About Barbara Harper

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Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Barbara Harper

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week, wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

It’s been rather a heavy week here, as friends on several fronts are facing various battles. In our old church in SC, one friend discovered she had thyroid cancer and is facing surgery, another had a massive heart attack, and one of the star athletes from the school there died unexpectedly. In our own family, my nephew that I mentioned a few weeks ago as having multiple tumors and undergoing massive amounts of chemotherapy discovered a new “knot.” It’s hard to fathom that some new tumor could spring up with all the chemo he has had, so perhaps it’s something else. They can’t see the doctor til next week.

In the midst of all the heaviness, God has placed some bright spots:

1. Faith, hope, and grace. I’m so thankful that when we believe on Jesus Christ as our Savior, we have the surety of heaven, even though it is still painful to be separated from loved ones through death. It would be unbearable otherwise. And the grace God gives to endure as we undergo hardships is priceless.

2. Facebook has been great for disseminating news to large communities of people at once and for keeping up with what’s going on. Since we’ve moved, I probably would not have heard of some of these issues for a long time, if at all, without Facebook. It’s a blessing to be able to keep informed and to pray as soon as possible for each one.

3. Camaraderie. Jim’s first day back at work after his eye surgery, he faced this:

4. Less rain than expected. When I looked at my weather app on my phone at the beginning of the week, it showed not just rain but thunderstorms almost every day. Thankfully we haven’t had nearly as much as predicted, and so far it’s been mostly gentle rain rather than storms.

5. A good helper. I feel for Jesse being the only son left at home sometimes, but he has been a great help as Jim is still not supposed to do any lifting or straining. He just spent his first morning of summer break cutting the grass. He changed his first flat tire last Saturday – I had meant to mention that as a fave and forgot, that it went flat in the garage and not while I was driving.

Happy Friday!

Myths and Maxims of Ministry

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Barbara Harper

Recently a friend told me that she was somewhat overwhelmed with the details of a particular ministry she had started and had trouble finding joy in it until she reminded herself of the reason she began it in the first place. That got me to thinking about some of the misconceptions I had about ministry over the years, and I thought I’d share some of those here. I’m not talking about “the” ministry: the paid professional, full-time minister of some sort, though some of these may apply there as well, but rather I am talking about the average Christian who participates in some ministry and then gets dismayed with it.

Here were some of my faulty assumptions:

1. Since this is being done for the Lord, everything should go smoothly. I can picture some of you smiling. Though I don’t see the devil behind every little problem, we do have an active enemy behind the scenes, and we do live in a fallen world where things break down and problems occur. The icemaker doesn’t know it’s in a church and shouldn’t fall apart just before a banquet that has been planned for months (just one of my “things gone wrong” scenarios.) The microphone makes an excruciating noise just as the soloist steps up, the babysitter forgot she should be there, etc. etc. It just happens.

2. Since we’re all Christians here, we should all agree on how everything should be done. If you read through the book of Acts, you see that the early church leaders had to hammer some things out. Even Barnabas and Paul had a major disagreement, causing them to part ways (and the Bible doesn’t really say who was right and who was wrong there. Some have faulted Paul for not being gracious, but maybe John Mark needed to know how serious his previous failure was. At any rate, they all reconciled later and God used it to multiply the number of people sent out). Leaders should not expect a panel of “yes men” (or woman), no one should be oversensitive about their proposals or ideas, we should all be open to differing opinions but be prepared to stand firm when something needs to be done a certain way.

3. Since we’re all Christians here, we should all have the best attitudes and act in an exemplary way. We should. But we don’t. We’re sinners. That’s not an excuse, but it is a truth. We fail. We disappoint each other. We display selfishness. We need to react to each other with grace, remembering our own faults and failures and need for grace. We might get our feelings hurt, but we need to take it to the Lord: we might need to go to the other person and let them know and try to explain and apologize to each other, or we might need to just let it go, but what we should not do is get bitter and drop out of church or avoid that person forevermore.

