Fall

I'm not one to enjoy the weather turning cooler.  I don't like cold very much, and as someone who is cold even in Texas summers, I can be pretty miserable.  But I am thankful for a house that is much tighter than it used to be, thanks to generous people who worked on it for us.  The wind is blowing mightly outside, but we are cozy and warm inside, doing school this morning.

A lot of things are changing around here.

I tell people Bill and I had three batches of children (Angel-Leah doesn't like that term, so I changed 'batches' to 'litters' for her, but she didn't think that was an improvement):  When we married, we were only going to have two children, and Rachael and Celeste were born.  We moved to Oklahoma, where we began to keep foster children, and after falling deeply in love with a little boy who didn't stay, I begged for more children. Gage was soon born, followed by three brother in eight years: Max, Spencer and Beau, and then pretty little Mary Susannah.  By then, I was in my 40's.  My heart was content.

Rachael and Celeste were 7 and 9, already in school, when we began to have children again.  They were my first batch, the boys and Mary Susannah were my second batch.

When Mary Susannah was around 8, and Bill and I were in our 50's, we began to adopt.  First came Luke, then Angel-Leah.  Soon after her adoption was final, we were asked to take her baby brother, Tommy, which we did.  That closed our home, because with Tommy coming, we were over the limit of children in our home that CPS would allow.  But then, three years after his adoption, we were asked to take Luke's sisters, Cynthia and Selah.  That was a very hard road with many obstacles, but eventually we were able to adopt them, too.

Life finds me now with all my biological children grown, married, courting, or far away in other states and even another country.  My adopted children all still live at home, and are fast growing up.  Sometimes, when I find myself in the rare situation of being alone for one reason or another, I realize that in eight years, my hands on parenting is going to be over.  By that time, I will have had minor children in my house for 50 years.  That's going to be a major change!   But God is good, and He gave me my hearts desire, lots of children to raise.  I am thankful for that!

My first batch, Rachael and Celeste, gave me nine grandchildren.  Those grandchildren are now grown or almost that way.  Chloe and Julia were married this past year, and Chloe has just given me my first great grandbaby, and he is just wonderful!

Daughter Mary Susannah is expecting her first baby, and I can hardly wait.  Max and his wife Whitney, who were fostering for a while, have decided to start a family, and I am anxiously waiting good news there.

So my second batch is adding babies to our family.   With 12 children, I am hoping for grandchildren in the 100's!

Son Spencer is dating now, and I couldn't be more pleased with his choice:

I haven't seen son Gage in three years, since Bill's funeral, because he is in South Korea.  But this summer he is coming to America!  He will be in Boston, Massachusetts, going to Harvard for the summer for a masters degree.  I am saving already to go see him there.  I have never been to Massachusetts, but mostly, I just want to see my son again.  I never dreamed three years could go by without my seeing one of my children.  I can't even say how much I have longed to see him again.

My third batch is growing, Cynthia will be 21 next month,  Angel-Leah and Luke have become teenagers.  They are all getting taller than I am, with only Tommy still shorter, but catching up fast.

Life is good, and cheerful.  And again, I am thankful.

I want to revive this blog, although I am told blogs aren't so popular anymore.  I have made ALL the mistakes in my life, but hopefully have grown through them, and am at the "older woman" stage the Bible talks about.  I would love for this blog to become a place where I can inspire women in their walk as a Godly woman, and teach them what I have learned.  Not that I am anywhere near perfect, far from it, but I do have a very few things I can teach.  I will be deleting old posts that aren't inspirational, and hopefully writing new ones, at least once a week, but life can get busy and we will see.
Input is very welcome!

Prayers

I am weary with my sighing, every night I make my bed swim...
...the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping.  The Lord has heard my supplication.  The Lord receives my prayers.
Psalm 7:7-9 


Life has been hard the past nine months since Bill died.  There have been many trials, and they are not over yet.  I admit sometimes I am scared, and I have fought a lot of depression.
Nights are the worse.  My mind runs and runs.  In order to turn it off enough too sleep, I take Valerian Root and Kava Kava, although I have heard that Kava Kava is hard on your liver.  Sometimes it works, usually it does, sometimes it doesn't...

Depression creeps up on me in the afternoons, when I start to get tired.  It can escalate by the night hours.

I know this is not God honoring, and I really do trust God.

Yesterday afternoon, I pondered how easy it would be to just give up.  I thought how much easier life might be.
'Might be' is the clue.  That's Satan talking, and I know it. Life would be a terrible thing to face if the Lord was not with me.  Things would not really be better if I gave up being a Christian.  But in a weakened state, it's easy for Satan to hit the target with his darts.

So I prayed a lot.  I told God there was no way I was going to give up.  But I really, really needed encouragement.  Could he show Himself to me?  I know it's not good to be asking that all the time, but once in a while, was it okay to ask, when we really needed it?

He had already been good to me a few hours earlier through his people.  My car had had a flat tire the day before, and a man from our church, who owns a tire shop, fixed it for me.  When I asked for the bill, he told me it was already paid.
That's humbling, friends, when you know you don't deserve the kindness people are showing, over and over.  My children deserve it, but I don't, especially when I spend too much time in the "slough of despond" (if you don't know what that means, go read  Pilgrim's Progress).

So I went to bed last night after taking my Valerian Root, and I "made my bed swim" and I prayed the hours away.

Then I got up this morning...

And I walked outside in the bright morning Texas sunshine...

And I knew God had heard my supplication, because I saw His glory everywhere I went...

First in the farm newborns:

And in the rooster that considers me a threat to his ladies, and tries to spur me everytime I walk near him, and thank you God that his spurs are not big yet, because I still haven't taught him who is boss even though I try to remember to pick up a stick whenever I see him:

In the goats that run to the fence to say good morning.  At least, that's what I tell myself they are doing.  Probably, they are trying to see if I have the feed bucket in my hand.
I really like this goat:

And in Samantha the goose, still my most faithful farm yard friend:

The Bible tells us that a man's life is threescore and ten.  I am 61.  Whose knows if I will live 9 more years, and reach threescore and ten, or if I will even reach the end of this day.  The women of my family do seem to have long lives, my fathers mother died just before her 95th birthday.  My own mother is 81 and very healthy, and her sister, my aunt Joy, just turned 88 and has hardly slowed down.
Even so, I thought if I do have a few more years, now is the time to try and do some of those things I always wanted to do.  I had better not put it off any longer.

I really want a fiber farm.  I want to learn to spin, and I want to raise animals that will give me wool.

I had the Angora Rabbits, but I wasn't doing much with them, so I bought a "husband" for them.  He is absolutely gorgeous, a rare white rabbit with blue eyes, and the beauty of this animal could only come from God.  It's hard for me to believe this gorgeous rabbit is considered "pet quality" rather than "show quality":

My spirits greatly lifted in my rabbit house this morning.  I had spent the last days cleaning it and moving air conditioners into it.  It's still a mess, but I am trying to do a little every day to get as much out of it as I can.

