Category Archives: Memes

The Week In Words

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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 made me stop and think this week:

I have not read anything by John Piper except the occasional quote, but I agree with this, found on a friend’s Facebook:

We have thankful days and unthankful days. And even our thankful days are not as thankful as they should be. Just think of how joyful and thankful you would be if your heart responded to God himself and his ten thousand gifts with admiration and gratitude of which He is worthy. – John Piper

This was from another friend’s Facebook:

Fight for us, O God, that we not drift numb and blind and foolish into vain and empty excitements. Life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst. Heaven is too great, hell is too horrible, eternity is too long that we should putter around on the porch of eternity. — John Piper

I have to admit I am struggling a bit with this one. I’d be interested to know the context from which it came. I don’t think he is calling for a life of asceticism: I don’t think there is anything wrong with playing word games on Facebook for relaxation and brain exercise or watching a video with the family. I think the latter, in fact, can enhance the spiritual — if everything we ever say to others is serious and spiritual, I think they’d turn us off after a while, but just relaxing and having some fun and fellowship can open the gateways for relationships and for other serious conversations. But, yes, by and large we do need to be careful to maintain focus and balance and not let “good” pursuits crowd out the “best.”

And from yet another friend’s Facebook:

In fear-based repentance, we don’t hate sin for itself, and it doesn’t lose its attractive power. We learn only to refrain from it for our own sake. Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves, but joy-based repentance makes us hate sin as we rejoice over God’s sacrificial love …& see what it cost him to save us. What most assures of God’s unconditional love is what most convicts us of the evil of sin. — Tim Keller

I am struggling a bit with this one, too. I think fear has its place and I’d like to understand more what he means by “joy-based repentance.” The Bible does talk about godly sorrow leading to repentance. But to me the value in the quote is the focus that our repentance shouldn’t be just about getting ourselves out of trouble or fearing consequences, but rather it is based on the offense of a holy God and yet His mercy and grace in making a way for us to be forgiven.

Finally, this from F. B. Meyer’s Our Daily Walk for November 10 on gentleness as a fruit of the Holy Spirit struck a chord with me:

It is not easy to cultivate this fruit of the Spirit because it has many counterfeits. Some people are naturally easy-going, devoid of energy and ambition, at heart cowardly, or in spirit mean. Many of us are characterized by a moral weakness and decrepitude that make it easy for us to yield rather than contest in the physical or intellectual arena.

But in gentleness there must be the consciousness of a considerable reserve of force. The gentleness of God is combined with omnipotence…It is the prerogative of great strength to be gentle.

The thought of gentleness as being strength under control rather than just being easy-going and yielding gave me much food for thought.

In that same devotional Meyer quotes Thomas a Kempis:

“If thou wilt be borne with, bear also with another. Endeavour to be patient in bearing with the defects and infirmities of others, what sort soever they be: for that thyself also hast many failings which must be borne by others.”

Amen.

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 in the comments. 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.

Note: The Mr. Linky site says: “System is currently down for emergency maintenance.” If it comes back up during the day, I’ll add your links: meanwhile, just leave them in the comments. Sorry about that!

Flashback Friday: Salute to Veterans

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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 this week is:

Yesterday was Veteran’s Day, so this is a good opportunity to reflect on the veterans we knew and loved in our early years. Were/Are either of your parents or other family members active military personnel or veterans? What branch? When did they serve; was it during wartime or peacetime? Did they share much about their experiences with you or others? When you were growing up, was the USA (or your country, for those outside the US) involved in a war? What do you remember about it and how did it impact you? Are you, your spouse, or any of your children veterans?

My father was in the Air Force, and I do remember he lied about his age to get in. He served during the Korean conflict and spent some time in Okinawa, but other than that he never said much about his military service. I did write a few years ago (to the Veteran’s Administration, I think) to request a copy of his military record, but since our move I am not sure exactly where it is. One of the very few mementos I have from him is a medal for sharp-shooting:

Dad's sharpshooting medal

His younger brother, my uncle, was on active duty during the Viet Nam war, so that war was brought a little closer to home. That uncle was the one who had three daughters close to my age, and one time he sent all of us a Viet Namese doll. It’s one of those things I wish I still had. One other specific memory of that time is that my parents used to make tapes (reel to reel, I think) to send to him, then he’d record a message and send them back. I know they must have done so to hear each other’s voices —  though maybe it was just because neither brother was a writer — and I imagine phone service directly where he was might have been hard to come by. One time they had a whole group of people on hand to make a recording — I don’t remember if it was a family gathering or a group of friends — but it kind of backfired, because instead making him feel a part of the gathering, it made him feel more isolated and lonely. He did go on to become a career serviceman. I know other uncles and grandfathers must have also served, but I don’t know anything about the particulars.

