June Journal notes

June 2012 has been a really different experience for me and I have really enjoyed my daily journal writings, but my Blog site has been neglected.  So I thought that today I would take a few moments to mention the Journal highlights for those who may be interested.  Since this site originated because of my diabetes experiences, I should note that June has not been totally friendly to my blood glucose counts!  I have had many readings of 94, and that is excellent.  There have also been many readings between 105 and 130, which are acceptable.  It is the other counts that have caused my recent "repentance" and promises to be good.  I seem to be more human than previously thought and thus subject to earthly temptations, such as ice cream on a hot day!  Well, we will get this under control and July will be a stellar month (surely!)

Well, back to June.  We have no internet connection at Lisa and Rudy's, and no provision for t.v. reception. I am thinking that this is probably all good for me, but we will see...
     June 3rd: Found my first or second (or whatever) lesson for today in John 18 - Jesus says to "put away (my) sword of bitterness" over the District's actions and leadership and "(fully) drink of the cup the Father has given me." This speaks to me and blesses me.  I am learning and growing so much already from this experience (this turning point), and since God answered my prayer and sang my song back to me.  About church today:  the music is sadly lacking.  Not live, only several recorded hymns hard to sing and unrelated to the message.  The people are friendly (only 30 there).  The liturgy is Methodist so we knew it all.  The next couple weeks services will not be usual times or regular order of things.  Of the 30, 6 were visitors.  No one wore a dress but me.  Pastor's wife was not evident - he does both Edgemont and Pringle so maybe she only attends one. This church is yoked with a UCC church in Edgemont, which gives me pause!
     June 4th: Matthew 25:21 notes that because of faithfulness, we will enter into the joy of the Lord.  So joy is the result of faithfulness and is given by God.  This verse was referenced in John 16 in a wonderful study we did in June of 1996.  I am enjoying the notes of that study as listed in my Bible #5.
     June 5th: Last night's power outages lasted 3 hours or more and took out our water, toilet, lights, clocks, dryer, coffee maker - but it all ended well as we slept.  Lisa re-started the dryer with my clothes in it, made my coffee for the next day, etc.  We awoke to a normal world!  Lisa has a real ability to make do, to make lemonade of lemons and to make it all turn out okay.  I am learning new stuff about her everyday.  In John 19:17, "So they had Him at last..." and I do, too, but in a good way!  John 19:20 the place where He was crucified was "near the city" where I always long to be :)  and the two others crucified had Jesus between them.  If (when) I am crucified, I want Jesus beside me, too...
     June 7th:  John 20 has Jesus asking Mary, "Why are you crying:  Whom are you looking for?"  She answered, "They have taken away my Lord and I don't know where they have put Him."  And later on, "How wonderful was their joy when they saw their Lord!"  This was me after the District's actions in Custer. Several times in the past I have let "them" take away my Lord - but I did not come desperately searching early enough.  I cried and nursed bitterness for far too long before I sought my "song" and it was much harder to see Him.  Those times occurred in the midst of spiritual plenty and productivity, but this one was in a time of spiritual malaise in me.  I do believe God is using this in triumph over Satan and in mercy for my soul, and maybe Dan and Stacy's, and maybe others.  I do praise His name today!
     Later that day:  a storm with ping pong ball sized hail totalled our car outside the place where we now live.  Massive damage in the rest of the trailer court and much in our own place.  My mind was elsewhere and when I set the coffee on auto that night, I forgot to put coffee in the basket!  Oh, well...
     June 7 was a very tiring day and my BG was 178!  Scary!
     June 10th:  Six years I have been given, so far, since Rol's heart attack!  If ever we need to be praising God, it is today!

So, I am one third of the way through June's Journal and I have left out lots but this is getting too long so I think I will quit and do something else.  What I see, however, is that God is faithful and if I ask, He will be my all in all and will teach me in wonderful ways.  Life is still so "daily" as Gloria Gaither puts it, but it sure is not boring and there is meaning even in this holding pattern that we currently find ourselves in.  The rest of the journal looks interesting but maybe another day...

My example on Mother's Day

So, in re-reading some of my older posts I see that my own mom has been sadly neglected on this blog.  I think about her so much of the time that maybe I feel she is always with me and don't realize that I hardly ever verbalize that fact.  My mom and I are (were) so much alike.  We looked a lot alike and we thought a lot alike. She was very short, very quiet, very conservative, very loving, and very much a worrier.  She began working outside the home when our family  moved from the farm to the city when I was about 2 years old.  She had 9 children at that time (one in Heaven) and would soon have #10 and a hysterectomy.  She began cooking at a local Chinese American restaurant a few blocks from our home.  She worked evenings Tuesday-Sunday as head cook.  I especially remember stopping off there many afternoons after school and watching her as she prepared live lobsters for dinner guests.  I remember her saying that she gave them a meat cleaver to occupy them until she was ready to drop them live into the boiling water!  I also remember that many movie stars of the day stopped there to eat and she had all their autographs.  I wonder where those went?  Lots of little kitties would end up at her restaurant doorstep looking for food and make their way to our home later on in her coat or sweater.  Many mornings my younger sister and I would awake to find several new little kitties sleeping at our feet!  That is a precious memory that will be forever in my heart.  Another special memory is waking up at midnight to find my mom greasing our chests with Vick's Vaporub and taking our temps because we had been sick with a cold before she went to work that evening.  She never failed to kiss our sleeping bodies and wish us a good night.

