When Pigs Get Out and Skunks Spray

 I recently read that

"Having the perfect day with no problems is an idolatry we build to our own happiness."

So when the pigs get out first thing in the morning,

and a skunk sprays the poodle while out for a walk,

and you have to drive carefully on snowy roads past a downed semi after a spring blizzard,

 and a fishing pole falls off the top of a cabinet and the fishhook on the line gets stuck in your husband's finger,

 and he's nearly passing out worrying about getting it out and wondering if he should go to the ER,
(and then you find out the barbs are outside the skin which is a huge relief because the hook slips right out after a lot of stressing out)

 it's good to consider what Christy Fitzwater writes on her blog:

"One thing I’ve learned about disappointment is that it comes when I have worshiped an idol. “Idols always disappoint,” says Timothy Keller. Having the perfect day with no problems is an idolatry we build to our own happiness. Hopelessness is only one broken lawnmower away."

"From a military book," Christy continues, "I learned the word “mitigate', which means to make something less severe, serious, or painful. How do we mitigate the effects of broken-down vehicles and unexpected expenses? By putting our hope in something more sturdy.
In Psalm 130:5 we hear this song:

I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.

Obviously my whole being doesn’t wait for the Lord. Some of it waits for a trouble-free day. So mitigating the hard day means making sure my whole being is placing its hope only in the LORD and in his word.
I’m borrowing a song from the hymnal today:

My hope is built on nothing less

than Jesus blood and righteousness;

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;

all other ground is sinking sand,

all other ground is sinking sand.

This hymn writer tells us that hope is built (which means more to me after just finishing a season of Fixer Upper.) Hope is not a feeling we wait for. It’s something we take charge of and construct. It’s a place where we choose to lean and a place where we choose to stand.
Where is your hope today?
at http://www.christyfitzwater.com/hope/minimizing-hopelessness-hard-days/

Old Mill Museum in Little Sweden of the US--Where Heritage Is Celebrated

On the way home from Missouri, I was doing a lot of thinking. 

One thing I was thinking about was my heritage as a daughter of the Morley family.

And in the middle of a day of much thinking, 

about 3:30 in the afternoon, we were needing a break in the long miles and noticed a sign for a town nicknamed "Little Sweden" of the U.S.

Just four miles out of our way, we found this Old Mill Museum that featured a 4-story roller mill that still grinds grain one week out of the year, and only cost $2 apiece to visit.

It was a great place to stop and take a walk.

How do you like the way we look?

Especially Rose who appears to be choking behind that high neck.

I always love rooms furnished with antiques, the way people used to live.

There were stuffed animals such as buffalo and prairie chickens, and information about the Swedish immigrants who came to the midwest, turning the midwest into a place to grow especially wheat.

Below is the entrance to more of the museum called Heritage Square.

It was the perfect illustration for what I had already been thinking about--our heritage.

Inside one corner of the museum was this sign, "Keeping Traditions."

As you can see, the picture (amazingly not yet taken down in this hometown setting) shows a man praying.

Many of the Swedes were religious people.

Beside that picture was this quote: "Their farms flourished; their families grew. They created new communities and learned the ways of their new country.

At the same time though, they kept important traditions alive.

In church, school and community, through worship, language, music and food traditions,

they remained connected to their heritage."

I loved that. 

"They remained connected to their heritage."

Not everything in everyone's heritage is worth keeping

or staying connected to.

Some people, such as children of drug addicts and alcoholics, have little in their heritage worth keeping or staying connected to.

What they really need is a totally new beginning.

Sometimes, even when there are good things in our background or heritage,

there are also negative things that we must toss out.

There are new beginnings that many of us need to make in some areas from time to time.

But let us take care not to throw the wheat out with the chaff,

and the baby with the bath water.

After leaving the museum, I took a turn driving for a while, and then while Jonathan drove, I pulled out my journal and began writing down a list

of the things in my heritage that I want to preserve and pass on to the next generation.

I wrote and wrote and wrote.

I filled most of both sides of my journal page with good and wonderful things in my heritage.

Things that I want to keep and pass on to my children.

Like flour for baking that has been cleaned, ground, sifted and bagged,

these are the things that I have sorted through and determined to keep and preserve and cherish.

Then I went to another page and began to write down a list of things I want to throw out of my heritage. 

I wrote down three things. I thought of a couple more later and couldn't get around to writing them down, so that list remains at three things. 

Three things that I wish I could sweep under the carpet but I can't.

Pretty major things, things I must never live in denial about, things that need to be 

swept into a dustpan and thrown out.

What touched and blessed me was that in those moments of traveling after visiting with my parents,

I could write down one blessing and principle and goal after another

that were so positive and upbuilding and effective.

