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What’s On Your Nightstand: January

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Barbara Harper

The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read. You can learn more about it by clicking the link or the button.

Wow, January has flown by — I can’t believe there is less that a week of it left. But I am glad — I look forward to February and Valentine’s Day, and then spring isn’t far behind!

Since last time I have read:

Snow Day by Billy Coffey, reviewed here.

Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery, reviewed here.

Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery, reviewed here.

The Anne books were read in conjunction with Carrie‘s third annual Lucy Maud Montgomery Reading Challenge. I just finished the next book in the series, Anne of Windy Poplars, and hope to review it later today or tomorrow.

I also made headway in 50 People Every Christian Should Know: Learning From Spiritual Giants of the Faith by Warren Wiersbe but admittedly set it aside to concentrate on the Anne books this month. I’ve been dabbling in it for a long while and need to make a dedicated effort to finish it.

I have a whole stack to choose from this next month. I don’t often accept requests for reviewing books, but something about Song of Renewal by Emily Sue Harvey spoke to me, so that will definitely be in the queue for this month. Also lined up are A Memory Between Us by Sarah Sundin, Faithful by Kim Cash Tate (won from Mocha With Linda‘s Booking the Holidays giveaways) and Just Between You and Me by Jenny B. Jones.

I also have on hand Looking for Anne of Green Gables: The Story of L. M. Montgomery and Her Literary Classic, a biography of LMM by Irene Gammel. I wanted to read it in conjunction with the Lucy Maud Montgomery Reading Challenge but it is not likely I would finish it in time. But I would like to read it while the Anne books are still fresh in my mind. I haven’t decided yet whether to go ahead with it or save or for next year’s challenge. I also can’t decide whether to go on to Anne’s House of Dreams, which I was really looking forward to as, if memory serves, it was my second favorite of the series next to the first one, or to leave it for next year’s LMM challenge. The challenge ends this week, so I can’t do both by then…decisions, decisions!

Happy Reading!

The Week In Words

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Welcome to The Week In Words, where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us, attributing it to its source, which can be a book, newspaper, blog, Facebook — anything that you read. More information is here.

Here are a few that spoke to me this week:

This was quoted in an Elisabeth Elliot devotional, taken from a chapter in All That Was Ever Ours titled, “Fear, Suffering, Love”:

There are tenderhearted people who virtually object to the whole scheme of creation. They would neither have force used nor pain suffered; they talk as if kindness could do everything, even where it is not felt. Millions of human beings but for suffering would never develop an atom of affection. The man who would spare due suffering is not wise. Because a thing is unpleasant, it is folly to conclude it ought not to be. There are powers to be born, creations to be perfected, sinners to be redeemed, through the ministry of pain, to be born, perfected, redeemed, in no other way. ~ George MacDonald, What’s Mine’s Mine.

So true — I would rather there were no suffering, but God has His purposes in it and there are things accomplished through it.

I saw this on someone’s blogs after a series of one link leading to another:

While I regarded God as a tyrant I thought my sin a trifle; But when I knew Him to be my Father, then I mourned that I could ever have kicked against Him. When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so, and sought my good. ~ C. H. Spurgeon

It was the thought of God’s anger and punishment for my sin that made me aware of my need, but it was His love that drew me to Him for salvation.

From Robin Lee Hatcher’s Facebook about lessons from Exodus:

When God speaks to a responsive heart, it melts. When God speaks to an unresponsive heart, it hardens.

And back to Elisabeth Elliot again, this time from “As We Forgive Those….” from Love Has a Price Tag:

To forgive is to die. It is to give up one’s right to self, which is precisely what Jesus requires of anyone who wants to be his disciple.

“If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps, he must give up all right to himself, carry his cross every day and keep close behind me. For the man who wants to save his life will lose it, but the man who loses his life for my sake will save it.”