Yesterday, I picked up this beautiful rabbit that I am in love with, and also picked up some Jersey Woolies I got a deal on - buy the baby buck and get two older does for almost nothing.  I was pretty happy with the seven week old buck:

And one of the does, who the lady assures me is pregnant with at least three kits:

God shows himself and His glory in all His creation, including the human ones.

Like a little girl who rides her bike to a neighbors house, and comes home with a kitten (yeah, THANKS Tammy...if I remember right, the mother of that kitten was one of ours who ran to your house to escape the very child you gave her offspring to this morning...)
Then when I tried to take her picture, three photobombers had to get in on the action:

And in a young girl who made her first dress yesterday, and was so proud.  And to make it even better for her, her first handmade dress matched one her mama has:

So, although my nights are sometimes hard, I purpose to take more walks outside my own house in the mornings.  Because the goodness of God is everywhere, all we have to do is open our eyes.  It won't be long before we reach the "Celestial City." (There's Pilgrim's Progress again, I got it out recently to read to the kids during school this year.)

May we be strong and of good courage.  Heaven is near!

Call to me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.  Jeremiah 33:3

sleep

Psalm 127:2  He gives his beloved sleep

...but sometimes, he doesn't...

Does that mean I am not his beloved?

I don't think so.

The last several months, sleep is often hard to come by.  I try to read myself to sleep - I read until the pages are blurry and I can't see them anymore.  I take Valerian root before bed, and that often helps.

But sometimes it doesn't.

I have learned not to fret over not being able to sleep.  I am an older lady, and I know that age sometimes brings sleepless nights, and I have a heavy heart, which also brings sleepless nights.

The reason I have learned not to fret about it, is that those are the times when the Lord seems to be the closest to me.  I have learned that if I can't sleep, God has something he wants to talk to me about.

Last night was no exception.  I read until after 11:30, and I thought I could sleep.  But I didn't.  I saw midnight come and go, and 1 o'clock, then 2, then 2:30.

And I prayed.  And prayed.  And prayed until I could not pray anymore.  Then I simply listened.

Years of a lot of Bible reading usually come in handy during times like this, but last night, it was old hymns.
When I finally quit praying in the wee hours of morning, and was still, the first thing that came into my mind was the hymn, "Blessed Assurance."  The words melted right into my heart, and they comforted me:

"Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!  Oh what a foretaste of glory divine!  Heir of salvation, purchase of God.  Born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.  This is my story, this is my song.  Praising my Savior, all the day long!  This is my story, this is my song.  Praising my Savior, all the day long.  Perfect submission, perfect delight, visions of rapture now burst on my sight.  Angels descending, bring from above echoes of mercy, whispers of love.  This is my story, this is my song.  Praising my Savior all the day long.  This is my story, this is my song.  Praising my Savior, all the day long.  Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my Savior am happy and blest, watching and waiting, looking above, filled with His goodness, lost in His love.  This is my story, this is my song.  Praising my Savior, all the day long.  This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Savior all the day long."

The next song was just the chorus of Hark the Gentle Voice of Jesus Calleth:

"Ye that labor and are heavy laden, lean upon your dear Lord's breast.  Ye that labor and are heavy laden, come and I will give you rest."

And he did.  I finally slept.  A slight headache plagues me this morning, but it will go away in a bit and I have a big day planned with son Max.  I look forward to Saturdays when he comes.

So what have I learned?  Not to fight those nights when sleep doesn't come.  Talk to the Lord, even if it's an all night session.  You will be okay, I will be okay.  Those middle of the night times with God are precious, and sometimes we really need them.


Psalm 3:5  I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.

What is "real"?

John 3:16   For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only (his biological) Son, that whoever believes in him (and is adopted by him) shall not perish but have eternal life.

  Galatians 4:4-5  
But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman (biological), born under the law, ⁵ to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.^[b]

Ephesians 1:5  He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will...

Romans 8:14  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons...

(words in red added by me)

So, my children have a mother who loves to write.  I would write all day if I had the chance.  I write for this blog, I used to write for Associated Content, which is now Yahoo something or the other and an online site called HUB.  
A friend of mine who read some of my articles and was compiling a book on the harder side of adoption, asked if she could use a couple of my articles in her book.  I told her I was glad for anyone to use them in any helpful way they wanted too.  Foster and foster adoption is my heart, and I was happy to help.
The book was published, and I was thrilled.  I bought 12 copies right away to give to my children.  It's a lovely book, called "Tied With Heartstrings" and I cried as I read the struggles other adoptive moms have gone thorough.  Adoption is pretty tough, and foster adoption toughest of all, in my opinion.
Adoption is also beautiful, and, if you will read the verses above, it was God's idea before the world began.  Because ALL of us, if we are Christians, have been adopted by God.  God had ONE biological son, Jesus.  The rest of us were adopted and given full heirship as God's sons and daughters.  Aren't we thankful that God loves us, his adopted children, just as much as he loved his biological son, Jesus?

I write about fostering and adoption a lot, because I believe it's something every Christian family should consider.  No child should be left in the system to age out with no real family.  Every Christian should think about welcoming a child without a family into their home.  It doesn't have to be through the state.  Just pray.  Tell God you are willing to take a child, then stand back and see what happens.  That's what I did.  And over the years, I have cared for more than 60 foster children, and have adopted five.  Am I done?  I don't know.  Let's wait and see what God does.

So, on with my story.  And I am not angry, honestly, but it may sound a bit like I am...

Angel-Leah has always struggled a bit with things people say to her about her adoption.  It's not adults but children.  There have been many times in her life that children have said hard, ugly things to her.  I don't think the children mean to be as ugly as they sound.  I think they truly do not understand.  And that's the fault of the adults in their lives.  Some of the meanest things said to Angel-Leah have been from children whose parents know her story well, in fact, know her birth parents, and have not explained what adoption means and why adoption sometimes occurs.  It's not fair.  I understand the need to protect their own children from a life story, but I need to protect my daughter - and yes, she is MY daughter, too.

Last week our church had an ordination and there were a LOT of visitors.  It seems that several of these families were families that had read Tied With Heartstrings, and they either read it to their children or their children (several of them) were old enough to read it themselves.  And they must have been told that Angel-Leah was the same little girl who went to Osceola church.

Now, let me give you a sample of some of the things that were said to her.  Here we go:

"Don't you love your birth mother?  Then why did you go live with Carla?"
"You love your birthmother?  Don't you love Carla?  She didn't HAVE to adopt you, you know."
"You love Carla?  It wasn't your birthmothers fault you got adopted.  She didn't HAVE to give birth to you, you know.  You should be grateful she didn't abort you."
"You should be grateful to Carla.  She didn't have to keep you.  Maybe she didn't want you.  Maybe CPS made her keep you."
"Do you miss your daddy that died?  He wasn't even your real daddy, you know."
"So Tommy is your only real brother?"

