When Generalities in General Are Getting You Down

 In a book I found in our church library recently called A Call to Joy,  the author related something helpful a professor had taught him.

He had said, "God convicts in specifics...and Satan condemns in generalities." 

 I could relate.

Immediately, I thought of some of the vague thoughts and feelings that often go through my mind, 

like, "Everything you do is wrong."

or, "You're just a big failure."

The devil and his cohorts know just how to pile on the blame.

Think about some of the most hurtful accusations you've received or heard about others.
Were they general, such as "You just think you're better than everyone else!"

Or were they specific, such as,
"This particular action or thing you said was very hurtful to me."

When God convicts us of something, He will let us know exactly and clearly what we are doing wrong and how to do right next time.

We can hang completely upside down with all sorts of general accusations from the devil's own sneaky self, from other people or from our own "inner critic."

But God's Word says, "His truth shall be your shield."

Sometimes we have to dig for the truth.
Sometimes the general condemnations come from people we trust.
They can totally blow us away.
Sometimes, we have to come to terms with those accusations we receive, and decide whether they hold water or not. Whether they are the truth or not.
God's truth will shield us from the generalities of the enemy.

And We Think We Have a Lot of Kids?

Last weekend we had the privilege of attending the golden wedding anniversary of a Christian

couple from Khazakstan who have twelve children.

 One of their daughters is now Carrie's violin teacher, and another daughter has been friends with our family ever since we met her family years ago when we attended their Russian church service.

Both daughters, with their husbands and children, had been to our hayride this year.

So they invited us to their special occasion Sunday afternoon-

a special service at their church involving their family celebrating the parents' 50th anniversary,

with a reception afterward.

 The service, like most Eastern European services, included many speakers and lots of music,

along with presentations of flowers to the honored couple.

 Here Vera, my friend (with the red microphone), is giving honor to her parents in the Russian language, 

while her sister, Carrie's violin teacher Natasha,

translates into English.

 Anytime possible, hymns, Scriptures, poems, or sermon points were put on the wall in both English and Russian.

 Several of the children were very musical, and played a beautiful rendition of "Nearer My God to Thee." They sang or played other hymns that had been favorites of the family.

I enjoyed the music so much.

 Accompanied beautifully on the piano by Carrie's violin teacher,  an elderly man sang "Great is Thy Faithfulness" while the words are on the wall in both languages.

 During the English sermon, Vera sat in the back translating into a mike so that several in the audience could listen in with earphones to a language they understood.

 We had expected a long service, and yes, it was over 2 hours long!

There was lovely food afterward!

 There's nothing like Eastern European style cooking!

My favorite of these salads was the cucumber salad directly in front, with young, small cucumbers thinly sliced, with various other things added in like green onion and lots of dill.

 Also there were dishes with beets in, such as the red beet salad above, to the left, 

with peas, cooked carrots and potatoes.

Below is another layered salad, something like a potato salad, only layered, and with beets in the top layer.

 One salad had pomegranate in it.

Below to the far left was a very delicious rice dish, then a couple dishes of sliced, roasted potatoes with parsley, and then chicken, etc. Sorry this photo is badly tilted, but otherwise I couldn't get a good perspective on several dishes at once.

 Some of the family and friends enjoyed playing music while everyone ate.

 Carrie snatched this photo of Vera's husband trying to get a picture of our big family!

 The cake was amazing. It was chock full of fruit such as raspberries, grape halves, blueberries and cream.

What I enjoyed most was getting to meet other folk. There was a family that I noticed sitting a little ways ahead of us in the church. Even from behind, I felt immediately impressed with them.

So at the reception, Jonathan and I tried to get acquainted. I had been observing them a little, and noticed their teenage boy being unusually mannerly at the table. 

Maybe you don't notice how other people eat their food, but there were only forks, and I didn't know how to get some of the leftover small pieces and sauce on my fork, so I hoped no one noticed

when I pushed some on with--horrors--my thumb. 

(And don't even ask me how my children were eating!)

But I noticed that boy carefully using his knife to get food on his fork. He never licked his thumb.

He sat up straight in service, and was present and polite and looked happy. 

The parents stood and sat erect and looked radiant and totally present.

They looked --how could I describe it?--like a family that lived joyfully and intentionally.

Talking with them even just a little confirmed them as intentional people.

***************** 

Good, mannerly, bright, happy young people

don't just happen.

 It takes work, intentional teaching and training, and parents practicing what they preach!

What a blessing to keep meeting new friends who are on purpose about living for God!

These last two photos include the girls' friend, Joanna, who stayed the weekend after our hayride.

What a sweet, beautiful young lady!

When You Cannot Forget

Sometimes things come back to haunt you,

playing and replaying in your mind--

such as your worst bad hair day

when your hair wasn't just bad but green..

 If you could just run away from the memories and leave them far behind.