Following Christ means walking the road he walked, and in order to forgive us he had to die. His follower may not refuse to relinquish his own right, his own territory, his own comfort, or anything that he regards as his. Forgiveness is relinquishment. It is a laying down. No one can take it from us, any more than anyone could take the life of Jesus if he had not laid it down of his own will. But we can do as he did. We can offer it up, writing off whatever loss it may entail, in the sure knowledge that the man who loses his life or his reputation or his “face” or anything else for the sake of Christ will save it.

And that’s why it is so hard. 🙂 But the remembrance of His forgiveness of me helps me to forgive others — whatever they did to me is much less than my sin against Him.

If you’ve read anything that particularly spoke to you that you’d like to share, please either list it in the comments below or write a post on your blog and then put the link to that post (not your general blog link) in Mr. Linky below. I do ask that only family-friendly quotes be included. I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder.

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

Laudable Linkage

Posted on January 22, 2011 by Barbara Harper

It’s been a while since I posted a round-up of interesting reads on the web. Hope you find some of these useful.

Marriage:

Whose Wife Are You? Tim Challies discusses two different blog posts on what it means to be submissive to one’s own husband. Both original posts are linked there, but Tim does a nice job in pulling out the main elements and pointing out that there is much in marriage and home life which is not delineated in Scripture, so each may not follow exactly a particular book’s view of what the marriage relationship “should” look like.

Are you sure you want a husband who…?

Writing:

50 of the Best Websites for Writers.

Six Elements to a Writer’s Style.

Crafts/Sewing:

A variety of ideas for Organizing Fabric.

Edible Valentine’s treats.

Fabric Flower Tutorial.

Others:

Returning to Your First Love: Bible Memorization: Make a Commitment Booklet.

Four Women I Would Like to Thank on the 38th Anniversary of Roe vs Wade. Beautiful.

Spiritual Care of the Elderly.

Star Wars Meets The Princess Bride:

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share our favorite things from the last week. This has been a 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 a good week.

1. I made progress on several fronts after a week or two of feeling foggy.

2. Jason (middle son) had two job interviews last week and was called back for a second interview with one company this week.

3. Sunday nights are some of my favorite times. Though we’re not legalistic about it, we try not to do regular work on Sundays and try to keep the TV off that day, so after a big breakfast and dinner and kitchen clean-up, I’m “off” the rest of the day. We come home from church Sunday night and everyone gets a snack and we either play games or read, or just generally relax. And lately Sunday nights have been time for…

4. Face time. All the males in my family have an iPod 4 which has a feature called Face Time — kind of like Skype except on the iPod. Jeremy has been calling on Sunday nights and it is nice to talk as long as we want for free and to be able to talk to all of us at once or to pass the iPod around.

5. A new Bible. The cover on my old one was staring to tear. I’d been wanting one with a more decorative cover but at first had only seen them on versions other than the KJV. I use the NASB sometimes and my kids have an ESV, but I use the KJV most of the time and especially at church. I found this one during a Bible sale on the already marked-down price, plus it is large print without being too big and clunky — so I don’t have to put my reading glasses on and off between reading the text and looking at the preacher. The brown part of the cover is really soft — I have to keep myself from rubbing it.

I asked Mittu if it looked too teen-ager-ish, and she assured me it looked fine for any age. 🙂

Have a great weekend!

Flashback Friday: Inventions

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Mocha With Linda hosts a weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site. You can visit her site for more Flashbacks.

The prompt for today is:

What new inventions or technology came out when you were growing up that you remember being amazed at? Were your parents “early adopters”–did they get the “latest and greatest” pretty quickly or did they stick with the “tried and true”? What are some things that you remember being a big deal when your family got them? (These may be items like stereos or kitchen equipment or bigger things such as carpet.) Were your folks prone to updating their furniture periodically or did they keep their old furniture forever? How was the way they were raised impact the way you were raised? And how did your upbringing influence the way you are today?

I do remember when the first microwaves came out when I was a teen-ager. The family of a friend got one as a gift, and the dad was a little suspicious of them: he said he “could taste the microbes.” It was a while before we got one. At first everyone used them just for heating leftovers, but then people got a little more adventurous with them, and before long microwavable food proliferated in the stores. I remember at first this tannish plastic stuff was touted as microwave safe dishes (I just finally got rid of mine last month after not using it for years), but eventually people learned you could put anything in there except metal and some plastics.