Yes.  These were real things that children said to Angel-Leah last week.  And people, this is terrible.  And it is horribly hurtful to a little 11 year old girl.  The children who were talking to her were both older and younger.  She says there were about 5 or 6 of them in about two different groups who said these things to her in the same evening.

Here's the truth about Angel-Leah, and Selah, and Luke, and Tommy and Cynthia.

They have two mommies.  They have the real mommy that birthed them. And they have me, the mommy who changed their diapers (well, okay, I didn't change Cynthia  :) ), who wipes their tears, who cleans their faces and the floor when they are sick, who makes sure they take their baths and brush their teeth, who makes sure they eat something besides candy at least some of the time, who makes sure they wear their coats, who kisses them when their noses are runny, who taught them to read and to add and to say thank you and to pray and taught them about God...and I am a real mommy, too.

It's okay for them to love both their mommies.  I would not have it any other way.

I didn't HAVE to adopt any of them.  I WANTED too.  I was and am GRATEFUL for the gift of them.  I am GRATEFUL, and I am sure the other two real mommies are too, that they had them and didn't abort them.

The daddy that died was their real daddy, and they mourn him like any other child would.  Two of them never knew their birth daddies.  Bill was the only daddy they ever knew.

And yes, Tommy is Angel-Leah's real brother.  Angel-Leah also has two half brothers that are real brothers.  She has five adopted brothers who are real, too, and a real half biological sister and five real adopted sisters.  None of us are play dough.  All of us are real, and we are a real family who lives together just like anyone else's family does.

Angel-Leah isn't the only one who has had hard things said to her.  I have too.  Here is a sample:

"You should mentor her birthmother.  Then maybe someday, she will get better, and you can give her her child back.  What?  You wouldn't give her back?  Have you no mercy?"
"There is NO WAY you could ever love an adopted child as much as you love a biological child."
"I would NEVER adopt an older child.  You just don't have as good a chance that they will become Christians."
"Someday, that child is just going to run back to his/her birth family and break your heart." 

My answers to those statements?


No, I won't give them back.  A child is not a commodity to be passed around.

Yes, I can and do love all my children with the same fierce love that would have me lay down my life for them.

God does not have grandchildren.  Each one of us must choose to serve the Lord, or serve the world.  No matter how your children come to you, or at what age, they must make their OWN decision.

My children will not have to run away from me back to their birth families.  One set of siblings, we have a wonderful open adoption and see some of the birth family often.  One 18 year old adopted child has already made a bit of contact with her birth family through facebook and the phone.  The other two, when the time comes, I will stand beside them and help them do this difficult thing, if that's what they choose to do.

So, what am I hoping to accomplish with this blog?  Just this, I guess...

The story in the book stopped when Angel-Leah was four years old.  It was written about a time just before and after her adoption, while she was still struggling with who she belonged too.  She loves me and I love her.  We have worked through that difficult time, and we will likely work through other aspects of her adoption for the rest of her life, like now, when people have said ugly, hard things to her.  As of now, she is firmly established in our family, she is OURS, I am her MOTHER, and she is my DAUGHTER, and we love each other as fully as any other mother and daughter love each other.  We are both "real" to each other.  Bill was "real" as her daddy.  And Rachael, Celeste, Gage, Max, Spencer, Beau, Mary Susannah, Cynthia, Luke, Selah and Tommy are "real" brothers and sisters, along with her two birth brothers and her little birth sister.  How horrible to try and say otherwise.

Mommies and Daddies, if there is an adopted child in your church or homeschool group, or anywhere else, help your child understand what adoption is.  Help them understand that it was not the adopted child's choice to leave their family.  Help them know they just might love both their birth family and their adopted family, and that is OKAY!!!  Hear me, that's OKAY!  Explain to them that an adopted family is a REAL family in the same way we are a REAL child to God our father, because He adopted us.  It's hard enough for your daddy to die without someone asking if you even miss him, since he wasn't your "real" daddy.  It's crummy to have someone tell you that your brothers and sisters and your mother and father aren't "really" your family.

So this was hard to know how to write.  I hope I have conveyed to some of you what your children may be saying to an adopted child, because although I am writing mostly about last Sunday, which was by far the worst it has been, this has been happening to Angel-Leah all her life.  When you talk about adoption to your child who was not adopted, be sure and explain to them that adoption makes a real family, and it doesn't necessarily erase the love that a child who was adopted at an older age might have for their first family, and that's okay.  It's okay to love both.  And it wasn't the child's fault that he or she lost that first family.  They didn't get to choose where they wanted to live.

Help your children learn to be gentle with my children, please.  They have been through so much, already...

Here is the latest picture of me and my six children who still live at home.  I love all 12 of my "real" children so much!!


1 John 3:1   See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

Finding Our Way

Proverbs 29:15 “... a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.”

Just a  little over a year ago, I adopted a 16 year old girl.

Lots of people told me to my face I was crazy.  Lots of people thought I would be sorry.  Lots of people thought I would do damage to the children already in my home.

I was pretty wise in my own eyes - or at least, I put on a VERY brave front that I was.  I never felt a check in my soul that I was doing the wrong thing.  I prayed a lot.  And I had raised up 6 children through the teen years already, and had a daughter the very same age as this 16 year old girl.  And I had loved her back when she was 6 to 8 years old, living in my daughter Rachael's group foster home.  And she was the sister of my son, Luke, after all...
And she and Luke had a very cute half sister that was included in the package:

The picture above is the first time we saw Cynthia again after we were called and asked to consider adopting her and Selah (then named Selena).  Cynthia had completely forgotten she had a baby brother, she had not seen him since he was a year old.  Her red eyes in this picture are the aftermath of much sobbing when she brought forth a dim memory of that forgotten baby brother, and remembered him...

So here we are, a year later.  We've done a lot of learning about each other during that time.  And I admit, I really DON'T know much about beginning to parent a child AFTER they are 16 years old.  There's so much I've missed and so much I never got to teach her.  It took me a bit to truly realize this girl was not Mary Susannah and that I could not expect the same behavior from her.
Even if they were only two weeks apart, and we celebrated birthdays both together and separate!

I took 6 year old Selah out of school the very day of the adoption.  I wasn't sure what to do with Cynthia.  She wanted to finish out the year in public school, and since it was more than half over, I allowed it.  When school started up again in the fall, I still wasn't sure what to do.  She wanted to go back.  Because I didn't know what I would do with her all day, I let her, although I never felt good about it.  I felt like I was taking the easy way out, when I should have been parenting her better.
But then Cynthia began to tell me she wanted to stay home more and more.  She would ask to skip school and go do the things we were doing.  I always said no.  If she were going to go to public school, then she needed to go.  If she wanted to stay home, though, I would withdraw her.  Her refusals got less and less strong.
Then she began to have stomach aches.  Finally, one day after picking her up just one hour after school started, and the school nurse had called to tell me she was sick, I said to her, "Cynthia, just come home."
And she did.

