Then I Thought of Home

Olivia was talking about getting her name changed now that she is married. You know what,  there is a lot to that, and I don't just mean a lot of red tape I mean there is a lot of meaning and honor to it. This isn't a post about the right or the wrong of changing your name when you are  married it's just my take on it. A name is a  huge thing. I mean look at all the time and thought people put into picking a name for their child. Last names mean a lot too. We all know the thoughts we have when we hear someone's last name. An image, good or bad comes to our mind. We wonder if they are related to the Gray's that we know,  and so we say, who are your parents or we say are you related, to Mark or Kelly or whoever? Whenever Mark does a wedding ceremony he always  mentions the fact that the groom is giving his bride his name. He says it's one of the greatest things he can offer her. Isn't that so true? Your name is one of the most valuable ...

Cooperation is a good thing. We all need to know how to cooperate. Parents and teachers are told not to work on teaching children to obey, but rather they should teach them to cooperate. Bosses are told not to expect employees to do what they are told but work on getting them to cooperate on the job. There is truth to some of that. It can make things go easier. The problem is as,  people we have that terrible habit of throwing the baby out with the bath water. We will hear a thought like that and run with it,  forgetting all the truth that has to be added in with it. Obedience is becoming a days gone by word. It seems like a small thing.... but everyone needs to learn to obey,  sometimes it isn't about rather we want to cooperate or not. You see, sometimes getting someone to cooperate leads to compromise Now compromise is another good word, we need it but not at the cost of forgetting obedience.. Obedience can be used in a wrong way,   but I'm...

What do we do when we just can't understand? When things  make no sense and there is no way it can be alright what do we do? Many of us are asking that and it's not the first time we've asked it. We've had times like this before, times when something so bad happens that we question all we know. or thought we knew. We can look at the facts. The facts are God created the earth and all that's in it. He made man and he wanted things to be perfect for him so he put him in paradise. God loved the people he made, and he wanted them to love him in return, not a robot, they had no choice type of love, but a real because they wanted to kind of love. So while he did put them in a perfect world, a world with no disease, no dying, no tragic death or prolonged illness, no abandoned children or abused wives or left husbands, the potential for all those things existed. As you can imagine this paradise was filled with trees of every kind. God told Adam he was fre...

I get asked questions about how to help children learn to sit still at church, weddings, funerals, meetings or maybe even a doctors office. Well, as you know I don't have all the answers, I never went to school and learned child psychology or anything like that but I did listen to what a lot of older women said and I did do a lot of what my mom did. So with that in mind I'll share a few of my thoughts and maybe a couple of them will help you out. First of all we all know that what goes on at home goes on everywhere else. If your children are out of control at home, don't expect anything different when you go out. But our goal today is just a few ideas to help them sit for a little bit when they need to. Start by making sure you have some quiet time at home each day, and that happens best when you can have a quiet spirit yourself, our kids feed on what we give out. What I mean by quiet time is no tv, no computer or cell phone. don't have anything but you, ...