My mom had Mondays off and us kids would take turns pretending to be sick on a Monday so we could stay home with her and thus be taken to the local grocery store in her little red wagon because Monday was grocery day and she had no one to leave us at home with.  She always got us a comic book and some candy to take home and make our day go better!  We always had to be in bed before my dad arrived home from work about 2:30 p.m. because he said if we were home sick we had to be in bed or else we weren't sick.  Looking back, of course, I now see that my dad was in on our plot all along, but he never let on and always scolded us for not being in school on a Monday!  When there are 10 kids you have to take time with your mom however you can get it - and that was our method.  Oh how we loved her and treasured our times with her, and she with us!

Mom always had high blood pressure and bad headaches but she was quite healthy, otherwise.  She began to have mini-strokes in 1979 and I began to mourn her, even though she did not die of them.  A couple of years later she was properly diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and would deal with that until 1995, when she did pass away of heart failure.  We had been in Nebraska most of that time and then in Oklahoma when she died and were not able to be with her much during those years.  One summer we took time to sit at her feet, so to speak, as she dictated her favorite recipes to me so that I would always have that part of her.  She baked and cooked instinctively and I think she had no equal in those categories.  Those recipes are still with us and Dan will probably keep most of them.

When Mom died the sisters caring for her elected to have her body cremated because they said she had expressed that wish to them.  Because of that, and the fact that we were all scattered and not able to come home for a funeral, we missed the chance to gather and talk and celebrate her life.  That was very hard and so in 1997 when my sister Marion passed away, we were able to go back to New York for her burial and a wonderful time of dinner and talking afterwards.  Thus, the healing began, though late in coming.  I think of her almost constantly and wish she was here to talk to.  I have tried to model my mothering after her example and probably will never know how well I have done - until I meet Jesus face to face and thank Him for her and listen for His "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."  I am so thankful for my mom today and so thankful that God has allowed me to me a mom also.

Tough Times Require Prayer

I have been thinking for weeks that it is time to update this blog.  Today is just one more day in what has been a rough couple of months for me and mine.  The first big event was the announcement that the Dakota District is closing our Custer Wesleyan Church.  Lots of tears, some anger, lots of questions, much prayer...and here we are into April and nothing really settled.  That is just the first thing, though.  Second was a growth that appeared on my face overnight in March and scared me half to death!  After a few days of praying and psyching myself up, I went to the doctor and had it removed.  Praise God that it was benign and now all I have to do is figure out how to pay the bill - but that is better than the alternative!  The third problem is that we need to figure how to take care of Wildcat.  Once Dan and Stacy are moved on, there will not be enough money coming in, nor will there be enough staff to do the work.  We all have ideas of how things can be made easy, but it looks like God will have to undertake for us.  We cannot accomplish any of this on our own.  If  we pray 24/7, there are probably not enough days to get it done.  But our God is a big God and He only needs to speak the Word and we can breathe easier.  We know He has a plan for all of us and we are asking that He continue to implement that plan without interference from any of us.  All we ask for is patience, grace, wisdom, and (kind of) to please hurry up?  Well, then today we spent a tense afternoon looking for funds to pay Lisa's house payment, which was our fourth big problem.  We got to where all we could do was say, "Help!" and some of us could not even get that much out!  But with some creative shuffling and a little extra help and more prayer, the payment was made.  We still need some more by Friday, but we are breathing a little easier.  There are many more problems yet to be solved because of this decision of the Dakota District.  It is affecting many people, in many different ways.  We are all impacted and we are all making changes.  We can only pray that we will react well, and that we will learn from all this what God  wants us to learn.  He has a future for all of us and it is one of hope and promise.  It is also probably not what we were expecting when we moved into 2012. If the last 69 years is any indication, this future will be even better than we had expected!  My response is still, "God is good - all the time!" and  "All the time - God is good!"  That does not mean it will be easy.  "God give us strength to finish this race well."

