Happy Birthday Beenie!!

She turned 12 today, so we are headed out in a bit to have her ears pierced. This is one of the milestones the girls always look forward to. She is so excited.

Happy Birthday Honey!

Gratituesday: Bible Teaching

Laura, from Heavenly Homakers hosts Gratituesday. I've participated in it a time or two, and I wanted to again today.

What I'm grateful for today is good, solid Bible teaching.

I've gone to church most of my adult life. We've gone to many different types of churches. Presbyterian, Non-denominational, Non-denominational with a leaning toward charismatic, Baptist, Independent Baptist (yes, there is a difference), Methodist, Charity (this was a Charity style church, but not officially connected with the Charity churches), and Bible churches.
These churches have had a variety of different set ups. Most had some sort of Sunday School class activities before regular church service. All but two had an additional weekday service, usually touted as a bible study, more often resembling a Sunday morning service with less singing. Some had Sunday morning and evening services in addition to the mid-week service. And some had a constant stream of activities: services (minimum of 3 a week), camp meetings, revivals, jubilees, homecomings, ladie's meetings, men's meeting, youth meetings, etc., etc., etc.

Hands down, I feel that I've learned more about the Bible in our current church than all of the others combined. I'm not saying I didn't learn about the Bible during all of those years when I was attending other churches, but most of that learning was done through my own research because of unanswered questions I would have after preaching services, or because I was curious about a particular topic, but wasn't satisfied with the (seemingly pat) answers I was getting. That is all well and good, and exactly what you should do. We should all study the bible on our own and not leave our training exclusively in the hands of our preachers, but it is invaluable to have dedicated elders who are intent on training their congregation. We are supposed to be taught so that we can mature in the knowledge of scripture. Unfortunately, I have heard preachers insist that the congregation look to him for understanding, instead of equipping them to understand it on their own.

Our current church has two preaching/teaching elders who usually lead our services. They use expository teaching, in the truest sense. They've systematically taught through entire books of the Bible, or sometimes through a particular topic, often debating both sides of an argument. They also open the floor after the teaching for questions or comments about the service, allowing input from everyone. If they don't have a ready answer for a question, they encourage answers from the congregation. If they, or no one else has a ready answer, they will research it later and get back to you. I have learned so much, and had so many questions answered.

So, it is wonderful Bible teaching that I am grateful for today.


Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

Time to think about the garden.

It's that time again. I need to plan out what I want to plant this spring and order my seeds. I probably should have already done it, but I'm sure it will all work out.
We plan on increasing the garden plot this year. As you may know, we only planted around the deck and a bit against one side of the back of the house last year. The deck is in the middle of the back of the house and we planted around the right side (if facing the back). This year we plan on putting a couple of beds off the left side of the deck. We won't be planting veggies right against this side of the house, partly because the outside units for the heat pumps sit there, but also because the section of free ground that is there stays in the shade almost all day. I would like to plant a few hosta in that shady part. Because of the layout; the house is on one side of the proposed garden plot, and the deck on the adjacent side, there's not much incidental foot traffic, and less of a chance of kids accidently stepping in the beds. On the down side, that is the one area in the whole yard where water sits for awhile if we've had a lot of rain. It's never had standing water for more than a day, but it's still something to keep in mind. Since we do raised beds it shouldn't (please, please, please) give us too much of a problem. If it does we'll just convert it back to lawn and move the garden beds somewhere else next year.
With the increase in gardening area, I may plant beans this year. I'd also like to plant pumpkins, but they take a lot of space, so I don't know for sure if they'll make it in this time. I also plan on moving some of my herbs to the front flower beds. I think the pineapple sage would look great up front. Some of the greek/globe basil would also look nice and the oregano would probably fair better in front than it did in the back. I would like to move my rosemary to the south side of the house, but we don't have beds of any kind over there right now, so I'll have to see if we'll have enough resources to put one in there as well. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew, especially since hubby suggested planting a few fruit trees this coming spring, and he wants to remove the rose of sharon bushes that are in the front beds and replace them with something that holds it's shape well once it's prunned. The rose of sharon is not a neat shrub so it falls all over the sidewalk even when it has been prunned.
There's a lot of work that will need to be done, but so many good things to look forward to.
Are ya'll looking forward to gardening this spring?
I can hardly wait!

Accepting responsibility, and an attitude of thankfulness.