 But sometimes you are left just trying to stay afloat

in a --well, anything but a boat,

and anything but oars to paddle with.

 How do you forget those painful memories that play and replay in your mind?

When you go to your knees, 

asking for an oar to help you paddle away from ditching at the shore,

will there be an answer from an all-knowing God?

And there upon your knees, on the first page that you open, you read, 

"Forget those things which are behind."

And you realize that forget is a verb.

Just like love is a verb, and love is a choice,

forget is a verb, and to forget is a choice.

You have to choose to turn your back on those haunting memories

and paddle away intentionally.

It's true that sometimes love just seems to happen, but very often, true, godly love is more of an intentional choice.

And while forgetting often happens, at other times it has to be an intentional choice.

God will always know every last bad or foolish or unnecessary thing you have done,

but when you turn to Him with your whole heart, He makes an intentional decision to forget it.

And while there will always be people who will be glad to help you remember 

the things you need to forget,

And while you can never make over those bad hair days that turned seaweed green,

or "fix" those situations that went completely out of control,

or those times that you sank beneath the waves

you can intentionally decide to leave these things behind.

Sometimes you really don't know how to define all the things that went wrong

in those seaweed green situations;

You just know that there was a lot of slime involved,

and you ended up with a lot of it dumped on you.

And sometimes the best thing you can do,
when you cannot define the green slime or what on earth or in the sea to do with it,

is to walk away and leave it all behind.

Because there is no nectar in green slime.

When We Take So Much For Granted

The next time you think all those leaves in your yard are a pain...

 try living out on the prairie for thirteen years

when most of those years are drought.

 You could always trade your leaves for dry brown grass, dirt-turned-to-concrete, tumbleweeds and your neighbor's trash blown in.

 Last week when we went to our home school meeting, I remembered

that there would be trees there, and leaves.

 And I couldn't help just snapping some photos of them every chance I got, even if they were mostly cottonwoods.

 So after some indoor educational activities, where the wee ones did a craft,

 we headed outdoors to play dodge ball and play at the pond.

And I--drank in beauty and couldn't get enough of it.

 When you can't have the reds and purples and oranges of Pennsylvania beauty,

you find that you can be content with yellow--

as long as its against the beautiful Colorado blue sky.

 And you go searching for little nooks where there is more sunlight filtering through leaves

and aspen trunks, and greenery.

 

 And while the children play, when the moms go indoors, I roam around the yard,

crunching the leaves underfoot,

looking and looking at bushes and trees that actually have leaves,

How did God know that a Pennsylvania girl was longing so much for 

trees and leaves that her heart hurt?  

                                          

Because life doesn't always hand you everything you want--

and that is when you remember that you can choose.

That when you can't have red or purple maples or orange and red oaks,

you can savor the beauty of 

a few golden aspen leaves

against a blue, blue sky.

As a Hummingbird to Its Nectar

The day after Jonathan came home from his hunting trip, he sent me a sweet email from his phone while in town, from where he had taken a few moments to try to collect his thoughts in Garden of the Gods, he said.

He was asking for a date with me!

My heart still skips a beat when I get an email like that!

I didn't feel up to a long trip to town to meet him,

but

 we decided to eat our supper out on the porch swing in order to enjoy the warm sunshine.

To our amazement, despite it being near the end of October, a tiny hummingbird moth showed up at our flowers in the flowerbed at our feet.

 It was the tiniest one I've ever seen. It flitted from flower to flower and we watched in quiet wonder, my sweetheart and I.

What a gift from God to enjoy while we ate meatballs and baked fries and green beans. 

 

 I still get so excited when my sweetheart comes home after several days away.

I know I am not the prettiest flower in the garden, and sometimes my petals droop,

but I love my hubby coming home to me!

And you don't have to go to a restaurant

or drive a long way

or pay a high price

to sit on your own porch swing in the long shadows of the evening

watching the sunset 

and the whirring wings of an amazing creature

enjoying the nectar that only God can provide.

Curtains Across the Sky

It's true I didn't hang my curtains on the line in any sort of artistic way.

 I don't usually do things just to have pictures taken--but to get the job done.

And you never do know quite how a picture is going to come out when your little boy takes the picture!

 But when the beautiful autumn day is too sunny to stay indoors,

 dressing up the blue Colorado sky with curtains is just the thing to do!

 I know God doesn't need any help dressing up the heavens. They are a wonder all their own.

He knows just how to heal broken bones down under the skin

without letting us see how it happens.

 And little girls dance into the doctor's office and giggle as the nurse saws off the cast.

 Pliers never looked so good.

 Nor scissors, as the white felt that had been chafing an arm for weeks was peeled off.

Sometimes God lets us understand why something happens,

and shows us what He wanted to teach us,

a good lesson learned.

 But sometimes He draws a curtain across His sky,

and hides the reason for His working.

And in those times-He teaches us another lesson--

to wait, often silently,

and to trust in Him alone.