Some of my Christmas People

I have been thinking lately about all the people in my life who have been "Christmas in the flesh" to me.  That is, who have embodied the real message of Christmas to me, all year long.  Some have been in Heaven now for many years, and some are still living, though maybe not in my current area.  I decided to write about some of these people, in tribute to my great affection for them.  To do this more easily, I am using an acrostic with the letters in Christmas.  This, of course, limits me to those mentors whose names begin with those 8 different letters.  To those of you who know you should be on my list, accept my apologies and know that eventually I will think of a list that will enable me to include you!  I am very good at lists, you know....

C is for Camilla Henry, who was part of our church in Rome, New York.  We pastored there from 1968 until 1975.  Camilla was raising her grandchildren at that time and was very much a part of our fellowship.  She was very loving and very giving, especially to a young pastoral couple.  My biggest memory is of the time we had to take our newborn Daniel to the hospital in Syracuse for NICU care, due to an immature liver.  We took our camper and set it up near the hospital and stayed there so I could nurse him until he was released.  One day when "Cam" passed her bank, God told her to draw out a specific amount for us to help in the expenses.  She obeyed, and, of course, it was exactly the amount we needed.  I am so thankful for God's servants who hear and obey His voice!

H is for Helen Nichols, my Diabetes Educator here in Custer.  In 2008 I really needed an understanding friend to guide me through those first frightening days of my diagnosis.  Helen was so very caring, and seemed to know just how to teach me what I needed to know - in the way that I would best learn it.  She became personally involved in my life and I will be forever grateful!

R is for my friend in Oshkosh, Ramona Kugler.  She was the only one I can really call my "soul sister" and God gave her to me before I even met her!  Before we were even introduced in 1989, I saw her across the room and said to my husband, "Oh, there are the Kuglers!"  We all racked our brains for years to figure out how I knew them when we had never met.  Ramona became my best friend and we shared much in the short time we had before she died from an infection incurred during a successful liver transplant.  I did not have a chance to really say goodbye and when I felt her appear to me in a dream/vision a few days later, to say goodbye to me, I asked God if He would really do that for me - let her come to say goodbye to me.  He said that yes, He would.  And I asked if He really gave her to me before we even met, and He said that yes, He did.  There are very few occasions when I have felt as much love as I did in that moment!

I is blank because I just cannot think of a person whose name begins with I for this list.  Maybe sometime.

S is for Susie Treyz, a part of the church family that led me to Christ in Binghamton, New York.  Sister Treyz cared for me and loved me into the Kingdom.  She was a great prayer warrior and I always wanted to be like her.  One thing I remember is her entry in my Autograph book, "Be good, sweet maid.  Let all who will, be clever."

T is also blank because God has not brought to my memory anyone whose name begins with T.

M is for my mom, Mildred Brown.  There is not paper enough to list all the Christmas qualities that she embodied to me, and to our whole family.  Her love, caring, generosity, patience, advocacy, shepherding, her peace-making, her gentleness....well you get the picture.  I want to be just like her when I grow up!

A is for Andy and Barb from Lincoln, generous in our times of need, friends always.

S is also for Skippy Beckwith, our first and best and most loving baby-sitter!  She will live always in our hearts.

James 3:17 says that "...the wisdom that comes from Heaven is first of all pure and full of quiet gentleness.  Then it is peace-loving and courteous.  It allows discussion and is willing to yield to others; it is full of mercy and good deeds.  It is wholehearted and straightforward and sincere."  (TLB)  My Christmas People embody this wisdom and have "set the bar" for me. They have been Christmas gifts to me through the years.  Do you have such a list that you can use during your praise and prayer time this Christmas season?  If so, tell that to Jesus, and then tell that to the people involved.  Maybe you will become a gift to them, in this way!

An Aha Moment!

Yesterday we were at Sunday School and Stacy was upstairs in the sound area.  Suddenly, a florescent light above her came on.  We did not notice because we were downstairs and all the lights were on there in the Sanctuary.  But Stacy noticed because she was used to being in the dark up there and the light really changed things for her.  I told her then that I thought that "would preach" and that maybe we were so comfortable in the darkness because it had become normal and usual for us.  We don't bother turning on the light because we don't need it to function.  I love to find spiritual applications in everyday situations and everyday conversation, and I usually just write such things in my Journal and think about them for awhile and move on.  This morning I was reading in 2nd Peter for my devotional time and the 2nd verse of the first chapter reads  like this:  "May God bless you with His special favor and wonderful peace as you come to know Jesus, our God and Lord, better and better."  Aha!  The reason I don't have as much peace as I desire, and as I used to have, is because I have become comfortable with my Spiritual experience and am not seeking actively to know Him better and better?  I have found many excuses (some reasonable) for my current lack of complete peace.  This allows me to not feel guilty and to carry on, secure in my salvation.  But what if I have just become accustomed to the level of light in which I have lived for years?  What if there is so much more for me to learn about Jesus, my God and Lord, so that I may serve Him better and better?  If you ask me, I will tell you that I know I have to keep growing so that I stay alive in Him.  And I do attend to daily Bible reading, and devotions, and I do pay close attention in Sunday School and Worship services.  I know that I desire in my heart to serve Him fully and lovingly.  But I wonder if I have stopped that eager, desperate search for Him that I used to know.  I don't want to forget what God has done for me!  I don't want to become so comfortable in the darkness that I turn the light back off (sorry, Stacy) when it is turned on for me by God!  From now on, I will actively seek the Light and accept His gift of peace as I seek to know Jesus better and better!  I think I will have to find new ways to do this, though, so that I get out of my comfort zone.  Strange, I used to think that my lack of peace was because of the many times in this past decade that I have been removed from my comfort zone - maybe I was not recognizing the Light that was to have shown me the way through those troubling times.  Sometimes I am a slow learner........