But how was I supposed to keep this already 17 year old busy?  Mary Susannah was finished with school and had a job two days a week.  I hadn't schooled a high schooler in a while. I found all the books and gave them to her.  Since she insisted she wanted to go to college, I told her it was her responsibility to take those books and really learn.
So she took them into her bedroom, but I was pretty sure she was not "doing school".

The holidays were upon us, and that kept me busy.  Then just after Christmas, Angel-Leah got sick, and was sick for a whole month.  It was a terrible, scary time for me, and took all my energy, just trying to tend to her and do the minimum for everything else.  School suffered a lot that month.

Then we came out from under that cloud.  But during the time since I had withdrawn her from public school, Cynthia had gotten into the habit of NEVER coming out of her room except to eat meals.  Never.  And laying in the messy room, all day long, tended to make her grouchy sometimes.  I knew it wasn't good, and no matter how much easier it was to just let her do it, I knew I was "leaving her to herself", the very thing the Bible warns us not to do.

So one night, I spent some time just thinking.  How could I change this?  What could I do to make things better?

And I came up with a plan!

I got all the kids together and told them that from now on, no one was allowed to be in their rooms between the hours of 10 to 2.  I made out a schedule:  From 10 to 11 was school time (that had Cynthia working for one hour.  The younger kids did more school in the earlier morning, but from 10 to 11 everyday, I read to them: Bible, character building, history, science...etc)  From 11 to 12, we listened to the younger ones read and then cooked and cleaned.  Cynthia and Angel-Leah could make desserts if they wanted too.  They could make a big lunch if they wanted too. And we got some housework done.  From 12:30 to 1:30, the ones assigned to the dishes did that, and the rest of us worked on a cleaning project.  So far it's been the addition/laundry room.  We have just about filled the dumpster with the cleaning out we've done.  From 1:30 to 2, we work on the outside - right now our project is getting the yard clean, and making a sitting area on the side.  Soon we will plant flowers and tend those.

The first day of this, Cynthia started out a bit grumpy.  But then, she and Angel-Leah made cupcakes.  They were a total flop looks wise, but they tasted alright, so we scraped them up off the tops of the cupcake pans where they had overflowed and put peanut butter in the holes in the middle where they had sunk in and they mostly got eaten.  After lunch, we tackled that addition. We actually had fun working on it.  We talked and sang - okay after a while, the grown up of the house - ME - gets a bit tired of "this is the song that never ends", but I will grit my teeth for the better good of it all.  Then we went into the yard and we picked up and laughed and talked some more.
And I asked Cynthia:  Doesn't it feel better to get out of your room and actually do something?  We did a LOT today!  And she admitted yes, it felt a lot better.  In fact, she might play with the kids for a while after it's done.

I bought her a GED book, and that's what she began to study today.  She was interested in the practice tests.  She is very good at English, which didn't surprise me a bit.  I gave her a choice when school time was over: she could do housework or bath our little Yorkie, and she choose to bath the Yorkie:

Then we worked on the addition once more and cleaned the yard a while, and around 1:45 I told her if she would brush out the little dog now that she was dry, she could be finished and have the rest of the day to do what she wanted.
So she brushed the dog, and then she decided to groom our Pyrenees, Goliath.  And he was a MESS!  She enjoyed it, though, because she is the only one Goliath is affectionate towards.  She did a really good job cleaning him up.

She's a very good girl.  She's a very hard worker.  She is almost always cheerful, and I think she's going to do well in life.  I am so glad I didn't listen to the people who tried to discourage me.  I always have felt like if I stayed close to the Lord and prayed about things, I could trust my gut instinct in everything, because I think that's the way we hear the Lord.

I am blessed she's my daughter.  I'm blessed they are ALL my sons and daughters!  God has been good to me!

Bible Reading

Romans 10:17  Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.


I was around 40 years old when I truly called out to God to save me.  I had gone through a terrible time in my life, and I knew that if what I had just gone through was my "fruit", then I did not have things right.  The Bible tells us we reap what we sow.  I was not reaping good things, so I knew I had not been sowing good things.  A worldly lifestyle was bringing me worldly results.  I wanted to change that, and to do that, I had to begin to sow good things, so I could reap them.
I was not fooled into believing just crying out to God was going to start the good things rolling.  I had to make changes, and I was very willing at  this point.  I told God, "I am going to start reading the Bible, and I will do whatever I find that you tell me to do."  I began to devour my Bible.  I kept it with me all the time, and I read it anytime I had a chance to read it.  I read whole books of the Bible at a setting, and as I did, it opened up to me and I began to make the changes in my life that I found there in the Bible. 

It was not easy, but few things that are truly worthwhile are easy!

That was 20 years ago.  I have tried to sow good things over these years, although I am human, and I do slip but I repent and try to make things right, and I am reaping good things I have sown.  If you compared my life now to my life back then, it would look very different.

I have, however, had a lot of trouble finding a church I could settle in.  The really conservative churches sometimes have a lot of rules that are or at least look good, but are man made rather than Bible, meant to help the members keep on the narrow path.  Sometimes those rules are hard to work with, especially when they involve giving up things that are my mission in life.  I found church once that we visited a few times that I thought was going to be it, except we had one difference.  I thought maybe we could live with it until one of the men told my young daughter that her mother was not only wrong, but doing something the Bible said not to do.  Huh?

Sometime the desire to be a member of a church consumes me.  And that's where I have been lately.  I prayed for hours about it.  It was all I could think about.  It seemed like I could not "hear" what God wanted me to do and that kept me in a state of desperateness.  But then one day, I got a clear message:  I was concentrating on the wrong thing.  Yes, being a member of a good sound church is a great blessing and certainly something I believe God wants for us.  But I was fretting about that to the point of not thinking much about what was going on with the children still in my home, and myself, spiritually.
And mostly, that translated to me:  are we reading our Bibles?  A lot?

It was the new year, so I found several "get through the Bible in a year" schedules and I showed the older kids who could read well.  I explained to them that this was very important, and I wanted us to be accountable to each other for keeping up with our schedules.  They all agreed to do it, and picked the one they liked the best.  There was a chronological reading, a straight through the Bible reading, and one that had a little bit of each every day, plus a psalm and a proverb.
Luke wasn't quite ready for this, but he wanted to do Bible reading too.  He found a Bible that had "words to live by" and he began to read those, writing down the verses as he went.  Here is a picture of some of the papers he handed over to me:

I am very proud of him!!

Which brings me to some encouragement I want to give you today:

Many times, when I am talking to other Christian ladies, they tell me they don't even read whole chapters of the Bible.  "I just read a couple of verses,"  they will tell me.  "Then I meditate on those all day." 