4. I should always feel joyful in my ministry. There are times when we get bogged down in details, feel overwhelmed, get tired of it, just don’t enjoy it, wish we hadn’t signed up, etc. And if we think about it a minute, we can feel that way in other areas of life as well. We don’t always respond to our loved ones with love and joy, though we want to and strive and pray for help to. We can get bogged down in the daily duties at home and get irritable about them instead of lovingly ministering to our families. A lack of joy in a ministry may be an indication it’s time to make changes, but more often than not it just means we’re human and, like my friend at the beginning, need to remind ourselves of why we’re doing what we’re doing and for whom we’re doing it. And I usually find that the joy comes not before or even during a task, but afterward.

5. If God calls me to do something, I should always feel sufficient for it. I have found just the opposite to be true. Usually, like Moses, I feel insufficient for it even before I start, but sometimes even if I am asked to do something that I feel God has equipped me for, there is always a point where I feel overwhelmed (I mean locked in the bathroom crying type of overwhelmed). But that’s a good place to be, because that’s when we learn by experience and not just principle that His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

6. If this ministry is in God’s will, there should be plenty of people willing to help with it. Not necessarily. A lot of ministries end up being understaffed because others don’t catch the vision or feel just too busy. Once when I needed to round up some helpers for a particular endeavor, I asked someone who looked to me like she’d have time, but she didn’t feel she did. Then another lady whom I would never have asked because she had so much on her plate volunteered. You just never know, but instead of getting frustrated, just pray about whom to ask. In some cases, it might need to be laid aside until enough people get burdened for it. Once when we were part of a Christian homeschooling ministry, the lady who had started it had her seventh child and just could not carry on with it. We went without it for a year, and then several ladies volunteered to take it up again, breaking it into more manageable pieces for each one rather than having the whole thing on one person’s shoulders. Praying for laborers isn’t restricted to the mission field.

Those are some myths, or misconceptions. Here are the maxims, which will overlap a bit with the above.

1. Something will go wrong, some times worse than others, no matter how well you plan. Take it patiently and pray for wisdom about what to do. God’s given me some marvelous ideas right in the midst of a crisis. And on the other side, if a lady comes tearing out of the church asking you if you’d be willing to go buy some ice because the icemaker stopped working and the banquet starts in half an hour and 100 ladies are coming — please don’t act grumpy and displeased and take 20 minutes to get going (yes, that happened). You don’t know what a balm you can be for someone in the throes of a major problem. And if you come to an event and it’s starting late, don’t be critical: you never know what has happened behind the scenes.

2. Disagreements will occur no matter how much you prayed beforehand. But don’t just dismiss them: sometimes they are God’s way of showing you an aspect you may not have thought of. Even if you can’t make a change and do what the other person suggested, you can make sure they feel heard and respond graciously.

3. You won’t always feel like doing whatever it is you’ve agreed to do. Pray for grace and do it anyway. You’ll probably feel better about it afterward.

4. Realize you can’t do it on your own. Jesus said, “without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5b), but “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13).

5. People will fail you. They failed Jesus, too. We have failed Him and others. We may need to discuss the specific matter with the person involved as part of their growth and training, but we also need to forgive as we have been forgiven.

6. People will surprise you with sometimes with their willingness to pitch in and help, to support you, to do what needs to be done, to have a great idea just when you can’t think any more, to say a word of encouragement to edify you.

7. Ministry will stretch you. If we never venture out of our comfort zones, we’ll never grow. It’s scary, but we can find God meeting us in our need and providing in the most wonderful ways when we let Him stretch us.

8.Get adequate rest before or in the midst of extra-busy or pressured times.

9. Delegate. Easier said than done sometimes, but pray not only for helpers, but the right helpers. Be prepared that they might not do everything just the way you would and pray for wisdom about when to insist on something being done a certain way and when to go with the flow.