My husband’s father was in the Navy — he also lied about his age and joined to escape a pretty bad home environment. He fought during part of WWII, and I remember him saying he was part of the battle at Midway, but other than that I don’t remember much about his service. He also did not talk much about it.

This is my husband’s parents in their early years together:

This is from my father-in-law’s funeral:

I have always liked that picture of two old veterans paying their respects.

This is on my mother-in-law’s wall:

When my father passed away, he also received a military funeral with a 21-gun salute, and I have to say I so respect and appreciate those men who serve in that capacity to send off their brother-in-arms with repect and honor even when they did not know him personally.

My step-father was in the Navy and I know he traveled a lot, but I can only remember his being in Japan. I do not remember for sure, but I don’t think he saw any combat. I think he was between the Viet Nam era and the Desert Storm era. He did benefit greatly from VA benefits in taking courses after he got out of the Navy and became a diesel mechanic, which stood him in good stead all these years.

My husband’s oldest brother was in the Navy (when the slogan was “Join the Navy, See the World” — but he remained posted in the States during his service), but neither my husband nor my sons nor my brother were in military service. I’ve been very glad, especially as my sons approached the age where they would have been able to enlist. that they didn’t have to. Though I admire the military greatly and am so thankful for all they do, and we would support any of our family member’s who wanted to join, it would be hard to willingly send a family member into harm’s way. I have just fleetingly wondered, though, if they miss something by not serving in that way — something of camaraderie, service, sacrifice — that only the military can provide. I hope not — I trust God will develop whatever character qualities He wants in them in whatever way He sees fit.

The Week In Words

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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 especially spoke to me this week:

From a friend’s Facebook:

Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened. — Winston Churchill

Sad, but all too true.

From another friend’s Facebook:

This life therefore is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health but healing; not being but becoming; not rest but exercise…. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not finished, but it is going on…This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.” — Martin Luther on sanctification

Though we are made righteous in Christ at the moment of salvation, the outworking of that into our everyday lives takes a lifetime. It can be discouraging that we’re so far from what we should be — for me, it seems like the farther I go along the farther away I am — but it is encouraging that we’re still in a process of growth.

I found these quotes about reading through one link from Semicolon‘s blog leading to another and finally ending up here:

“[The fairy tale] stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: The reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.” —C. S. Lewis, in Of Other Worlds

“Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.” —C. S. Lewis, in Of Other Worlds

“If good novels are comments on life, good stories of this sort (which are very much rarer) are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience.” —C. S. Lewis, in Of Other Worlds

Great thoughts on how even fiction can enrich our imaginations and enhance our understanding.

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.

“A” Random Dozen But Not “The” Random Dozen

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Linda at 2nd Cup of Coffee is discontinuing her weekly Random Dozen meme for now, maybe forever, possibly bringing it back some time as a monthly rather than weekly meme.

I was poking around my saved drafts yesterday looking for a post I thought I had started but never finished. I did find the post in question, but I also found, at the bottom of the “Recent Drafts” section of my blog dashboard, a “View All” button. I clicked it, and, voila, there were about 18 post drafts when I thought I only had about 5. I rummaged through them and found this meme that I had seen somewhere, partially answered, and left to sit there since last May.

So, being in the habit of feeling random and memey on Wednesdays, I decided to pull it out and finish it for today.

1. What time do you usually wake up in the morning? 5 a.m. weekdays, “whenever” on Saturdays, 5:30 on Sundays.

2. What do you do for the first hour of your day? Go to the bathroom, shower, get something to drink and take my Synthroid with, have some quiet time with my Bible, get Jesse’s breakfast and make his lunch, start getting ready to take him to school.

3. Where did or will you have lunch today? Home.

4. What did you or will you be eating lunch? My favorite lunch is leftovers — depending on what we have left over — or going out with family or friends. Today there is leftover creamed chicken and biscuits from last night plus a ham and chicken dish Jason invented on Monday. Don’t know yet which I’ll have.

5. What is your best high school memory? Graduation? 😀 I did enjoy the latter two years of high school but can’t think of a standout memory just now.

6. Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes. I have little black flats I wear every day.