I saw the transition in filming from only a few people having 16mm reel to reel films to many people having clunky video cameras on tripods (every school program or recital looked like a press conference) to almost everyone having a smaller hand-held video recorder to these days most people filming with their camera or cell phone.

I didn’t have central heating or AC or automatic dishwashers growing up (my aunt had central AC and I thought that was the height of luxury). We had fans going constantly in summer time and big clunky gas heaters in each room for heat during winter. It was a tremendous blessing to get an electric typewrite to replace my manual one in college. Diet sodas were limited and tasted awful. McDonald’s was a restaurant before my time but Happy Meals were introduced the year I was married, 1979.

Phones used to be rotary dialed with a twisted cord, and it was great when they invented longer cords so one could move about the house a bit more while talking. Of course, then came cordless phones (it’s funny to see an old TV show and remember how big and clunky they were at first) and eventually cell phones. Car phones originally required installation .

I remember in college having to accumulate punched cards about the size of a business envelope for registration. It was a really big deal that the science lab had a computer students could use. Personal computers were coming out right about the time I graduated from college, and we had an early Vic 20 and Commodore 64. The screens were dark and the letters were green and the only computer game was Pong. It’s amazing how much we played that!

The Hula Hoop was invented the year after I was born. Nondairy creamer was invented when I was 4, audio cassettes when I was 5 (although I remember my dad sending reel-to-reel audio cassettes back and forth to his brother in Viet Nam), permanent press fabric when I was 7, compact disks when I was 8 (though I don’t think they were widely used for years), the first hand-held calculator when I was 10, the ATM and bar-code scanner when I was 12, the VCR when I was 14, post-it notes when I was 17, cell phones and Walkmans when I was 22, the Apple MacIntosh when I was 27, Doppler radar when I was 31, answering machines when I was 34 (all of that info. came from this site.) It’s amazing how much of that we take for granted these days and how fast the technology for some of it advanced.

Whenever I go to a baby shower I am amazed at what has been invented since I had babies. A lot of it is really neat — sippy cups and portable car seats that double as a carrier and those little plastic things that help a baby sit up in a tub. But sometimes I want to reassure new moms that they really don’t need everything that’s out there. But I suppose we don’t really need all of any of the things that we have that are new inventions — yet we quickly learn to depend on them.

In my younger years money was tighter and my dad wasn’t inclined to get the latest “new thing.” When my mom and step-dad married, the money woes eased over time and they were a little quicker to get a new appliance or something but it just depended. I’m not so gadgety when it comes to kitchen and household things, but, again, it just depends on what it is and how expensive it is (it took me years to decide whether I wanted a George Foreman grill or not). All of the males in my family are very much into the latest technology, though, and are very much aware of when something new is coming. They usually don’t buy it right off the bat unless they can find a good deal on it — my husband is great at that. It used to be that any new technology was very expensive at first and then lowered in price over time, but it seems nowadays that doesn’t seem to be the case as much.

Furniture — both the family I came from and I tend to keep it until it’s pretty worn out before changing. I’m not one to rearrange furniture or decorations very much (it takes me too long to decide where to put things in the first place) though I am drawn to decorative things for the home and have to guard against accumulating too much.

This look back has been fun but makes me feel very old! Mostly I do enjoy the inventions that have proliferated over my lifetime.

Book Review: Anne of the Island

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I am participating in Carrie‘s third annual Lucy Maud Montgomery Reading Challenge and finished Anne of the Island, the third in the Anne of Green Gables series.

Anne of the Island covers Anne’s four years of college and her continuing growth into young womanhood. The excitement of finally going to college is mixed with the bittersweetness of leaving all that is familiar and dear in Avonlea. She boards with old friend Priscilla, meets a new frivolous but sweet friend in Philippa, and has regular outings with Gilbert, whom she is trying to keep as a friend only, and Charlie Sloan. She and her girlfriends find an ideal “house o’ dreams.” She undertakes her first writing for publication — with comical results. As she returns home for Christmas and summer vacations, she finds dear old Avonlea not quite the same as the children have grown, old friends face new crises, and even her relationship with bosom friend Diana Barry is not quite the same with Diana engaged. Her romantic ideals take a blow when her first proposal falls far below her dreams and she finds refusals more painful than romantic. And even when a Prince Charming does arrive on the scene, Anne finds the whole situation…not quite what she expected.