10. Sometimes it is best to say no or step down. A principle instilled in me early on is not to say “no” unless I’ve prayed about it. But sometimes the answer should be No, and sometimes the desire to step down from the ministry is from the Lord. I don’t know how to tell you five easy steps to discern that, but as you walk with the Lord, He’ll show you. Don’t throw in the towel at the first sign of weariness or problems, but take it to Him to see whether he wants you to lean on Him more to carry on, or whether He wants you to make way for someone else to step in.

11. There is nothing like seeing God provide strength and ideas and and even tiny barely-significant details that make you marvel at His attention and care.

12. There is nothing like being used of God (which is what ministry comes down to: allowing God to work through you in some way to minister to another). When someone lets you know that they were blessed or instructed or encouraged through some small thing you said or did, and you know it was only through His grace that it was accomplished, it rejoices your heart, encourages your faith, and spurs you to minister for Him even more. And even if no one else notices, you can be sure that God does.

13. We’re all called to ministry. We may not be a part of an official ministry within the church, but all those who know God are called to minister to one another, to exercise the spiritual gifts He has given, whether in an official church-based capacity or just quietly behind the scenes.

14. Keep first things first. Like Martha, we can be “cumbered about much serving,” “careful and troubled about many things,” and forget the one needful thing: fellowshipping with our Savior. Serving is no substitute for engaging with Him, getting to know Him better, growing in love for Him, believing in Him. Sometimes weariness in service is an indication we’re off track just here.

A beloved former pastor, Jesse Boyd, once said:

Worship without service is a hollow farce.
Service without worship is a hectic fervor.
But worship which issues in service is a holy force.

There is much more that can be said about ministry: there are whole books written on the subject. But I hope some of these thoughts help encourage you in your ministry for the Lord.

What have you learned about ministry along the way?

Other posts about ministry here at Stray Thoughts:

Am I Doing Any Good?
Women in Ministry.
Why Older Women Don’t Serve.
How Older Women Can Serve.
God’s Help for God’s Assignment.
Whose life is it, anyway?
Mentoring Women.
Church Ladies’ Groups.

This post will be also linked to Women Living Well.

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Book Review: Betrayal

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Barbara Harper

Betrayal by Robin Lee Hatcher is the second in her Where the Heart Lives series about three orphans who were separated and try to find each other as adults. Each book focuses on one of the siblings: the first book in the series, Belonging, reviewed here, featured older sister Felicia.

In Betrayal older brother Hugh Brennan has just been released from prison where he had served as a result of his father’s betrayal. He has heard that Felicia is in Idaho and sets out to find her, but then his horse is injured and he has to stop for a while. He comes across the ranch of Julia Grace who, though wary, offers him food, a place to stay, and a few days work while his horse heals. Hugh, of course keeps his background as private as possible.

Julia has secrets of her own. She was plunged into a marriage of convenience to escape a lifetime of shame, but her husband abused and belittled her. He has passed away, and her one security is the ranch he left her, which she steadfastly refuses to sell to her husband’s brother.

Can these two wounded souls ever come to trust each other with their futures as well as the secrets of their pasts?

I enjoyed the story and the journey Robin led Hugh and Julia through and the things they learned along the way about trust and true security.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

The Hidden Art of Homemaking Book Club, Chapter 3: Music

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Barbara Harper

It’s Week 3 of The Hidden Art of Homemaking Book Club hosted by Cindy at Ordo Amoris where we’re discussing Edith Schaeffer’s book, The Hidden Art of Homemaking, a chapter at a time.

In Chapter 1, “The First Artist” (linked to my thoughts) Edith makes the case that because God as Creator is artistic, making the world not just functional but beautiful, and we’re created in His image, it follows that we’re created to be creative and to appreciate the artful and beautiful. In Chapter 2, “What Is Hidden Art?” (also linked to my thoughts), she goes on to explain that she is talking primarily about everyday endeavors, not necessarily pursuing the Arts as a profession (though some are called to that), and encourages us that though we’re finite and limited, though being creative requires some discipline and prioritizing, there are ways we can pursue it. The next several chapters are going to delve into some specific areas where we can learn to appreciate and perhaps even incorporate beauty and creativity. Chapter 3 discusses music in particular.

