Pure

The Word of God is pure.  Prov 30:5

I have been meditating on that word today.  Pure in motive.  Pure in purpose.  Pure in love.

My words are less than pure.

They have an undercurrent of need.  A need to be understood, to be appreciated, to be right, to be heard.
If they aren't driven by need, they often have a want in there.  I want you to do this for me.  I want to convince you of something.  I want to receive a certain response.

They have a great deal of self.  Self-love.  Self-satisfaction.  Self-awareness.  Self-doubt.  Just hearing myself talk.

They often lack faith.  They sound like a stormcloud threatening rain.  They're quick to confess lack, and slow to profess hope.

The words the Lord speaks are only uttered in love.  Even his rebuke is in kindness, to correct in a way that draws me back to Him.  My corrections are often unnecessary, and not usually with the other's good in mind.

The words of the Lord have purpose and accomplish what they are sent to do.  My words don't usually have much thought put into them, let alone an abiding purpose.    

The words of the Lord are timeless.  Eternal.  Mine?  I don't feel like many of them will last beyond the second in which they're breathed.  

Yet our words, while not omnipotent, are potent.  (not original to me; one of our church's elders spoke recently and said this, and it's stuck with me since.)   They do have, after all, the power of life.  They have the power of death as well, and no gray in between.

But focus on that for a moment -- our words, when infused with the Holy Spirit, have power and life.  Power to build up.  Power to mend.  Power to transform.

I have to remind myself sometimes what we often hear mothers tell their toddlers:  "Use your words."  May I make use of my words today, in love of God, for the purpose of the kingdom of heaven.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer.  Psalm 19

More thoughts and encouragement can be found if you follow back to Company Girl Coffee. :)

Have you seen my Nap Time Warriors post?  Please take a gander at it, and link up if you have something to share!

Calling All Mommy Bloggers

Today's nap time has been long-awaited.

We went to the doctor's office for our belated 15-month appointment (yes, she is almost 17 months old; there was an insurance kerfuffle, but it's fixed now so we're finally back on track) and had her royal highness checked out.  She's got a mild to moderate head cold.  Really?  That's all?  She does seem to be feeling better today, though

This week I've had some fun during the afternoon nap:

I went grocery shopping.
I made lots of lists.
Vacuumed.
Washed lots of dishes.
Got some reading in.
Had a few cups of coffee.
Visited more blogs than I can shake a stick at.
Paid the bills.
Made dinners.
Drafted blog posts for my busy days or ones in which my creativity flatlines.  (I have a few recipes I want to share with you soon!)

Today during this nap I have managed to:
Finish the laundry, clean the bathroom, help Sam practice his martial arts stick work, change and wash the sheets on the bed, have a brief but uninterrupted phone conversation with a friend, set up a linky tool (yay!), and compose a blog post!  And the girl is still sleeping--maybe I'll wake her up too early to get her out the door to an appointment more often!

I did want to show you this quick little Before and After:

Lizzie was starting to reach into the silverware drawer and remove anything she could reach.  The knives were in front.  Bad planning, Mommy.  Bad planning.  So a re-do was necessary, and I did it on Monday.

Yes, those are coffee grounds in the corner.  Don't ask.

All this was rattling inside the drawer.

Ta-da!  Now the knives and forks are safe from little fingers.

Have you accomplished anything that you'd like to tell about or show off?  Link up!

Here are the qualifiers for the Nap Time Warriors:

Just mention something you accomplished, whether leisure or labor, in an effort to use your time wisely.
Please link to a specific post on your blog at the linky tool below, and somewhere in your post, please link back to this site.
If you want to grab the button, please feel free to!  I'll try to create the tool this afternoon.
You don't have to have a napping child to participate.
If you're not a blogger, post in the comments.

All Hallow's Eve

What is your take on Halloween?

I have only one child, and she has no concept of holidays yet, so it is not an issue that I have to decide in black and white this year.  I am not quite sure what our official stance will be.