Having my Grandmother living with us has taught me a lot. A lot about my Grandmother. A lot about accepting responsibility for our situation in life. A lot about having a good attitude, and yes, a lot about thankfulness.
It is very hard sometimes to really see our part in our own lives. Let's face it, as much as we may want to whine about how awful certain situations are, we are directly responsible for a huge portion of our own lives. Take for instance an abusive and/or alcoholic spouse. Well, you married them - it can't get any plainer than that. We don't really have forced marriages in this day and age, at least not in this country, so we are the only ones we can REALLY hold responsible for who we married.  "But", you say, "I didn't know he drank/was abusive before we got married." Generally speaking, there are at least a few little clues about a person's true personality that show through, usually more than a few. We just tend to try to excuse them away when we don't want to accept them.
Okay, what about situations like having a parent die. Certainly the child cannot be held responsible for that. True. I'll give you that one, but we've all heard the saying that our lives are 10% what happens to us and 90% what we make of it. I know that as children it's much harder to see things clearly or adapt well, and some children do not have good examples from which to learn, but all these things can be overcome if the adult starts to accept his/her responsibility for their own lives. We can't possibly go back and change how things have happened in our lives, but we can pick up the pieces and try to make something redeemable from them.
Constantly bemoaning what has happened in our past; not wanting to accept that, at least as adults, we have had a share in most of the situations that have shaped our lives, will leave us angry and bitter.
Part of growing up is learning to accept responsibility for all of our decisions and actions. It's hard to be objective about ourselves. It's painful to admit that the reason your child is whiney and difficult is because you're not effectively training him/her, or because he sees an example of whining in you. As adults our whining usually takes the shape of complaining, but it's really the same thing. Sure, we all need to get things off our chest from time to time, but how often do you do that and in what way? A very wise women told me once, years ago, that she had tried to develop a habit of taking stock of her own attitude/behavior when she started to notice behavior problems in her children. She began to see a pattern of them acting out more when she was going through problems with her own attitude. Maybe she was resentful of a decision her husband made, or maybe she didn't want to accept something God was trying to teach her. Her rebellion sparked rebellion in her children. She didn't ignore the behavior issues in her children, she corrected them, but often it was after she admitted to them that she was setting a bad example and started correcting her own behavior. That kind of personal honesty and responsibility is hard and I've got to admit I fail miserably at it sometimes, but I do try to keep it in mind.

The other big part of all this is learning to have an attitude of thankfulness. It's hard to be thankful in some situations, but we can try to develope a habit of looking at the situation through a different pair of glasses. Yes, getting sick and having to be in the bed when you've a lot to do can be tough. Having to deal with a broken limb, or even the loss of a limb is difficult. The loss of a job, or losing your house to flood or fire is awful, but when you get right down to it, you can always think up how your situation could have been (in many cases, much) worse and try be thankful that you are not in that type of situation. Sometimes our difficulty in dealing with a situation lies in assumptions we made. My grandmother is having a hard time dealing with having to live with someone else. Her biggest problem with this is that she thought she would always be able to take care of herself. That was a pretty resonable expectation when she was younger, but to think that you will always be able to take complete care of yourself, no matter how old you get, is not at all resonable. And there are all kinds of situations that may necessitate someone requiring help at a much younger age. We are given no guarantees in this life. And no, having faith in God will not prevent things from happening to you, though it can help you deal with them.

I am not ignorant of how terrible life can be. There are plenty of situations where someone's life has been completely ripped apart by circumstances totally beyond their control. This probably happens more often with children because they cannot have control over the circumstances of their lives, but there are exceptions to everything. For the vast majority of us though, our lives have not been all that horrible. Even if we have had some terrible incidents in our lives, it is nothing compared to what some people have had to deal with.

I may have rambled a bit in this post, but the bottom line is this: One of my biggest prayers that has come out of this experience is that I want to watch my attitude as I grow older. That I do not want to waste my life focusing on how things didn't go as I wanted or expected, and making everyone around me, as well as myself miserable because of that. I'm not complaining about my grandmother, I just truly want to be a good example to my children and grandchildren as I grow older. Showing them, through example as much as words, how to be thankful in all things. I also want to be pleasant to be around. Lets face it, as parents, sometimes our children do not want to be around us.:D It would be nice if, once we are no longer "the heavy", they actually enjoyed our company.

As we grow older we should do all that we can, whenever we can, but we should also be able to accept, with dignity, any help that may be needed. Let us grow old gracefully, fully accepting the fact that our lives were, for the most part, under our own control, and that we are responsible for the outcome. Let us always, always remember that we are an example to others and that we want our children, granchildren and great-grandchildren to enjoy our company. This has become one of my prayers.

Winter Jammin'

Nope - not exactly the rock out session you may have thought when you saw the title.
Simply put, we ran out of strawberry jam, so I spent part of the day making some from my stash of frozen strawberries. I also decided to try out a recipe for spiced blueberry jam since I still have frozen blueberries. My jam session today nearly depleted my supply of strawberries, but there's still plenty of blueberries for muffins.

I've never thought about keeping a pantry list describing what I canned for the year, but I saw it as a suggestion recently on the blog site Food in Jars. Upon reading the comments I discovered quite a few people who also ran out, or are very low on strawberry jam. I guess there'll be a whole lot more strawberries finding their way into jelly jars this spring. At any rate, the pantry list sounds like a great idea. I'll have to keep track next year so I can better approximate what I'll need to can each year. I already know a couple of things that I won't bother with this year - my hubby didn't like the Italian Style diced tomatoes, and the Salvation Jam was just okay; certainly not worth the trouble since there are so many other jams and jellies we like much better. On the other hand, there are quite a few new things I'd like to try to can this comming season - ketcup and barbeque sauce are at the top of the list.

The other thing I managed to learn today was how much grain is too much to put in my grain mill. Thank goodness I run it in the garage. Then again, if it had been in the kitchen I would probably have caught my mistake a little sooner. :D