Experiencing music together as a family or with friends gives an outlet for expression, for relaxation, for “creative ideas and imagination [to be] sparked off” in each other, for enjoyment, and for personal development. She encourages letting children start off with their natural inclination to explore sound and rhythm (I can remember mine banging pans and such as toddlers).

She spends only the last few paragraphs talking about musical expression in the Bible, but that would be a very rich study to pursue further. We have the Psalms with their variety of emotions expressed in song, we have the encouragement to “make a joyful noise” unto the Lord, the instruction to teach and admonish one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. God tells Job about when the morning stars sang together and is Himself called a song: “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2).

To my regret, I don’t know how to play a musical instrument, but I do enjoy singing around the house, in the car, etc. I can’t say I know a lot about music, but I have always enjoyed it, and one of my favorite classes in college was Music Appreciation. I did not grow up with classical music but developed a love for it in college. I’m not much into pop music – the closest I get to it is some of Josh Groban, Michael Buble, Il Divo, etc. I love “the standards” – “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” etc. I also grew to enjoy folk songs – American, Irish, Scottish, English – a lot of songs from musicals, and a rich variety of hymns. Music, even secular music, touches the soul in a particular way that nothing else does.

I remember having a little toy drum and piano when my kids were toddlers, and if I remember correctly, our library had a regular time for preschoolers that involved musical instruments. Of course I sang to them from their infancy, we sang a variety of songs together, and they grew up hearing music at home. They all went to sleep listening to Patch the Pirate and other musical tapes. We didn’t start any formal lessons until they were 8: that was the age recommended to me by a friend who is the mom of a very musical family, and coincidentally, the age their school began piano lessons. I wanted them to take piano because it would give them a good foundation for singing, for choir, and for any other instrument they wanted to take, plus it’s a good discipline and use of time. I don’t know if any of them liked it. They were excited to begin, not so excited about practicing. They would have liked it a lot better if they hadn’t had to play in front of people at recitals. Only one taught himself a variety of other instruments (guitar, penny whistle, ocarina). But they do all enjoy listening to music. They all sang in school choirs, one sang in the church choir for a while, and one sang with an ensemble at school.

Edith mentioned at some point in the first couple of chapters that even if we don’t have talent or skill in a given area of art or creativity, we can learn to appreciate it, to see the beauty in it. I had not originally planned to do this when I first started this post, but this morning I was thinking that it might be helpful to some to share a little bit about listening to classical music from an amateur. I mentioned earlier that I didn’t have much exposure to classical music until college. I grew up with “You’re Cheatin’ Heart” and other such lovely little ditties. 🙄 I can remember going to hear an orchestra with my Girl Scout troop and being fascinated, hearing a high school concert of Handel’s Messiah, and a few other exposures, and then when I got to college, I not only heard more classical music from some of the programs we were required to attend, but I had a Music Major roommate who got me started with some basic classical records. Then my senior year I was required to take Music Appreciation and loved it. But the first time or two I heard a whole concert, I was lost. I found a couple of parts that particularly appealed to me, but afterward I couldn’t have told you what they were. Listening more and learning more about classical music helped immensely. I don’t know a whole lot, but here are a few pointers for enjoying classical music:

1. Listen for the theme, a few notes put together in a specific pattern that repeats. This is easiest to do at first with something that is a variation on the same theme, like the second movement from Hayden’s Symphony No. 94, the Surprise Symphony (so called because it has some unexpected loud parts designed to wake up those who were dozing :)) or Ravel’s Bolero or the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The composer takes the same series of notes and repeats them with different variations: different instruments, different themes, different harmonies, different tempos and rhythms, etc. It’s similar to your music leader at church saying, “Everyone sing harmonies on the first stanza of this hymn, men sing the second stanza, ladies the third, then we’ll all join in unison on the fourth without the instruments.”