That always makes me very sad.

The Bible is our love letter from God.  It is our instructions on how to live a Christian life.

Now suppose the man in your life wrote you a love letter?  Would you just read one or two lines of it a day, then put it up so you could just think about those one or two lines? Then the next day, would you pull it out of your drawer and read another couple of lines, and put it up, and continue that over the next year or so, so you could "fully savor what was in the letter"?  I don't think so.  Likely, you would open it quickly and read every word, maybe two or three times, and read it again many times of the next few days, trying to memorize everything it said.

Or suppose you finally got a long awaited smart phone?  Would you just read one or two lines of instructions a day, meditating on those parts, and leave the rest to read small bits at a time over the months to come?  Would you understand it better that way?
I doubt it.  Taking a small portion at a time makes it easy to take what you read out of context, so that you don't really understand what your instructions, be it Bible or smart  phones, are trying to tell you.  :)

We can read novels, magazines and newspapers for hours at a time.  Why can't we do that with our Bibles, the most important book we will ever read?

Try it.  Get a Bible reading schedule and try to get through the whole Bible this year.  I have one that will get me through the whole New Testament once a month.  I have done that one many times over the last 20 years.  Some years, I will read my Chronological Bible in the mornings, and then read the New Testament at night.  Because reading the Chronological is really a great way to read, but it means you don't get to the New Testament for months and months, and the NT is our instruction book on how Christians are to live today.

I would love to hear some of your Bible reading schedules.  How do you read your Bible each day?

Remember, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.  It only seems to reason that the more we read, the more our faith will increase!

Classy

Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.  (Philippians 1:27)


It happened to me twice this past week.  I go to the store only to be confronted not only with immodesty, but immodesty that's not even pretty...
The first lady, who was not young, but looked to be close to 30, was in line next to me at the pharmacy, wearing a pair of spandex leggings and a sweatshirt that did not cover her behind.  Gravity had not been good to her, and I thought how much prettier she would look if she would just cover up a little more.  She was not unattractive but the outfit she chose to wear really took away from her prettiness.

Then a few days later, I was out again, this time at Walmart.  As I walked down the busy isle, two ladies, young ones this time, turned in front of me.  It was bitterly cold outside, but these two girls had on a sweatshirt and spandex leggings with very small shorts over them.  Across the back of the shorts on both girls, in big letters, were the words, "pink".  They were not slim girls, and I thought, "Good grief, let's bring attention to our.... ummm...less than trim fannies...

I thought about this, and I realize that not everyone is a Christian and will conduct themselves in a manner that would make other people mistake them for one.  But it seems to me like it goes beyond this. 

Whatever happened to being classy?

I looked classy in the online "urban dictionary" and here is the meaning I found:

classy 1. prestigious 2. high quality 3. elegant or stylis

How have so many beautiful women lost this?  Why do they consider going to the pharmacy or Walmart or any other public place, dressed in immodest clothes that accents the most unbecoming part of them?
So many times I wonder, "Do they not have a mirror?  Do they not realize what those clothes make them look like?  Or is fashion so important, that we will wear what's popular without a thought of how unattractive it makes us look?"

I am not a rich lady.  And I have a large family.  I sometimes buy clothes at Goodwill.  I love ebay.  Antique Alley here in our little town is one of my favorite places to shop.  But I do try (and I know I don't always succeed) to dress my children and myself in clean, nice clothes that fit and cover our bodies.  I think one of the nicest compliments I ever got on our family was when a young man asked my teenage daughter if we were rich.  She was surprised and said, "No!  Why would you think that?"  And he answered, "Because you always look so well taken care of!"

I learned long ago as a mother of a large family, that if I went out with my children and their hair was combed and their clothes were nice, strangers would comment positively on us.  But on the occasions when we might not have looked put together - those were the times I usually got negative comments.  As I grew in my Christian walk, I began to also see how the more neatly modest I dressed, the more likely someone was to listen to me when we talked about God.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20   Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,  for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Now, let's look at that definition of classy again:

classy 1. prestigious 2. high quality 3. elegant or stylis

And let's look at what the Bible says about Christians:

2 Peter 2:8-10  But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

Now, that sounds like a classy person to me.  We are a chosen people.  Royal priests, a holy nation, God's very own possession. That makes us high quality people, right?  Doesn't that make us prestigious?  How does God's very own possession act and look?  Because if we look like what is just described in this passage, then a result of that is that we can show others the goodness of God!
How wonderful that is.

Now I know that not all classy, nicely and modestly dressed people who profess the name of the Lord are truly Godly.  Jesus addressed that himself when he told the Pharisees in Matthew 23:26-28  "“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean."
So we are deceived if we think what we do on the outside, always reflects what we are on the inside. But be assured that as we mature in our faith, what's on the outside WILL reflect what's on the inside.

This is a post where I feel like I have rambled.  And I know that if I write a post like this, the next time someone who reads this sees me is probably going to be one of those times when we go out in public and I have forgotten to comb Luke's hair, or Selah managed to get out without socks on, or Angel-Leah's fine hair is going to have fallen half out of her pony tail.  Tommy will have his shirt on backwards.  Or, as I did one Sunday morning, I will have dressed too quickly and put on one shoe each of two different pairs. 
Please have mercy!!  :o)
We do try.  We try because I feel like it's very important.

Be classy.  Look like one of those chosen people, God's very own possession.  Because nothing else is as important as letting your light shine so you can show others the goodness of God!!

Questionable music and our children

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.  Proverbs 23:7

A few days ago, a homeschooling friend of mine came over to my house.  Like me, she sort of has two families: older grown children, and a younger child - a daughter about the age of my Mary Susannah.  Somehow music was brought up, and we both agreed that we had changed so much in that area as we grew in the Lord.  Music we enjoyed as unsaved teenagers and young adults did not appeal to us anymore.  In fact, we were both grieved at the lyrics of music, both then and now.

In fact, one day a few years ago, I was at the grocery store with Mary Susannah, who may have been six or seven years old at the time.  As we bought groceries, Billy Joel's song "Piano Man" came over the loudspeaker.  In my old life, I had loved that song, and soon found myself quietly singing along as I bought groceries.  After a minute, Mary Susannah looked at me with her pure, innocent eyes, and asked, "Momma, what's that song about?"  I looked down at her in horror!  What was I supposed to tell her?  "Well honey, it's about a piano player in a bar singing to a bunch of drunks..."  I told her it was not a nice song, and I was sorry I sang it.  Then I prayed quietly in my mind, and asked God's forgiveness, too.

 When I was a young teenager, my father gave my sisters and I an allowance on Saturdays.  I would usually take that money straight to the store and buy a 45 record.  But my father forbid me to buy the Beach Boys song "Fun, Fun, Fun".  He told me "All that song is about is a young girl disobeying her father."  I rolled my eyes and thought he was silly.  But now, as an older mother, I think he was very, very wise.