This brought back some of my own feelings during college — an exciting time of growth and change and missing home yet not feeling quite the same there. I thought Montgomery captured all of that beautifully as well as Anne’s own maturing when real life turned out differently from her dreams. New adventures and characters as well as the same beloved ones balance out the growth and change. Though Anne’s character is refined and tempered with sadness and disappointments, her “spunk,” love of life, and idealism remain.

I didn’t mark as many quotes from this book as I did from Anne of Avonlea, but here are a couple I liked:

“Charlie Sloan…talked unbrokenly on and never, even by accident, said one thing that was worth listening to.” May I strive to be “worth listening to” rather than just babbling.

At Diana’s wedding: “The only real roses are the pink ones… They are the flowers of love and faith.” That tickled my pink-rose-loving heart.

I loved this chapter in Anne’s life, and I especially loved how it ended — though I’ll leave that for you to discover if you haven’t yet.

(This review will be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday review of books.)

Booking Through Thursday: Periodically

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly meme centering on the subject of books which poses a question or a thought for participants to discuss. The question for this week is:

Even I read things other than books from time to time … like, Magazines! What magazines/journals do you read?

I subscribe to:

Frontline

Victoria from my “adopted mom” who has kept me supplied with it for years.

Family Fun, which I’ve loved, but am not going to renew because it’s mainly for families with younger kids. Love some of their neat ideas for parties and holidays.

Taste of Home

Phyllis Hoffman Celebrate. Love the numerous neat ideas for special occasions.

Southern Lady

Martha Stewart Living

Real Simple

I also sometimes pick up Romantic Homes — I used to subscribe but a new editor and focus changed it too much for me — and some of Better Home and Garden’s specialty magazines like Do It Yourself or a craft magazine.

The problem is — I usually prefer to read books rather than magazines, so they stack up until I can’t stand it any more and then go through a big pile of them at one time. So I think I am going to let Martha Stewart and Real Simple run out — though sometimes they talk me into resubscribing with a good deal. 🙂

Wednesday Hodgepodge

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Joyce From This Side of the Pond hosts a weekly Wednesday Hodgepodge of questions for fun and for getting to know each other.

1. Do you like your name? Were you named after someone? If you have children how did you settle on their names?

This is 3 questions! 🙂 I did not used to like my name — I thought it sounded too “sharp” and I liked flowy romantic names like Crystal Lovelace when I was growing up (I remember having that as a name for something I was writing, but I don’t remember anything else about it.) Plus “Barbara” means “stranger,” so whenever name meanings came up, there were obvious jokes. But then once my pastor preached on Christians being “strangers and pilgrims” on this earth, and another time I found verses about God loving the stranger. So the meaning made it more special and it grew on me. Just please don’t call me Barb. I was named after my mother’s sister (who went by Bobbye), and my middle name came from my father’s sister.

With my own children, we looked at baby name books and meanings and narrowed it down to a list and eventually chose one. All our sons’ names start with J though we didn’t intend for that to happen when we started out.

2. How do you define success?

Had to think about this one a while. I think I’d say “Reaching one’s goals honorably.”

3. Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy?

I like them both, but Jeopardy wins because of the variety of questions and because I hate Wheel of Fortune’s Lose a Turn and Bankrupt spots on the wheel.

4. If you could own any single object that you don’t have now, what would that object be?

The living room chairs we have had on order for several weeks now but have had a series of problems in obtaining.

5. What is something that inspires you?

Missionary biographies.

6. Meatloaf-yea or nay? If its a yay how do you make yours?

YEA! I love meatloaf. Well…most of them. Mine is made in the microwave and has a sauce on top made with ketchup and brown sugar.