However, I do have my personal experience of it, which ran through the conservative pendulum: 

When I was young, our family locked ourselves in the basement, with the upstairs lights off, pretending we weren't there.  We played games, watched movies, sang songs, colored, and basically hid from Halloween.  Sometimes we hid with another family; that only embedded our "us verses them" perspective.

When we got older, it became popular for churches to have "Harvest Parties" as an alternative to Halloween.  Those were fun, and we had an opportunity to dress up and carry home bags of candy without partaking of evil.  The Harvest Party concept can be sad sometimes because it isn't often an outreach, only an inbred way for Christians to hide, together, with the lights on.

Later we moved further into the country, and our church was small and had no resources for a harvest event, so the flock had to fend for themselves when it came to Halloween.  We lived on a tiny dirt road, with about 10 neighboring houses, and there were not even that many kids on the whole street.  So we decided to trick-or-treat.  We dressed up as something non-threatening (usually a hobo--because we had raggedy clothes in abundance, or a cowpoke, or a kid-too-old-to-be-trick-or-treating) and visited our neighbors.  We met some of the kindest neighbors because we stepped outside our comfort zone and met them where they were.

Then we moved into the suburbs.  There we were surrounded by families with children, and they were children who swam at the same pool we did, and their parents waved at us (or glared at us, depending on our current standing in the HOA's list of "lawns most needing care"), and who invited us to grill out with them on holiday weekends.  So we left our lights on, and bought an orange pumpkin bowl from the Dollar Tree, and handed out candy to happy little ballerinas and super heros and ladybugs and goblins.

Over the last few years, our church has headed up a "Harvest Festival" that has seen thousands of neighbors come through for free games, music, popcorn, hot dogs, and cotton candy.  We have had a prayer tent, and have handed out hundreds and hundreds of Bibles.  But this particular event is being put to rest.  While we were involved, it was easy to decide what to do: we went, we helped set up, helped run the event, and helped tear it down.

Regardless of what we choose for this year or next, my perspective is this: Whatever we do, we have to do it in faith. 

Honestly, you can boycott Halloween and be absolutely within your rights to do that.  There are enough reasons to avoid it at all costs.  It is, after all, a holiday that has an obsession with death, evil, and darkness.  And depending on where my family is (physically and spiritually), we may have years in which we avoid it. 

If you decide not to take part in anything having to do with All Hallows Eve, do it out of conviction that it is not godly.  If you decide not to partake in costumes, candy, spiders, and jack-o-lanterns, make the decision in personal obedience to Christ, and not out of fear.  As children of light, we should not make decisions based on fear.

If you decide to participate, do so in love.  You don't have to hand out tracts with your Fun Size Butterfingers, but if you want to, do it in love.  Do it prayerfully, and in faith.  If you decide to participate, emphasize to your family that there is evil in the world, but we have the Word of God, which is a powerful weapon against spiritual forces of darkness.

And if this Halloween you come to our house and we don't have our lights on, it's because we really aren't home; we don't have a basement to hide in.

(For a thoughtful discussion of Halloween's Christian roots, take a minute to read Elizabeth Esther's article, Halloween is NOT a pagan holiday.)

Going Somewhere?

wordless wednesday

Meals and Brunch Menu

A little late, but that's fine.


Monday, you may have read, was a little crazy.  I made Chicken Cacciatore, and it was delicious.


Tuesday, we were planning to have dinner with our home group, but Lizzie is still not a happy camper, so I have to make dinner.  I didn't end up making Baked Potato Soup last week, so that is what I will make tonight.


I am hoping to make it to the grocery store this afternoon or tomorrow, where I'll pick up what I need to make:

Steak & Salad

Crock Pot Beef Stew w/ Root Vegetables

Honey Dijon Chicken w/ rice

Stir-fried chicken (probably like this Sweet & Sour Chicken recipe) you guessed it, w/ rice

Eggs/Tofu/Tomatoes w/ rice

and the stuff for chicken soup - since it's always good to have it on hand.