7. What does a perfect Sunday afternoon include for you? Dinner with all the family, then a nap.

8. Was there one book that you read as a child that you still cherish? A Child’s Garden of Verses.

9. How would the people that know you personally describe you? I’m not sure. Probably quiet. My kids would say I’m a good cook. My Home Ec. teacher did not say so. But I think I’ve learned since then.

10. How would the people who only know you online describe you? I don’t know — how would you describe me?

11. How will you be treating yourself today? I usually treat myself to too many sweets or seconds.

12. What is your definition of being spiritual? Are you spiritual? This is one of the questions that had been left unanswered, and I was probably going to mull it over before answering and then just forgot all about the meme. To me the word “spiritual” connotes some kind of belief in a higher being outside ourselves, some kind of need to nurture soul and spirit, but is not necessarily Christian in its belief system. So by that definition I would say, yes, I do believe there is a “higher power” or Being and that I need to be rightly related to Him, but not in a vague, nebulous way. I do believe it matters what one believes in and I do not believe all spiritual paths lead to peace here or heaven hereafter. I believe in the God of the Bible, His Son and my Savior Jesus Christ, and I believe He communicates with us through His Word. On the other hand, “religious” has the connotation to many as being the system by which we work out what we believe, and in that sense I would say I am religious because we are supposed to work out our lofty ideals and bedrock doctrine into everyday life, but for some the emphasis is more on the works or the system rather than the belief. So while both words apply to some extent, neither one hits the nail exactly on the head. I usually just say I am a Christian, though some say “Christ-follower” these days.

If you’d like to do this same meme, feel free, and let me know if you do so I can come and see your answers, or feel free to answer in the comments if you’d like.

The Week In Words

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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 especially spoke to me this week:

I mentioned on Saturday’s Laudable Linkage a quote from Insignificant Is Beautiful by Mark Galli (HT to Washing the Feet of the Saints). Here is another one:

When we think of making a difference, we think about making the world a better place for the next generation, not caretaking people who have no future. This is one reason we are quick to push the incontinent into “managed care” staffed with “skilled nurses.” No question that this is indeed a necessary move for many families—I had to do it with my own father, sad to say. But let’s face it. A fair amount of our motive is mixed. How much skill does it take to clean up excrement from an elderly body? Mostly it takes forbearance—and a willingness to give oneself night and day to something that, according to our usual reckoning, is not all that significant.

While the whole article is not about caring for the elderly, it makes the point that quietly taking care of someone’s most personal needs behinds the scenes can be ministry just as much as the more visible and seemingly higher-impact works. I highly recommend that whole article.

Seen at Challies:

When I consider my crosses, tribulations and temptations, I shame myself almost to death thinking of what they are in comparison to the sufferings of my blessed Savior, Jesus Christ. —Martin Luther

That definitely puts things into perspective. Nothing any of us has faced can compare to what He underwent for us.

And from Start Somewhere: Losing What’s Weighing You Down from the Inside Out by Calvin Nowell and Gayla Zoz:

My problem was that I was trying to get God to surrender to me.

That one pulled me up short. When we’re wanting our own way that’s exactly what we’re doing, but I never thought about it in quite that way before.

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.

Flashback Friday: Halloween

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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 this week is:

What was Halloween like when you were growing up? Did your family participate? If not, was there a substitute activity? Did your school or church have a fall festival or carnival? Were there stipulations regarding costumes? What sorts of activities did they have? What about Halloween parties? Have you ever bobbed for apples or been on a hayride? What are your memories of “haunted houses”? (I’m not referring to the ultra-scary, secular ones, just the fun kid ones, with bowls of grapes and cold spaghetti!) If you went trick-or-treating, what were the rules, both for trick-or-treating and for candy consumption? What types of costumes did you wear? Were they store-bought or homemade? Did you carve a jack-o-lantern? How are your children’s experiences similar or different to yours? And the most important question: Do you like candy corn? What is your favorite (and least favorite!) Halloween candy?

My family did allow us to trick-or-treat. I can’t remember any of my costumes except I know I wanted to be a princess one year. We usually had store-bought costumes with the plastic face masks, and I can remember the masks getting all sweaty and irritating after a short while. But it was fun to dress up and get candy and wasn’t a terribly big deal.

One cousin did have not so much a haunted house but a creepy scary tour in his garage with low lights, boiled eggs for eyeballs, spaghetti for “guts,” etc, that we were supposed to run our hands through. It was pretty well done for his age and wasn’t scary so much as icky, but one other cousin got pretty shaken up by it. That’s the only thing like that I can remember going to — I had no interest in them as I got older.