7. Which is more admirable-the ability to organize and be methodical or the ability to adapt and make do?

It’s valuable to have both. Both would be hindered by the lack of the other.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

My son posted this on Facebook a while back with the comment that there was probably a spiritual application that could be made.It has to do with studies that show we can’t walk in a straight line without some visible guide point. Yes. I can see a spiritual application! I don’t know how blind people are affected, though. But it was interesting.

Progress

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I’ve felt like I’ve been in a bit of malaise or brain fog the last couple of weeks, and, interestingly, I was scrolling through old posts yesterday looking for something and noticed I had a post saying about the same thing the first few weeks of January almost every year. I think a lot of it is due to transitioning back into routine after the holidays, but that was disrupted a bit due to several snow days. But after getting a lot of sleep, I think I’m back on an even keel. Yesterday brought progress in several areas:

Temperatures in the 40s! I didn’t have anything to do with that, of course, but after days and days of sub-freezing weather, 40 felt pretty nice, and most of the ice and snow has finally melted. Winter’s not over yet, but this little break was heartening.

Lists. In spite of “brain fog,” some of my problem was just laziness. I’d think of things to work on but would veg out with solitaire on the computer instead. After confessing that to the Lord, I made a running list of various things that needed to be done and got started on it yesterday.

I’m still working on decorating the house. It’s going slowly both because it takes me a while to decide where to put things and because I need Jim’s help for some of the heavier items — plus the holidays put all of that on hold. I concentrated on our room yesterday and got several things up on the wall, several boxes put away, and a dust ruffle and dresser scarf ironed and in place. A bit of lace and decorativeness does my heart good. I do still plan to post pictures of the house, hopefully soon. We’re still waiting on those living room chairs…

I’ve been able to make headway on this cross stitch project here and there during the evenings. Jason commented that I’d been working on it a long time, and a variation of the song came to mind…”Little by little, stitch by stitch…” I don’t even remember when I started it, but it’s fun seeing it come together. I’m dreading the words in the hoop, though, and left them for later. They’re the most important segment but they don’t follow the lines and squares — I may write them on with a washable fabric marker and stitch over them.

Anger…which is actually a regression rather than a progression. I’m not in general an angry person every day, and some times, by God’s grace, I can take things in stride. But sometimes I can get blindingly white-hot angry in a flash, and often over some stupid little thing. And it’s worse when I’m in “the right” (or else believe I am) because it’s harder to let that anger go. Such an incident happened yesterday (no, not with anyone in my family), and after the emotion cooled down I was terribly ashamed and discouraged. I didn’t really say anything, though if the other person was alert they could have picked up on it. But the roiling under the surface was neither healthy nor honoring to the Lord. I confessed that to the Lord as well, and a couple of verses came to mind (“Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools” [Ecclesiastes 7:9] was one, as was “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” [James 1:20]), yet I still felt shrouded in defeat. So this morning I did a brief word study on “anger” and “wrath,” mainly in Proverbs and the epistles. Several helped, but one that realy jumped out at me was, “The discretion of a man deferreth his anger; and it is his glory to pass over a transgression” (Proverbs 19:11). Meditation on that and some of the others is helping.

So, though winter will still be here for a while and I’ll always have a list of things to do and an old nature to contend with…I am encouraged to see some progress.

The Week In Words

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few that spoke to me this week:

From a friend’s Facebook:

Some pursue happiness, others create it.

From another friend’s Facebook:

God doesn’t merely want a change of habit. He wants a change of heart, which will lead to a change of habit.

Seen at Challies:

Trials and tribulations are very good for us in that they help us to know ourselves better than we knew ourselves before. —D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Among the many purposes God has for suffering, this is one. Usually, for me anyway, I discover a deficiency in myself or some new way in which I need to trust in or yield to the Lord more.

And, actually, I heard this first rather than read it, but then I wrote it down and then read it. 🙂

God does not love us because we’re valuable; we’re valuable because God loves us. ~ Adrian Rogers

Also since last time I shared quotes about winter and quotes from Anne of Avonlea in different posts.

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!