I did not have to look very far or think very long before I came up with pages of 

heritage to keep.

Perhaps I will write in the next post about the things I want to keep,

because that is what I want to focus on.

That heritage of positive things can go clear back to my grandparents, too, especially my maternal grandfather who had a fabulous sense of humor, and my maternal grandmother whose favorite flower was the iris.

And the example of my paternal grandmother who always had a home cooked meal for her family,

usually meat and potatoes and cabbage. My mom has never forgotten the smell of cabbage when she'd come in the door of the big, 3-story house to go to her apartment on the second floor during that time of her life where she rented this apartment in my dad's mother's home and met her future husband that way.

My old Grandma Morley in her seventies or early eighties cooked a meal every week for our family until she just couldn't anymore. It was probably my favorite meal of the week. It was usually scalloped potatoes, chicken casserole, cucumber salad and bread and butter and jam. (There was not usually enough to feel really full on but it was always sooo good.)

I pause in the middle of a day where I am overwhelmed with no end of responsibilites,
 to write and try to clear my mind, but I must get back to my duties, so 

until later.

Missouri

On our way to Missouri, we were able to attend the graduation of our girls' friend Krystal Hunt, neice of our former pastor Derald Hunt, and daughter of Gary Hunt.
I knew the Hunts long before Krystal was born, when they pastored down in Texas, where I spent a few weeks before going to Honduras to teach the Warden children. 

It was great to be part of this lovely home school graduation in the pretty little chapel that was packed that Friday evening.

Afterward, our girls joined theirs in the back of the pickup taking Krystal and her sister Julie to the reception.

We stayed overnight (the girls were up very late together!) and then drove all day to Missouri, where we spent Saturday night with our dear friends the Goodwins.

Sis. Goodwin has been a tremendous pen pal to our girls, writing the most amusing and informative letters, and always loving our girls' letters back. 

Here is their place on Sunday morning as we were leaving to go to church with them.

Sis. Goodwin has been one person that I have been so delighted to be a friend to my girls--

encouraging them to do what is right,

to keep up with their music lessons, 

to keep writing,

and to be faithful to memorize Scripture.

She has invested a lot in our girls, like a third grandmother, and not the least of her investments are her fun letters and her amazing ability to laugh and be such a tremendously fun person (along with her husband!)

They are both (especially he) in almost constant pain with fibromyalgia, yet they are constantly cheerful and loving when we talk to them. 

On the way to church they took us by the piece of property they are hoping to build on someday. 

Hannah loved picking daisies there, and I enjoyed the dogwood tree,

the blackberry bushes, and just all the green grass and trees.

This is the church they attend. We were surprised to see Ken and Vicki Thompson, and to find out this is where they attend, too, when they aren't out having services.

They were to be preaching at Northwest Indian Bible School shortly.

Jonathan and I loved this wall behind the drinking fountain at their church. 

The pastor is a Rev. King, and their daughter is a fellow student at Penn View with Crystal.

Jonathan loved this Sunday School superintendent's suit jacket. The younger class quoted their Bible memory verse for the morning.

All the moms got a potted flower.

Here is Sis. Goodwin with the girls.

On the way from there to my relatives, I loved all the blooming rose bushes and other flowers.

Walking the half mile from Joella's place Monday morning to my mom's we found a turtle.

Joella's Jonathan was so excited about it.

I loved Mom and Dad's pond with all the lily pads. They have 2 acres.

Next door to them is the shed building business where Craig has been working. 

Craig stops in the middle of the morning to admire little Jonathan's turtle and to introduce us to his boss.

Joella showed me around their place where they had a bigger garden and then also this small garden where they had planted onions, lettuce, etc. I loved all the iris.

They've had to do a lot of work cleaning up all sorts of trash around the property, but they have improved it a great deal. Craig and Joella's family always improves everywhere they live!

Below, Craig and the boys are working in the big garden.

It was so nice to see an actual garden that wasn't just a little raised bed surrounded by fencing and covered with hail screens like we have to have here.

But downsides of Missouri are that you have to watch out like crazy for poison ivy and ticks!

Jonathan pulled two ticks off me, and others got ticks on them, too, after walking outside.

I was so afraid Hannah would get poison ivy after running through an old vine of it, but thankfully she did not. Poison ivy seemed to be almost everywhere.

My Unselfish Mother and Her Orange Hat

My Mom has an orange hat that sort of embarrasses us and entrances us all at the same time.

The whole batch of us relatives were teasing about it Sunday as we walked together around a nearby lake--no, we don't think it is against God's laws to take a walk in His creation on Sunday instead of lolling on couches, putting on more pounds at dinner, criticizing the church people, staring at screens or surfing through Facebook while not minding the children and letting them get into all sorts of scraps. 

