Let Me Tell You One Thing

The Gardener has definitely been snipping a lot on your vine! That evidently means your fruit will be fresh, large, and abundant!   You have been worthy of nurturing and tending even though your trials have been many! The Gardener of my vine, however, has had to take a chainsaw to my vine and take out whole sections of my unyielding vine because I am hard of hearing what He says!   I think I am on probation as to whether or not the Vine Committee (there are three of them) are planning to let me stay in the vineyard because I am such an eyesore. It is really embarrassing because all the other vines get snipped and I get snapped! My last season fruit was despicable! My fruit was so puny I tried to hide it behind the leaves on my branches. I didn’t want anyone to see that my fruit was in such a sad state. I am really trying because the alternative is devastating. I hear the Head Gardner comes in with His entourage and speaks a curse on the vines that do not produce. I hav

In Sunday's Parade magazine, February 17, 2013, an article caught my eye.  My training and education has been in family studies and for many years I have been a practicing family therapist having the opportunity to meet with and allow safe, therapeutic environments for families to develop.   Naturally, the article appealed to me.  I would like to share the highlights and perhaps it will inspire you to get Bruce Feiler's book and put some of his research into play in your family unit. He gave  ninteen questions to his readers to help them have better family relationships.  I am not listing the results in its' entirety but a summary of each question for the brevity of this blog. 1. When a team of pscychologists measured children's resilence, they found that the kids who knew the most about their family history were best able to handle stress.  This answer surprised me somewhat because in our culture I believe we have forgotten the importance of generational histo

This morning, I found an old Floyd Cramer CD that I have had for years. I had not heard the CD in years but remembered how well Clyde and I loved his music when we dating and married back in the 60's.   I was busy packing Christmas angels for storage and the melodious sounds of his masterful piano began to spill into our living room.  I am not one to cry very often but I felt this music beginning to squeeze out the tears and it progressively became a sob. It triggered memories of our young love and how young love is fresh and exciting with so many plans for the future.  I began to think as I sat down on the sofa, sobbing alone, hoping he would hear me from another room, how our love has so much more depth and meaning now after 51 years of marriage, four children, and ten grandchildren later.  It didn't help any that today is my birthday and I realize in three more years I will enter yet another decade of my life and how swiftly the years are flying and how precious each d

A Contemplation Of Asaph. 1 Give ear, O my people, to my law; Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. 2 I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, (ref) Matt. 13:34, 35 3 Which we have heard and known, And our fathers have told us. Jesus spoke in comparisons or obscure sayings and emphasized passing the knowledge to the children, generation after generation. Telling our children and teaching our children must be renewed and revived in families. It is not enough that we educate them intellectually, we must pass the teachings of Christ to them from our family setting as well. This is an example to us that was set here in this Psalm. The teachings of the Passover and the experience of the Passover was passed down from generation to generation. Where are our examples of an orderly home given to the importance and the practice of making the knowledge of Jesus Christ as much a part of family routine

Sheets have never been a particular topic that I cared to discuss with anyone. I mean, sheets are sheets. One sleeps on them, launders them, puts them on a mattress; they are just sheets, nothing more. I have begun to realize that even our sheets can become a complex matter if you are actually trying to shop for them. I can remember a time when a sheet was sheet was a sheet. You could buy them in colors, or you could buy them white. I even remember a time when the fitted ones all came in twin, double, queen, or king sizes. Sheets were not a major matter to contemplate. It occurred to me as time went on, that the market place was filling up with sheets that only tried to confuse me. I knew the size of my mattress, it was a queen sized one. But then gradually shopping for new sheets became a thing of wonder. I usually ended up going home and sleeping on the same old sheets even when I bought a new mattress because I was no longer sheet savvy. Did I buy 200 thread cou

The devastating point that we have to face if we are in a low place is that we activated the events to get us to the low place. The decisions that we have made in our past orchestrate where we are today. If we are in a good place, it is a result of decisions we either made yesterday or decisions we made as young adults. The same thing took place if we are in a low place. It seems that once we get on the treadmill of mistakes the same scenery keeps passing by us and it finally dawns on us that we have been in this same place many times before.  The absolutely most embarrassing thing about that is each time we execute the same behavior that has given us the same results forever, the same things that brought us back to the same square one, is the same decisions we keep making. If we keep doing what we are doing, we keep getting what we are getting. We just don't get it. Eventually, the treadmill representing our life becomes a thing of dread and we simply feel it is not within our po

Devotions in Psalms Paula Day Johns Psalm 1 1/6/2011 10:29:21 AM Getting up at 5:00 am to pray is not an easy thing. I’m not saying it is difficult to get up, I am saying that it is difficult to get up and pray. I often find myself jumping out of bed when a thought hits me that this needs to be done or that needs to be finished. I go into the kitchen and put the dishes that have been rinsed in the sink into the dishwasher, or I go to the computer and read emails and answer them, or I simply go to the mailbox get the daily paper and read. I relish that. I suppose because when I wake up and my mind begins to focus on the things that need to be done, I know that I can’t sleep anyway and that I may as well get it done. But getting up to pray is another issue entirely. Usually when I wake, I tune my antenna into the spiritual side and see if there is anything coming in on the channel. I will lie in the bed and reflect and discuss with my self and God silently the things that se

I read the article that cnn.com posted on its' health link today which spurred some of my homegrown rhetoric. Don't count it out, my homegrown rhetoric I mean. If an infant could have the luxury of being exclusively fed by the mother for six months,it would bond the mother and child and improve trust issues in the childhood years and adulthood years. This is from what I have been able to research as a family therapist. I personally breastfed all four of my children. In retrospect, if I had extended that breastfeeding period to the full six months, I am sure I would have had even more results from breastfeeding. The child that I breastfed the least, ( I was a sixteen year old mother) had more illness as an infant than the other three. The child that I weaned from the breast to the cup at nine months old is more self confident than any one of my children. Breastfeeding was not popular in the 60's and 70's, but I have never been one to do the popular thing. My mother encou