2. Listen for how the themes work together. This is easiest to do if the themes mean something to you, like in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture: the first part is here, the second part is here – I guess maybe it was too big for one YouTube video. It begins with what some people would consider high church or holy-sounding music, representing the friar, then goes into the the fight theme, representing the discord between the two families (the music picks up, clashes, you can imagine sword thrusts back and forth), then goes into the love theme (which you’ve probably heard at some point), – and then all these themes start interacting, playing over and above each other as the young lovers try to connect amidst the fighting, the friar tries to help out, etc. Even if you can’t follow it line by line, you can get the overall feel of it. One of my favorite examples is The Moldau by Smetana, representing one of the rivers in his native Czechoslovakia. It begins with two streams that merge into a river, then the river flows alongside a country wedding, through mermaids, rapids, etc. It wasn’t until the Romantic Era that music was made to represent nature or literary themes on a large scale: before that it was mostly “absolute music” the same interplay of themes, but just as themes and not meant to represent something in life. Still nice, but a bit harder to pick out sometimes.

Two good piece for children are Peter and the Wolf and Carnival of the Animals (especially the latter with Odgen Nash’s poems in-between.

3. Listen for the progression. Like a good story, most classical pieces have a beginning, build to a climax, and then resolve.

4. Read up just a bit on the different kinds of compositions. A symphony, for instance, has 2 or 3 “movements,” and each one usually following certain parameters (the second is usually slower, for instance) and each with its own themes. It helps you not to feel so lost if you know a little bit about how it is put together and what to expect.

5. Learn a bit about the piece. Knowing that Dvorak’s New World Symphony was written when he felt America didn’t have a”national sound,” and that he invoked a lot of Native American and African-American-sounding themes in it, helps you get more out of it. The song “Going Home” is from the second movement.

6. Learn about the composer. A friend did this once: chose a composer and read about him while listening to various works of his to get the flavor of them. Knowing that Hayden’s situation and personality were both different from Beethoven’s, for instance, helps to account for some of the differences in their music.

You can see why Easy Listening music is called that. 🙂 It’s not that classical music is hard, necessarily, but you do get more out of it if you put a little more into it. And then just like any other song or story, once you’re familiar with a piece, you enjoy it, anticipate your favorite parts of it, etc.

I wish I had listened to more classical music with my kids. I had planned to have some sessions with one of these pieces playing in the background while we did other things, but I either never thought about it when we could have done it, or it never worked out as they got older and busier.

I mentioned my thirteen favorite classical music pieces here and some favorite CDs here (though I’d have several to add to that list now). Here are some of my favorite selections from different genres:

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Barbara Harper

It’s been…a somewhat stressful week, actually. As regular readers hear have already heard, my husband had a detached retina earlier this week and had to have surgery on it. My head was spinning with the coming and going to different doctors’ offices for three days in a row. Things have been a bit more peaceful the latter part of the week. We won’t know for about three weeks how much vision has been restored, but we’re hoping for the best. The highest highlight of the week was God’s peace and help during Jim’s surgery, as well as many expressions of people caring and praying. Here are a few others:

1. A church ladies’ fellowship at a restaurant in town. We only have them about once a quarter, and I had missed the Christmas one. It’s easy to skip these, especially when life is busy and hectic, but I do always enjoy them when I get there. The testimonies were a special blessing.

2. Chocolate pie. I had planned to get dessert to take home at the restaurant after the fellowship, but they had closed and were just waiting on us to get done. 🙂 I had really been set for a piece of chocolate pie, so I stopped at a store on the way home and bought one to share with the family.

3. At-home visits. Our church started an at-home ministry a few months ago to encourage and coordinate visiting some of the church members who can’t make it out very often, and my mother-in-law is on the list of those to visit. They took the Sunday night church service to divide the whole congregation into groups to go visit the various at-home members. They had done this at Christmas and decided it would be a good idea to do it through the year. We had about ten people go to see Jim’s mom, and not only was she blessed by the singing, but another lady in the room sang along as well, and many staff and residents stopped by to listen.