So anyway, here is Craig who decided to take a turn wearing Grandma's orange hat.

And there is Grandma right in the middle of the action, behind Carrie and Kezia's Elizabeth.

The mom and grandma who wears this orange hat. 

But that orange hat sort of epitomizes who my mom is all about--her very own self.

Mom doesn't go to Sears or Penneys or Dillards to choose what hat she would like, and then spend $50 for it. She finds this wonderful orange hat at probably a yard sale, discovers that it fits her just perfectly and only costs--who knows, probably 50 cents, and she is content with it. 

It doesn't matter what people think of her or her hat. She wears it cheerfully, serenely, unselfishly and intentionally.

Because for my mom, life is not about what she chooses for herself all the time.

Maybe some people live in the luxury of having all sorts of choices, but some of us, like Mom,

don't always have many choices about our circumstances.

And so she does have this choice to make--to throw away what she is given, 

or to wear it well, despite what other people say.

Even if it is orange.

To wear the orange hat we are given cheerfully, serenely, unselfishly, and intentionally.

And that is just how my mom lives.

Cheerfully, serenely, unselfishly and intentionally.

There she is up there on the bridge with a young mother, a friend that she treats as closely as a daughter, because Mom has a heart big enough to include many besides family. 

And below, there she is eating Sunday snack with her children and grandchildren,

having kept up with the whole hour walk.

Mom's life has been anything but desserts and apple pie, though she enjoys a small piece occasionally.

Joella and her girls had made delightful rhubarb strawberry pies and berry cobbler.

Mom's life has been spent serving others, her husband and her children, and then a multitude of others with whom she keeps in contact by sending at least birthday cards every year.
It was just like my mom to be found at her desk when I arrived Monday morning after walking the half mile with Jonathan. 
Her desk had been placed near and in front of lovely windows so she could look out and see the outdoors.

The window sill was covered with plants, which she and Dad proudly showed me.
When I asked about the beautiful calendar, she told me it was from Disabled Veterans.
She has never mentioned it before, but she said they send a small donation every month
because these are people who have lost so much and came home so broken.
And in those moments I saw another corner of my mom and dad's hearts--
the care for broken people, because we are all broken in some ways,
but some worse than others.
And I thought about my own dad and how he served four years in the Air Force, and came home with nerves shot from the grueling months as air traffic controller in an airport tower
where thousands of lives depended on him never making a mistake.

My mom and dad have always taught us children to respect the disabled and broken and handicapped people.
We were to never, ever even think about making fun of such people.
We were to never ever make fun of old people, or weak people.
Ever.

While I pulled old photos from a worn out collage frame and transferred them to a new frame,
Mom read story books to Hannah and little Laura, including Little Black Sambo  and a story about how Golden Delicious apples came into being.
Mom loves to pass on to her grandchildren the love of good books.
Mom has always had a thirst for knowledge and is always interested in history and nature. I found these purple petaled blooms that had fallen off the tree along their hedge row, and she had researched to find out  that it was a Paulownia tree, an Asiatic tree with lavendar blooms.

I got another glimpse into my mom's heart when she mentioned as I went about the house, that she felt bad for the trouble we had to go to
in order to go visit them for such a short time.
It was such a long trip to just be there a day and a half.


Like we shouldn't have gone to the trouble to go see an old mother who has only seen my family and me a few times in the last 15 years.
Like we shouldn't have gone to any trouble to care about someone who is lonely and loves to see her children and grandchildren.

But that is my mom--incredibly unselfish, having let go of us when we got married
instead of becoming more possessive and jealous of our time with our spouse and in-laws.

 As I finished work on that collage of photos, and came back from seeing what Jonathan was doing on the ceiling fan, Mom confessed that she had just wished that morning that she could live 50 more years to see all the grandchildren and what would come in the future.

But then, she said, "I had to ask the Lord to forgive me."
I'm sure the Lord had a hard time forgiving her for this unpardonable sin. :)
I didn't say anything--I knew what she meant.
She meant that she didn't want to spend her life pining for what she could not have,
and not being grateful for what she had already been given.

Jonathan and I hung on the wall more frames that were lying on the closet shelf waiting to be hung.
It touched me that the pictures they had saved were cross-stitched ones I had made or one I had bought for their 50th wedding anniversary--probably for fifty cents,
just like my mom!
My unselfish mom with the orange hat,
cheerful,
meek,
intentional,
and humble.

It has been said, why not give flowers to people while they are alive

instead of waiting till they die to speak good of them?

So here are my little flowers, like the irises Hannah picked,

"One for you," she said, "one for Grandma, and one for whoever else--"

and that whoever else includes all the mothers in our lives!

It was a Mother's Day I hope to always remember.