Saturday we will have brunch, when I will make:

Pumpkin Waffles

Sausage & Onion Frittata

Hummus & Veggies & Crackers

Grape Salad

and coffee, juice, and whatever else strikes my fancy.

The beauty of all these things is that they can be made ahead of time and finished or warmed up in the morning!

a Monday of Misadventures

Today felt like a real-life enactment of Robert Quackenbush's children's book Henry's Awful Mistake.  I have been thinking about that book quite a bit lately, because I want to have people over to eat with us, and I have been seeing ants in the bathroom.  But that has nothing to do with today.  Today was just weird. 

Henry's Awful Mistake, Robert Quackenbush

Last night we discovered that one of our cats had gotten locked out of the bathroom where their litter box is, so when we came back from our dinner excursion at the fine dining establishment of KFC, we found cat doodie and cat tinkle on Sam's backpack in his closet. 

When we threw the backpack into the washer and went to finish the cleanup, we discovered that the floor was damp and the carpet was stained a sort of rust color.  There was a musty smell.  This closet wall is opposite of the master bathroom shower.  Dreading the worst, we put a fan on it and went to bed, deciding to tackle it in the morning.

Severe thunderstorms swept through north Georgia early this morning, so the house was cool and dark when the alarm went off at 7-something and I rolled out of bed at 8-something.  The first half hour of the morning was quite pleasant; I got up, had coffee, a bit of a quiet time, and listened while the thunder woke Lizzie. 

Shortly after breakfast, Sam and I began discussing bills needing to be paid and being past due, and it was not the most peaceful conversation.  I wondered what had happened to the quiet that had been in my heart.  I realized it was dueling with the pride in my heart, which was trying to convince me that I had hardly any fault.  I chewed on that for a while, and eventually went to apologize to Sam, who was trying to figure out what was the best way to deal with the mold in his closet. 

I had the cute, demanding, and infinitely miserable half-pint hanging on my leg, and on my neck when she managed to convince me to carry her.  All day she's been wiping her nose on her sleeve, and has been generally discontent except when outside or in the bathtub.

While Sam was extracting black molded carpet frames and carefully putting them in a bag inside a box to keep the toxicity at bay, I had been trying to at least make a list of things that need to be done this week, and had high expectations of making a grocery list and starting dinner.  Lizzie was napping, and I was going to take full advantage of the time.

I picked up the living room to vacuum so that Sam could vacuum in the closet, then we could throw away the vacuum bag.  I am outrageously out of shape, because I was winded by the time I finished.  And when I stood the vacuum upright in the master bedroom, I heard Lizzie's pathetic, snuffling cry through the monitor.  She had been down for about 30 minutes and I let her cry for another 10, just to see if she would calm down.  No good.

The rest of the day was spent in a low-grade panic.  Late in the afternoon I chased the wide awake and exploring Lizzie into the bedroom to find Sam leaning over the sink quietly washing his hands.  I asked if he was alright, and he said he had stabbed himself with a rusty nail.  He'd been wearing thin plastic gloves to protect him from the grossness, but they had been no protection against a nail.

New distress surfaced when he said that the last Tetanus shot he had received was in 1991.  So we spent 20 minutes trying to pinpoint the county Health Department, where he could get a shot without having insurance.  While searching, we found out that our county's Health Department's website is absolutely blank.  No information, no phone number, no 'click here for details.'  Just a banner letting you know you found it, and the rest is empty.  Taxpayer dollars at work.  We found the location, thanks to Google Maps, and Sam left with 20 minutes before the clinic closed, hoping for an open slot.

In the meantime, I had to figure out whether I was going to make something for dinner or just call Sam to ask him to pick up another healthy meal from a drive-thru.  I decided to give dinner a go while Lizzie was semi-mesmerized by Veggie Tales' Pistachio.  From what I heard, it sounded entertaining. 

Around 6 PM, Sam made it back home, to tell me that he has to go back tomorrow, since they didn't have time to give him a shot today.  In all honesty, the Chicken Cacciatore was the highlight of the day, which I photographed and I hope to share the recipe with you soon.  We all devoured it.  Perhaps we were starving and didn't realize it, and that's why everything seemed a little more awful than it really was.  Or maybe it really was just a crappy day.