I heard a man in church once ask if we really meant the words to the songs we sang.  He was talking about hymns: are we really as passionate about God as the words we sing would suggest?
I would ask that same question in another way: as we sing those impure songs about lust, drinking, young people disobeying their parents and other sins, are we enjoying them in our hearts?  Jesus tells us Matthew 5 that if we even look at a person and lust, we have already committed adultery  in our hearts.  He says it's better to gouge out our eyes than go to hell.  So what if we are singing about it?  Would that not be the same thing?

Proverbs 6:27 says "Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?

Can we listen to and sing along with impure music day after day, and not be changed by it?  

What about the young children who are listening to that music with us?  Can they listen to, and sing along with music that tells them to disobey their parents, to grow up wild, to let a young man hold them through the night, and still be pure and moral as they grow to adulthood?  Can we plant seeds like that in their impressionable hearts and minds and not expect to reap a harvest from it?

Matthew 18:6  " But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea."

I have such a burden for little children and their parents today.  I wish I could make them understand how important it is to keep their own minds, and the minds of their small charges clean and pure.  There are so many beautiful songs in this world.  There are the old hymns, and even the newer contemporary Christian music.  Why would we expose our little children to music that sings impurity to them?

Hebrews 12:14  

 Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

Shocked at Sin

“The greatest security against sin is to be shocked at its presence”  (Thomas Carlyle)


For many years, I lived an oxymoron called “the worldly Christian” life. I was raised by parents who took me to church Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night, and kept me well insulated against impurity. I married at the age of eighteen, a very innocent young woman still because they had guarded me well.

But around the age of twenty, my husband and I decided we were ready to start a family, and I quit my job outside the home and began a home day care center so that when our baby arrived, I would be able to stay home with her.

Keeping a houseful of children kept me pretty busy until naptime came. I had a couple of hours to kill, and I soon discovered soap operas. Before long I was watching three of them. Even more than thirty years ago, soap operas were pretty rank, but I loved them. I looked forward to them every day, and dwelt on the lives of those fictitious people.

I also began to take women’s magazines; my husband and I went to the movies and rented them to watch at home, not worrying about the ratings. I have always been an avid reader, and I was not careful what I bought or checked out of the library. After all, I was an adult, and I could handle it, right?

My thought life was filled with these impure things. I repeated what I had seen on TV and read in books. I told and laughed at crude jokes. I enjoyed hearing things that the Bible means when it says in Ephesians 5:12 “It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret.”

But still, I thought I was alright. I was still going to church every Sunday and Wednesday night. I taught in children’s Bible classes and Mother’s Day Out programs. I was very active, to the point that my children were sometimes left on their own while I did all these things with church.

So when, in my late twenties and on into my thirties, my life took a turn for the worse, I was surprised and dismayed. I had done everything right. Hadn’t I?

But if this was my fruit, then obviously I had not. I had to get things turned around. I told God I was going to start reading my Bible, and I would do whatever He wanted me to do, if He would just show me the way.

I know that God must just love it when we do that. The Bible opened up for me in ways I had never seen before. As I devoured God’s word, carrying my Bible along with me wherever I went, I was amazed at what I found there. Many times I would read something that suddenly seemed so clear, and think “Was this always in here?”

A peace began to settle over me as I worked to make things right.

I found in the Bible the overriding theme of holiness. To be a Christian, you must strive for purity. A holy God cannot live in garbage. If I wanted Christ to dwell in me, I needed to do my upmost to have a clean temple. Ephesians 5:3-9 says “Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God’s people. Obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes – these are not for you…you can be sure that no immoral, impure or greedy person will inherit the Kingdom of Christ…Don’t be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey him. Don’t participate in the things these people do. For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of the light! For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.”

Hebrews 12:14 says to “Make every effort to live at peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.”

That’s pretty serious. So what does holiness mean? According to the Strong’s concordance, it means the “state of purity.”

So holiness must be the opposite of impurity, right? I desperately wanted it, and I began to seek purity.

In this world, that is not an easy thing. But it can be done, as least as far as it lies within our own control. I began to throw out things in my house that were not pure, and that included my complete collection of Stephen King books, along with most of the other books in my house. I threw out the woman’s magazines. I quit watching TV, because even if the program I was watching wasn’t bad, the commercials were. I slowly let movies go. I quit listening to some of the music I liked. I quit going certain places where I knew I would see or hear impure things.

The Bible gives us a warning about “cleaning our house” in Luke 11:24-26 “When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.”

The transition period when I tried to find other things to take the place of the impure things; in other words, different books to read, different music to listen too, different things to occupy my time, was hard. Many times, it was tempting to give up. But I had a vision of a clean, pure holy mind, and I kept trying. Eventually I did find new things to read, new music to listen too, new things to do. It was very exciting as my life changed.

Then one day, about two years later, I went to someone’s house, and they had the TV on. I wasn’t paying attention really, but suddenly I heard a crude word. My head jerked up and my face burned. And suddenly, I was filled with happiness. I had what I called my “shockability” back. Before, I wouldn’t have noticed that crude word; because it was one I heard or read all the time. But now, it was no longer something that was much in my life, and hearing it made me feel bad. I knew a great battle had been won. I was now shocked in the presence of sin.

A Christian life, holy and pure is a beautiful thing.

Ephesians 4:23-24 “Let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God – truly righteous and holy.

I Love My House

I love my house.  I mean, I really, really love my house.  Everything I want is here.  Everything I need is here.  I have a bit of recluse in me, and I might never leave if I didn't just have to, or need to sometimes.
I watched this house being built in the days before we moved to Grandview.  We were getting to know the people at the Mennonite church, and as we drove I-35 to visit different families, I would see the men of the church building this house.  It would soon be the home of Wesley and Maria Weaver, a young newly married couple.  They lived in a travel trailer in the front yard, and Maria actually had her first baby in that trailer.  I always thought they were such a blessed couple to be building such a cute house when they had barely gotten married.  I never dreamed I would soon own it.
I even ate Sunday lunches here a few times while it still belonged to Wesley and Maria.   Then, less than a year after our family moved to Grandview, the church formed an outreach, and several families moved to California to start a new church.  Wesley and Maria were one of the families who would be moving, and the house was soon for sale.  By the time they left, the house was ours.

We have lived here for eight years now.  That's longer than I have ever lived in a house in my whole 37 years of married life.  Everything feels settled here, and I can't imagine ever moving again.

But my kids, the older ones anyway, are always after me to move.  They want a nice, fancy house with a small well kept yard.
Well, that would never happen with this family, I'm afraid.  We might move into a nice fancy house with a well kept yard, but once we had lived there a month or two, it wouldn't be that way anymore.  They might as well admit it...

So, it's a battle..."Move mom!"
"No way, kids!"