4. Finishing the cabinet for my sewing/craft room.

5. Talking with an old friend of my mother-in-law’s on the phone last night. She’s a dear lady: she and my m-i-l have been friends since childhood. It was good to catch up with her.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Sewing/Craft Room Cabinet

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Barbara Harper

For some months now I’ve been searching for some way to keep my laminator and Cricut close by and ready to use, but off my work table so I have more space there. The room is small, so I didn’t have much wall space or closet space to put another storage unit (and I didn’t want to keep them in the closet anyway.) I wanted something on wheels, and because the laminator gets so hot, I wanted to avoid plastic storage.

I’ve been looking at various storage units and ideas and not seeing anything that would really work, and then one day this caught my eye in W-Mart:

I had taken measurements of my work table and saw that this would fit underneath it! And it was the right width and already on wheels — perfect!

Except it was black. I appreciate black furniture in other people’s houses, but it’s just not my preference, and it just wouldn’t “go” in this room.

So, inspired by DIY projects I’ve seen on Pinterest and elsewhere online, I decided to spray paint it white. I knew it would take several coats, but otherwise it should be simple: just point and shoot, right?

Wrong.

I did know to paint the pieces before putting them together. At first I was holding the can too far away, so most of the paint went into the air rather than on the cabinet. (I was thinking, “Wow, there is more aerosol than paint in this thing! Then I realized the problem.) But when I got close enough for the paint to stick, then I had problems with drips, sputters, puddles, and uneven coverage. When I tried to dab off some of the drips, it took a whole chunk of paint out, down to the wood. I was SO frustrated. My husband came home at that point and took pity on me and helped me. I had been holding the button on the paint can down continuously while spraying back and forth, but he took short quick individual strokes back and forth. He sanded off some of the problems areas, and multiple coats of paint evened out everything else. I also learned the cheap 96 cent spray paint is not the best. Krylon worked the best for us.

We let the pieces cure for about a week, and then Jim assembled the cabinet for me last weekend. I had also wanted to put some decorative scrapbook paper on the back wall of the cabinet, to look something like this or this or this or this. But I just used two-sided tape because I wasn’t sure if I’d leave it and wanted it to be easy to get off or change.

So, here is the finished product:

(Kindly ignore the other ~~junk~~ stuff on and around the work table – I’m still working on the rest of the room. 🙂 )

I love it. I like that it’s near at hand and I can roll it out when desired and put whichever machine I’m using on top, but I can keep it all tucked here out of the way otherwise.

I may decide I want to keep the Cricut out on the table after all, but if I do, I have plenty of other things I could store here.

The pink floral paper at the back really doesn’t show up except when I use the flash on the camera: otherwise it just looks dark back there. So in a sense that was kind of a waste, but mentally I’m glad to know it’s there.

I’m just tickled that this worked so well. This room is really starting to come together and be more functional.

I’m linking this project up with:

And

This post will be also linked to Women Living Well.

The Hidden Art of Homemaking Book Club: Chapter 2: “What Is Hidden Art?”

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Barbara Harper

It’s Week 2 of The Hidden Art of Homemaking Book Club hosted by Cindy at Ordo Amoris where we’re discussing Edith Schaeffer’s book, The Hidden Art of Homemaking, a chapter at a time.

Chapter 2 is “What Is Hidden Art?” Edith defines it as art found in the “minor” or “everyday” areas of life rather than art as one’s occupation or profession. Because we have different gifts and interests, the “hidden art” in each of our lives might look a little different. Because we have multiple demands on our time, no one can do it all. But incorporating some degree of artistry and creativity will require some discipline and prioritizing:

“All art involves conscious discipline. If one is going to paint, do sculpture, design a building or write a book, it will involve discipline in time and energy — or there would never be any production at all to be seen, felt or enjoyed by ourselves or others. To develop ‘Hidden Art’ will also, of course, take time and energy – and the balance of the use of time is a constant individual problem for all of us: what to do, and what to leave undone. One is always having to neglect one thing in order to give precedence to something else. The question is one of priorities” (p. 32).