I was a teen-ager before I heard of or attended an alternate party — the church I attended had something, but I don’t remember what it was called. It was basically a youth activity with games and food and fall decorations — wholesome, nothing scary, no costumes. I enjoyed it.

As a young wife and mom, I was pretty anti-Halloween. I had become a Christian as a teen-ager, and you can find a lot of reading material about the negative influences and symbolism of Halloween. Naturally I wanted to protect my children from anything evil. Plus the day seemed to stray from just innocent dressing up and gathering candy from neighbors to something darker and gory, and stories sprang up across the country about tainted candy. So I was very surprised when I saw faculty and staff from my Christian college let their kids trick-or-treat on campus in the faulty housing area. Of course, it was probably the safest place in the country to trick-or-treat, but, still, what about all those evil origins?

Well, over the years, after observing what several other Christian families did, I did come to the conclusion that it would be possible to celebrate the day as we did in my childhood, with just an opportunity to dress up and get candy, without endorsing evil. I never did feel comfortable letting my own children trick or treat, but we did give out candy as well as children’s tracts and a little leaflet a family in town published with a phone number kids could call to hear Bible stories. If I had young children today, I would probably let them trick-or-treat just on our street or maybe at a mall or zoo or somewhere like that with an organized candy distribution.I would still feel uncomfortable taking them to total strangers.

One of my close Mom friends did have a fall party several years in a row which I just loved. She purposefully kept it away from the day or week of Halloween for those who had problems with it, but she did ask kids to dress up. She had a theme each year: one year it was storybook or fairy tale characters (Jeremy and Jason were Robin Hood and Little John); another year it was clowns, another it was “what you want to be when you grow up.” She had games and prizes and fall decorations. It was a lot of fun.

One year when we were in GA and were discussing with the Awana leaders whether to have any kind of fall party with the kids, one couple strongly objected: they were so adamantly against Halloween that they were against doing anything at all related to costumes or candy or parties anywhere near the date. But I have no objections at all to alternate activities. In fact, in many missionary stories I read, they came up with alternate activities to some of the pagan or unwholesome ones on purpose to help the Christians who might have been tempted to go back to situations that would have proven a major temptation for them.

The only time I dressed up for Halloween as an adult was when I worked at  a fabric store in a mall and had to work Halloween Day. I made a Raggedy Ann costume and wore the dress (without the pinafore) for many years afterward. My kids used the “hair” for clown costumes.

Me as Raggedy Ann

Working at a fabric shop, it was fun to see what different people came up with.

I do remember bobbing for apples once — I didn’t like it very well (mainly getting water up my nose). Now the unsanitariness of several people putting their mouths (and sometimes noses) in the same tub of water grosses me out. I can remember going on a hayride or two —  it was ok, but I didn’t really see the point. I don’t remember ever carving a jack-o-lantern. I don’t like candy corn. I ate it some as a child and thought it was okay, thought not a favorite, but I can’t stand it now. My favorite candy is Lindt Lindor Truffles, but people don’t usually give those out at Halloween. 🙂 But I like the little fun-size M&Ms, Three Musketeers, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as well as the Hershey’s Miniatures (except for the dark chocolate ones).

And for a nostalgic visit to some of the old-style candies —

The Week In Words

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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 some that caught my attention this week:

The following is from Jeanne Damoff:

Fear is a liar and a thief. A liar, because it fills our minds with hypothetical horrors, and a thief because it steals precious hours we can never get back and strips them of peace. Fear is a cloud, obscuring what’s real, and what’s real is something that can’t be imagined. It can only be received and is only given when it’s needed.

I had never thought of fear in those terms, but that’s so true.

From Warren Wiersbe’s With the Word commenting on the memorial Israel was to set up in Joshua 4 and the need to memorialize or remember how God has led in the past not only to praise Him but as a testimony to future generations (Psalm 78:1-6):

When you have living faith in a living God, the past is not “dead history.” It throbs with a living reality.

I get aggravated when some people discount all of history since it is about “dead guys.” That’s pretty short-sighted!

And from the same book concerning Calebs’ claim to his inheritance in Joshua 14:

What an example for us to follow! Age did not hinder him, the disappointments of the past did not embitter him, and giants did not frighten him!

What particularly struck me about this was his not being embittered by the past. If you remember, Caleb and Joshua were the only ones willing to trust God and go forth when the Israelites came to Canaan the first time, but the others were afraid and refused. Israel was then assigned to the wilderness for forty years while the old generation died off, and Caleb had to wait and wander even though he had been faithful. Yet he didn’t complain and was never bitter — he patiently waited until it was God’s timing for him to receive portion. A lesson to me: I probably would have been inwardly chafing much of those forty years. (I Peter 2:19-25 has more to say on suffering when you’ve done right. What greater example is there of that than the Lord Jesus?)