When they look at our house, this is what they see:

Okay, I admit it's a bit overgrown, but I LOVE vines.  I plant them everywhere, and if I'm really lucky, they might actually grow.  If not, I replant again the next spring.

And here is something else they see:

Toys all over the drive way, and a messy flower bed.

When I walk outside and have to step over the toys, and I see the weedy flower bed I don't have time to tend, this is what it represents to me:

I'm not put out to pasture yet.  I'm still needed.  I still have work to do.  And it's just what I've always wanted.

At least one of the things I've always wanted.  Being a mom was the first thing, the second thing I always wanted was a farm.  And now I have twelve acres and a house I love, plus big and little children still under my wings, and on top of that, I have the animals.

I fixed up this rabbit cage all by myself, and I have cuts all over my hands to prove it, including one bad one that is right in the exact spot that my crochet hook lays in.  But I'm healthy, and it will heal.

I even have a few goats, which no one in my whole house can fathom the reason for.  They are the bane of my husbands life, because I'm not strong enough to build the cages for them, and he is.  But they get out and climb up the stairs to his office, and potty while they are at it.  But every farm HAS to have goats, doesn't it?  And I only have three.  And okay, I just told Rose tonight I would buy hers, but I think I'll just sneak it out into the pasture and not tell anyone...

And of course, I have my chickens.  There are two things I hope to never be without in my lifetime, and that's small children and chickens:

I have two things at my house that are really nice things - I think - and I got them totally free.  The first one is the big purple castle sitting right smack in the middle of my front yard.  My children says it's the biggest eyesore on the face of the earth.  Gage says it looks like Bowsers castle from the old Mario Brothers video games.  We got it free from CASA a few years back.  A lady won it in a CASA raffle, and donated it back to a foster family.  We got picked:

And this beautiful piano I got from Freecycle, which, once the moving part was over, my children actually think might be the one thing I have here worth keeping:

So these are the things I love about my house.  These things are why I am very content to just stay home and never leave.  There's not much that will drag me away from home often...

...Except when my dad gets sick and gets put into the hospital and then a rehab.  When that happens, I will drive the hour drive into Bedford several times a week to see him.  He has given us quite a scare, but he seemed better today:

We just need to get him strong enough to walk again.  Then maybe everything will be alright.

So, this last two weeks, I've been out of my house a lot.  And my children and even I have taken advantage of that a little.  I've taken Angel-Leah out to a nice restraurant, just me and her.  She says that has never happened before, and she might be right.  We went to pick up son Max up from spending the night with my dad one afternoon, and after visiting with dad for a while, we went shopping at Penny's.  Since Max wasn't interested in shopping, he took the little kids to Arby's while we were there.  So for probably the first time in the past five years, I got to shop a bit ALL BY MYSELF - well, Mary Susannah and Beau were with me, but they were off in their own departments.  I gathered up lots of tops and skirts, having so much fun, and finally went into a dressing room - where I discovered even if I get to shop alone, I'm still just an old lady with lots of gray hair that really shows up under those lights...but I still found some things to buy!

Today, we visited dad, then went to Central Market, where I bought the kids gelato, which is a fancy ice cream, and bought myself bath salts, fancy hair conditioner, and lemon curd.

Then I came home.  Fed the kids the chili Gage made for us over the weekend.  Got a call from Anna asking me to watch her son Caleb, and I said yes, and he came over for a few hours.  Took a wonderful bath in my new bath salts.  Got a visit from friend Rose at nearly ten o'clock, who is scared to go home, I think, and she is spending the night in the guest house, which just happened to be empty, since Max is off at fire fight school.

Did I say how much I love my house?  Life is never boring here!!

spiritual battles

Earlier this week, I went to the Dollar Store for some last minute Christmas things. There is a young man who works there that I always enjoy checking me out. He's friendly, talkative, and polite, three very good qualities.
This trip, however, as he was checking me, I noticed he had a really bad black eye. It was swollen and several different colors, and he had a large band aid in the corner of his eyebrow. It was bad enough that I thought he had been in a car wreck, or maybe mugged or any number of things, and I asked him "What happened to your poor eye?"
He smiled sheepishly at me, and lifted the corner of the band aid. "I had my eyebrow pierced," he said. He had two large silver balls, one on the top of his eyebrow, and one underneath. "Oh, good grief" I cried with a half smile on my face. "I don't feel sorry for you anymore! Didn't that hurt?" "Not really," he said. "The needle didn't hurt at all. It did hurt when he put the clamp in." I just shivered. I couldn't imagine putting myself through that voluntarily. We talked as he finished ringing up my things, and as I left, I said I hoped his eye got better soon. He said he did too, because he planned on having the other eyebrow done next week. I just shook my head at him, and left.
Since the Dollar Store didn't have everything I needed, I stopped at our small towns local grocery store. I bought one item, and got in line to check out. As I waited, I glanced around at the other people. There, standing next to me in line was another young man, but this one seemed a bit different from the one at the Dollar Store. His face was covered with piercings: three just under his bottom lip, more in his eyebrows and in his ears, but these piercings were mean looking spikes. In addition to the piercings, he just looked unapproachable. His shoulders slumped, his face was unhappy looking. He looked as if he expected someone to look at him in a negative way.
I checked out and went to my car. I put my bag in and then got into the front seat, put on my seat belt and got out my keys. As I put the key in the ignition, I looked up and saw the young man with the spiked piercings standing on the sidewalk, waiting for me to back out so he could get into his car. As my car started, our eyes met and I smiled at the young man, but he did not smile back. His eyes looked empty, not mean, not mad, just empty. He didn't even seem to really be seeing me, even though we were certainly looking at each other. In that same instant, a song by Steven Curtis Chapman came on in my CD player, and I heard the words a godly father had written about his daughter: "You are a masterpiece that all creation silently applauds, and you're covered with the fingerprints of God."
The thought immediately sprang into my mind, as I took in again his spiked piercings, sad, unhappy countenance and slouched shoulders, "It's not the fingerprints of God he's covered with."
I lowered my eyes and backed out my car. I felt heavy all the way home. I felt as if for a split second, a veil had been lifted and I could see the spiritual battle taking place for our souls. I felt sad for the young man, whatever it is in his life that made him look like he did that day. I want to remember to pray for him, and even, if God wants, maybe see him again someday when I can talk to him. This is an awfully small town. It wouldn't be impossible.