I have been reviewing some of my old bound journals and decided that it is about time I began writing again.  I used to write to several friends/family members through my e-mail and then print the letters out to paste in my journal.  This killed two birds with one stone and so I did a lot of writing.  I wondered at the time if they were worthy of reading but several years (or more) later, they really are kind of interesting!  My current journal does not seem interesting to me and so I think I will change direction and see what comes of it.  Last year, on this blog site, I wrote of my plans to make it through the winter here in Custer.  I had 10 goals and only a couple of those goals were met, but apparently I made it through the winter - one way or another.  Now, today, in mid-September, it is freezing out and we actually have seen snow!  So I feel an urgent need to plan ahead for this winter and see if it works out better than last year.  I plan to complain less, write more, review past successes and add even more layers of clothing!  I will also pray more, trust more, smile more, and praise God more.  And if all that does not work, I am demanding that we  move to a more mild climate before another winter arrives. Well, suggesting, anyway!  One way I will make it through the winter is remembering how much I am loved.  Jan Karon says that "when you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you."  I recognize that in my wonderful husband!  She also says that "when someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.  You know that your name is safe in their mouth."  This is true of my loved ones, I think, and also of my Saviour, who "calls His sheep by name, and our names are safe in His mouth." (also Jan Karon).  I think I will concentrate on love, real love, this winter, and see if that warms my cold days!

Father's Day

I hardly ever write about my dad and I don't speak much about him, either. That is not because he was a bad father. I think it is just because by the time I knew him (being number 9 of his 10 children), he was quite busy keeping food on the table and clothing all those kids! I spent the first 20 years of my life being afraid of him because he was strict and gruff and usually had his mind on things other than me. Way back then, I didn't understand why that was so, but now I do. Thinking back on my childhood I think that the fact that my birth followed 3 boys probably had a lot to do with his distraction! Those boys always seemed to be getting into trouble. Because of that, I decided to be extra quiet and not create any waves. I never asked him for any money or favors because I was sure he would say no and I did not like the way he said no. My mom, many years later, asked me why I thought he did not love me when he was so clearly proud of me and pleased in all that I did. I told her that I did not sense that and that he never said he loved me. I decided then to actually tell him that I loved him and see what happened. When he looked surprised and then said, "Well, I love you, too!" everything changed for me. Our relationship became much more relaxed and satisfying. I decided then and there that if I had my own children, I would make sure they knew how much I cared.

My oldest sister told me that the father she remembered was not the one that I described to her regarding my childhood. I learned from her that parents change as the family changes . I had not known that my dad could have been an opera singer because I had never heard him sing, or that he played the fiddle for the family when he was younger. I missed out on a lot and I regret all that. Now that there is no one left to talk to me of my mom and dad when they were young, I wish I had asked more questions and looked at more pictures. This year I decided to make a list of the attributes that I could personally attest to, regarding my dad. I know he was a hard worker, providing for his family faithfully. I know that he insisted on moral behavior in dress, language, and lifestyle. He loved my mom very much. He was frugal and patriotic and always present in the home when he was not working. He was very tall. He made room for his own elderly father in our home a portion of each year until Grandpa's death. He took us on a yearly trip by saving all his dimes in a big bank. He had some military service but I am not sure about what or when it was. All these things I can remember that are good. I have decided that for 2011 I will not dwell on the disappointments I had with him because I now realize that we are all flawed and that as parents we do the best we can.

When I first began to learn about the God who loves me, I had a problem referring to Him as a father because I had no close relationship to draw upon. I still struggle with that, preferring to trust that the Jesus I love said that He and the Father are one, so I don't have to worry. I believe that my heavenly Father understands and all is well. So, since my earthly father is no longer here to celebrate on Father's Day, I offer this from one of my favorite authors, Beverly Lewis: "All honor and praise to our heavenly Father, Creator, and ultimate mender of broken hearts..." Sounds like a father to me!