The evening progressed, and refreshed from a delicious meal, we got up and got Lizzie in the bathtub, where she had a wonderful time as long as both parents were present.  When we got her out, she promptly tinkled on the floor.  That was laughable and I cleaned it up, diapered her, pajamaed her, read to her, nursed her, and medicined her.  The nighttime routine is very long, and I had not made a pit stop before it started, so I asked Sam to keep an eye on Lizzie while I ran to the bathroom for a minute. 

What happened, though, is that I actually ran to the bathroom.  And as I ran, I swung for the lightswitch in the bedroom, but missed.  That's OK, because I've lived here for over 3 years and can navigate my way to the bathroom in the dark.

Unless there is an upright vacuum cleaner in the pitch black room. 

C   R   A   S   H   !!!

I nailed it with my knee, my shin, and what still feels like my entire upper right leg.  And I kind of lost it, if you know what I mean.  I cried in pain and embarrassment and fatigue.  Sam and Lizzie came in to help me up and give my boo-boos kisses.  I changed into my pajamas and finally got Lizzie into bed. 

Now that I listed it all, it's pretty funny.  But I was on the verge of tears of complete weariness and frustration most of the day.  And I am thankful that nothing worse happened.  And I am so very grateful that tomorrow will come with fresh grace to help and the sunrise will come with new mercy to meet our needs. 

Now, to--slowly--find myself some Advil.

Realizations of a novice blogger

This month has been the first time I have really put forth the effort to carve out my online presence.  This blog has about 150 posts, and it has been in operation for over two years, but I'm really still a n00b.

These are some of the things I have learned over the past few weeks:

I was posting just for the sake of having something to post every day.  And I felt like some of it was, if I am honest, annoying.

I write really, really, really, really long posts.  I'm sorry.  I will try to keep them shorter.  I even cut this one into two posts already.  As if you could tell.

I have a bad habit of being a first-draft blogger.  Half-baked thoughts may be "raw" and "honest" but there is a reason some things should be cooked thoroughly.  I need to break this habit.

Fortunately saving drafts has helped me this week in a few ways:
My writing has more clarity and purpose when I begin to write a draft, and save it for publishing later.
Having a draft available to work on means that I do not have to spend as much time creating or fighting through a mental block.
Scheduling a posting time makes sure it doesn't remain a draft forever, and gives me a deadline to just let it go.  I believe it was Steady Mom who mentioned that she does this.  Or maybe it was Clover Lane.  Either one of them is believable, because they put out great content, and have solid advice.
The evening before a post is scheduled, I just give it a final once-over, and wish it good night.  In the morning, it has posted, and I can have my quiet time, my coffee, and cuddles with my little girl, without fretting that the blogosphere has gone on without me.


When I have my quiet time in the Word in the morning, taking the time to pray and waiting on the voice of the Father, I feel less of a need to seek out affirmation and feedback from the world online.  Inspired to Action has been helpful; I'm not following their specific program, but it was enough of a push to get me moving. 


Creating a blog calendar has helped me keep straight what I will write for the week, and figure out what blog carnivals I would link to, and let me see a pattern--if any--to my posting.  Alicia's Homemaking mentioned a blogging calendar and the lightbulb went off above my head in a "why didn't I think of that?" moment.

I stalked my stats this week.  I'm trying to figure out what they mean.  I read Kludgy Mom's articles about a million tools to make your blog more useful and cooler and to help you make sense of the stats. I haven't made sense of them, but they're entertaining. But now I have a search widget, and it entertains me.  Go ahead, search it.  It'll be fun.

Apparently I need to work on asking better open-ended questions.  Or maybe I just ask them on days when I have more traffic.  As though I could time that.

I am really close to opening a Twitter account.  Will that place me on the dark side?

Have these been lessons you have learned as well?  What else have you learned that you can share with a young grasshopper?