short verses. The chapter starts out with King Lemuel, believed to be King Solomon, telling us what his mother told him about being a King, the kind of man she said he would need to be, then it continues in verse 10 with her instruction about the kind of wife he should chose. Verse 10 says, "A wife of noble character who can find?" She is a rare thing. What does it take to be a wife of noble character, do you have it in you? I think you do....listen to what God says it takes. He said we should live in such a way that our husbands have full confidence in us...

Insecurity. We all have it. Even a show of confidence is often a cover up for insecurity. It started back in the Garden of Eden. Eve was perfect, she was exactly, on point everything God had intended for her to be. Then Satan moved in. Have you ever thought about what he said to her? In Genesis 3:5 he said,  "For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." He compared her to someone and she came up lacking. There was someone that had something she didn't have. There was someone who was more than her. She wanted what they had. So she became dissatisfied with who she was and she reached out and took the fruit in an attempt to be like someone else. You know the rest of the story. Her life would never be the same, the world would never be the same. The insecurity curse is still as alive and active today, as it was then and we still fall into its clutches, as easily as Eve did. I...

You know  the saying,"If I would have known having grandkids was this much fun I would have had them first"? Well I think we need a saying sort of like that to apply to marriage, I don't know maybe something like, "If I had known peace was this good I would have been quiet years ago." You all might be a lot nicer, humbler, kinder people than Mark and I because we've  had to learn how to be quiet, and I'm just now really getting it. Tuesday night at Bible study we were talking about marriage and I shared how that very day, Mark and I had been working together. I had sweat running down my face and burning my eyes, it wasn't fun. Then Mark said, "Make sure you get all the feed out of the trays because it will draw mice if you don't." He has been telling me that same thing for twenty years, you would think he would stop saying it, but he doesn't. Years ago it flew all over me when he said that, not so much that he said it...

I can't believe it! On September 22, I will have been blogging for four years. How can that be? I remember when I first got on facebook. I struggled along trying to figure it out and made my kids a nervous wreck, they never knew what mom might accidentally do, or flat out  say on purpose. I didn't really know what you were supposed to post so I just started posting whatever was going on at our place. I just told you about it like you were one of us, I didn't know what else to do. Then people started telling me they liked it. They started telling me to start a blog, I thought...what they are really saying is, "Will you get off of facebook and go blog somewhere! " So one evening Lucas and Tim sat down and set up my blog and as they say, the rest is history. And history it is because things have changed. Nothing is the same. When I started blogging I had something to tell almost every minute of everyday. The house was full of kids, ours and ...

I've never been one to have a big celebration about things. I mean if it was a birthday, we would have a cake and buy some ice cream, but we didn't do parties. Graduations were gone to, but we never had the huge open houses that many had. I don't really know why, I guess that's sort of how I was raised and the way Mark was raised. Oh we had a big Christmas and Thanksgiving, but that's about as big as it got. I've been a slow learner when it comes to celebrating life events. I've learned a lot from my sister-in-law, Debbie. I've learned a lot from watching and hearing about all the ways and all the things she celebrates. She is a wonderful example of a woman who loves her family and loves letting them know it. I never thought of a birthday party as  a celebration of someone's  life and your love for them. But she did. I've learned that not everyone can put on a big celebration, but we can all celebrate, and we can go as big...

Most of us know the saying about the wedding ring being a circle because it represents a love with no end. It just keeps going and going. My engagement ring was a princess cut, it was a size six. Needless to say, it's not that size anymore. Mark hid my ring in a can of Pringles, as he knew that's where I would most likely find it and he was right. I was so excited, just like you were when you got yours. You know how you go in the bathroom and look in the mirror and act like you are fixing your hair or moving your hand a certain way just so you can see how it sparkles or how you sort of lay your fingers out straight on the steering wheel just so the sun will catch it? I don't have my first wedding rings any longer. My hands sometimes swell and the night before the house burned I had taken them off and put them in the kitchen cabinet, right up in the corner where I always put them when I had to take them off. When the house burned, the kitchen fell into the c...

I've been so excited about some of the things we've been learning in our ladies Bible study so I thought I would share them with you. First of all we learned about the word, Ezar. Ezar is a Greek word and it's translated helper. The word is only used 21 times in the Bible and two of those times are referring to women and the other 19 are referring to God himself. Remember when God said it wasn't good for man to be alone,  and so then  God made a woman, a helper, he made an ezar for man. It's so exciting to know that as women we were and are created with an attribute of God. Just as God is our helper, we are helpers to our husbands and our children and all kinds of people. As women, we are caregivers, we are nurtures, we are helpers, we almost can't stop ourselves because it's in our DNA. It's who we are. We're marked by God. I heard Devi Titus use the example of a designer purse to explain it. She asked the question, "What...