Ephesians 6:12 "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

Long Hairstyles on Little Girls

About fifteen years ago, I became convicted to obey the Bible verses in 1 Corinthians 11: 1-16, which tell a woman to have long hair (my way of obeying this was not to cut my hair anymore at all), and to cover it when she prays or prophesies. It was a hard thing to come to terms with, as it certainly makes me stand out most places I go. But after a while, I came to terms with it, and even became very comfortable looking this way.
Soon after I came to this conviction, I gave birth to a little girl, and around eight years later, another little girl came into our lives through adoption. I let their hair grow, too. My biological daughter has never had her hair cut except for the time she did it herself when she was about three, and she cut the ends of her ponytails off when I neglected to put the scissors away. My adopted daughter came to me at the age of two and a half with short hair and bangs, but her hair has not been cut since she has lived with me.
Both girls have long, lovely, waist length hair, the older girl’s hair is thick, curly and brown, and the younger girl’s hair is silky, fine and blond.
With them both, I’ve had to find ways of containing their hair to keep it neat and tangle free.
Since we don’t braid our hair because of the verses instructing us not to in 1 Timothy 2:9 and also 1 Peter 3:3, I had to find other ways of putting their hair up. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time everyday. I just wanted something quick and trouble free that would last all day.
One quick way I learned was to part their hair down the middle and pull one side out of the way. Then I sectioned off the other side just above the ear and put in a ponytail holder. I took this portion of hair and added it to another section parted just under the ear, and put in another ponytail holder. Then I gathered the rest of the hair on that side and put in yet another ponytail holder, then repeated the process on the other side. This held almost like a braid would, and if you do it just right, it almost looks like a French braid in the way the sections appear.
Another way to do this same hairstyle that looks really nice and stays even better, is to make a ‘knot’ each time you put in a ponytail holder. The way to do this is: once you get the ponytail holder in, loosen it. Then, take your thumb and first finger and stick them in the middle of the hair, going from the underside, just above the ponytail holder. Grab the hair contained in the ponytail holder with your thumb and first finger, which are sticking up through the hair, and pull it through to the underside. Tighten it, and the ponytail holder should be hidden under the hair you just pulled through. Do this each time you make a ponytail. For a tutorial in this, there is a wonderful site on doing little girls hair at:

http://girlydohairstyles.blogspot.com/

Another style that looks really nice for church or any other formal occasion is to twist it. Once again, part the hair down the middle, and pull one side out of the way. Take the other half, and comb it like you are going to make a ponytail in the very front of the child’s head, at the hairline near the forehead. Instead of putting a ponytail holder in, however, begin to twist the hair in the direction of the part. As you twist, let the hair naturally turn toward the back of the head. This takes a little practice to make it smooth. Once you get all the way to the back with the twist, fasten it down with a clippie while you twist the other side in the same way. When the second side reaches the spot you stopped at with the first side, unfasten the first twist and use a ponytail holder to fasten both twists together. Then stick your thumb and first finger from the bottom side of the ponytail holder up to the top, grab the hair from the ponytail in the same way you did in the first style and pull it down through the part you made. This time, however, keep rolling the hair around the ponytail holder in the same manner through the part, until there is no more hair left. Now the hair looks like a roll from one side of the head to the other. Place bobby pins in the hair to make it secure and spray it well with hair spray. This is a very beautiful, elegant style for a little girl.

We like to make buns, too. A simple way to make a pretty bun is to pull the hair back in a ponytail, twist it a little, then wrap the hair around and around the ponytail holder until all the hair is wrapped. Then take the tiny little clasps you can buy at the discount store, and clasp the bun to the hair with them evenly all around the bun. This holds amazingly well even for an active little girl, and it’s very pretty. Once again, spray it well with hairspray to keep the wispy hairs in place.

These are just a few examples of the ways I have arranged my daughter’s hair that keeps it out of their face and tangle free. Neat, clean hair is always attractive and a better testimony than messy hair if you are keeping your hair long as a religious conviction. Soon your daughter will cover her hair, too, and that simplifies things even more.

Experiment and find what works for you and you little girl.

Purity in our speech

When we first become Christians, sometimes it’s easy to believe that since grace saves us, all that is required is that we believe. It’s easy for Satan to take that thought, and twist it into making us think we can live and act however we want, as long as we believe. That all the principals laid out in the New Testament, which is the covenant we are under since Christ died for our sins and rose again, are not something we need to worry about, because, after all, we are saved by grace. And yet, that grace also makes us a new creature. The things of this world should have no more hold over us. I heard a song once, and although I’ve forgotten most of the words, one line has stuck with me. The song was about a girl who had become a Christian, and she was no longer hanging out and doing the things she used to do. Her friends were trying to talk her into forgetting her faith, so she could do what she wanted. The line I have always remembered went “I can do what I want, it’s just my wants have been changed!” Like the old hymn says, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face. And the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”

1 Peter chapter 2 tells us we are strangers and aliens in this land now. That we are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and God’s own possession. We are told in this chapter to live carefully and properly among our unbelieving neighbors. We are told to get rid of all evil behavior and be done with all “deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy and all unkind speech.” Chapter 1 of 1 Peter tells us to “be holy, because I am holy.” Hebrews 12:14 says “work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord.”

One way we can work towards holiness is to control our tongue. James 3:2 tells us that “if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way.” I think that is an amazing statement. Imagine, if we could finally learn to control the things we say, we could control ourselves in EVERY way!!
Ephesians 4:29 says “Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.” Colossians 3 says that now that we have been raised to new life with Christ, we should “get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language.” Later in this same chapter, we are told that “Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves; you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each others fault, and forgive anyone who offends you.” Remember, this says make allowance for other people’s faults. It doesn’t say make sure other people are making allowances for YOURS! Control your tongue, and forgive other people if they don’t control theirs.
Remember always, we are God’s witnesses here on earth. Our speech will bring glory to God, or dishonor to God. A foul, hateful, unkind person will never convince anyone that being a Christian is anything to be desired. Indeed, a person like that cannot have the Holy Spirit living within him, because the Holy Spirit is pure. Everywhere we go, in everything we do, let our speech and actions show the love of Christ. There will never be a person who crosses our path who is not worthy of showing that love too. In fact, showing love in our speech and actions to the most unworthy of people is a true test of faith, and will win people to the Lord quicker than many other things we can do, because it’s times like that that will show the difference in us, and the hope we have within us. May we pass that test, because the fruits of the spirit are within us! (Galatians 5:22-23)

Proverbs has much to say about our speech:

Proverbs 4:24
Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.

Proverbs 12:13
An evil man is trapped by his sinful talk, but a righteous man escapes trouble.

Proverbs 14:3A fool's talk brings a rod to his back, but the lips of the wise protect them.

Proverbs 20:19A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid a man who talks too much.

Test yourself always. Make sure your words are always edifying. Do you know something about someone else that isn’t good? You don’t have to pass it. Do you suspect someone else is not doing right? Confront the person; don’t pass on your suspicions to people who have no business knowing. We are told in the Bible that to the pure, all things are pure, but to the corrupt, nothing is pure. Train your mind to always think the best FIRST. A passage of scripture to help you do this is Philippians 4:8 “Fix your thoughts on what is true, honorable, and right, and pure and lovely, and worthy of praise.”

Finally, remember these words from Matthew 12:35-37: “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. And I tell you this; you must give an account on judgment day for every idle word you speak. The words you say will either acquit you, or condemn you.”