But the discipline and prioritizing are worth it.

“It is true that all men are created in the image of God, but Christians are supposed to be conscious of that fact, and being conscious of it should recognize the importance of living artistically, aesthetically, and creatively, as creative creatures of the Creator. If we have been created in the image of an Artist, then we should look for expressions of artistry, and be sensitive to beauty, responsive to what has been created for us” (p. 32).

That doesn’t mean we can or should “drop everything to concentrate on trying to develop into great artists” (p. 32), nor does it necessarily mean we need to take courses in Art, which can sometimes discourage, making us feel “‘outside’ the magic circle of the talented” (p. 33). But we begin to develop an eye for seeing the artistic and then incorporating it in everyday ways.

I loved this chapter on many levels. I liked the encouragement to seek the beauty in everyday life as well as the acknowledgement that we’re limited in what we can do, and that’s ok.

In the “middle age” of life I’m in now, those limitations actually help provide focus. For instance, I’d love to learn how to play an instrument. I know I could take lessons even now in my mid-50s (I know an 84-year-old who takes lessons!) But I’ve sometimes said I have enough things I want to do to keep me occupied til I’m over 100. The time it would take to practice and learn an instrument well enough to begin to enjoy it is time I’d rather spend in other pursuits right now (though sometimes I’m still tempted!)

But though lessons of some kind can be beneficial and enjoyable, the focus of this book is more on little touches and everyday ways to incorporate creativity. I’m looking forward to the next chapters!

There is a Hidden Art of Homemaking Pinterest Board where members have been posting some of the everyday beauty in their lives, mostly outdoors shots so far. Here are some from around the house (some current, some past):

You can find others’ thoughts on Chapter 2 here. Normally the link-up post is on Tuesdays. My Tuesday this week was taken up with hubby’s surgery for a detached retina, but I hope to be posting these chapters on or before Tuesdays from here on out.

Thank you for praying

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Barbara Harper

We had to be at the eye care center at 6:30 a.m. this morning. Ugh! I am so not a morning person. But we made it and everything went well with Jim’s surgery for a detached retina. I’ve known three people in my life who lost their vision in the affected eye from a detached retina permanently, so I was a bit antsy. But they say they have a 90% success rate.

It will be a few weeks before he is completely healed from the surgery and we know how his vision will be affected. Today he has to wear an eye patch and sit bent over with his head on a counter or table, looking down. Not too comfortable for long stretches, but it’s due to a gas bubble placed in the eye and the need to keep it in the proper position. We have to go back tomorrow and will see then whether he’ll have to keep wearing the patch and will discuss when he can go back to work. They had a whole list of things he can’t do for certain amounts of time. He can’t fly for a few weeks or even drive to high elevations due to differences in pressure, so we’re hoping and praying nothing happens with his mom in that time frame.

So today’s a quiet day of rest and recuperation. We’ll see what tomorrow brings, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he is mainly supposed to rest for the remainder of the week.

Thanks so much to those of you who prayed after yesterday’s post. It was greatly appreciated! If you feel so led, keep ’em coming. 🙂

You never know what a day will bring forth…

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Barbara Harper

A week and a half ago, Jim started having some trouble with his eyes: a lot of floaters, some black spots, and a small dark area. He went to the eye doctor, but the one he usually saw was not in. The doctor he did see dilated his eyes, said everything looked fine, and the problems were just part of aging.

But the dark spot grew, especially over this last weekend, so Jim went in again, this time to the doctor he usually sees, who diagnosed a detached retina. They sent us over to a specialist for surgery, which we thought would take place immediately. But that doctor scheduled us to come back tomorrow, and in the meantime did a little laser work on the other eye, which had a few places that could precipitate detachment on that eye.

We’d appreciate your prayers, not only for his eyesight in itself, but because his vision is essential to his line of work.