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.

Flashback Friday: Families

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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:

How was your family structured when you were growing up? Did you grow up with both original parents in the home? If your parents divorced, did you go back and forth between them? Whether divorced or widowed, did your parent remarry? How old were you? Was yours a multi-generational household with grandparents living with you? Did your mom work outside the home, and if so, was it full-time or part-time? Was there a clearly delineated division of labor between your parents (or parent and step-parent) and how traditional was it? Did your parents believe in child labor?! That is, how structured were chores? What responsibility, if any, did you have for things like doing your own laundry, fixing your own school lunch, etc.? Were your parents do-it-yourself-ers or did they hire people for repairs, painting, etc.? Is your current marriage/family structure similar to the way you were raised? What do you do differently than you did then?

My parents married right after my mom got out of high school. They were originally going to wait two years and work and save money, but my father’s father was dying and told them that if they wanted him at their wedding, they’d better go ahead and have it. Years later, with the wisdom of hindsight, my mom said that if they had waited, they probably would not have gotten married. But then I wouldn’t be here. 🙂

My father was an alcoholic and a very insecure, jealous, angry man, though all of those characteristics were just in embryonic form at that point. He probably was not a full-fledged alcoholic then, but he did drink, and my mom thought that when they got married that would take care of the jealousy and insecurity. She was wrong, and may I say to anyone contemplating the same thing, you will most likely be wrong as well.

I grew up with both parents in a pretty traditional nuclear family the first several years. There was some period of time we lived with my mother’s father, but I don’t remember how long that was. Overall things were pretty stable — an occasional fight, and occasional drunken binge, smatterings of financial trouble. But I do remember feeling more happy than not, the occasional blow-ups passing through like a summer storm.

They had a fairly traditional marriage. My mom did various things as we grew up: sometimes she stayed home, sometimes she worked full time, sometimes she worked at night. When she worked, sometimes we had a baby-sitter come to our house, sometimes we were taken to a baby-sitters house, once we went to a daycare. The daycare was the worst; Mom at home was best. As the oldest, I became chief baby-sitter when my parents thought I was old enough. I think those experiences were some of the main influences towards my strong desire to be a stay-at-home mom. Even as a teen-ager, I hated coming home to an empty house after school.

But the anger and drinking escalated. I don’t know whether it was the natural progression of things or whether my dad just couldn’t handle life’s increasing pressures with five children or what, but it got to the point where neither my mom nor any of us kids could do much of anything right, there was constant tension and fear of saying or doing the wrong thing to set him off. I don’t remember physical abuse per se beyond an occasional undeserved spanking: I do remember my father slapping my mother once. Years later she said there was more physical abuse than that, but I don’t know whether I just blocked it out or they kept it behind closed doors. But the withering verbal abuse was bad enough.

When I was almost 16, my mother left my father after 18 years of marriage (and, as I shared in my testimony, God used these things to bring me to Himself) for another man who was 13 years younger than her, only seven years older than I was…and, yes, that was pretty strange at first. He and I did eventually come to respect and care for each other, and he and my mom were together until she passed away, I think some 22 years later. They had one child together, but I rarely think of her as my half-sister — we were all just siblings. My brother lived mostly with my dad, and my next oldest sister stayed with him for short periods of time, but the rest of us stayed with my mom.

My parents’ division of labor at home was pretty traditional. But when my mom and step-father got together, many Saturdays you’d fins him cooking and her cleaning out the garage, at least until she got older and started having health problems and became less active. The older she got the less she seemed to like to cook. My step-father makes a wonderful pepper steak — I crave it sometimes.

We kids didn’t often have specific regular chores when I was younger, but we were expected to help any time we were asked. As a teen-ager it was my responsibility to get dinner started: I’d call my mom at work and see what she wanted me to do, and, depending on what it was, I’d often have it pretty much ready by the time she got home. I know I helped with general house-cleaning, but I can’t remember if I had specific regular responsibilities or just generally pitched in.

Both my dad and step-dad were do-it-yourselfers. My step-dad was a wiz at fixing cars until they became computerized — I don’t know how many weekends some friend or another brought their car over for him to look at.

My own home is pretty traditional. I cook, though my husband grills sometimes. I do the bulk of the cleaning and shopping, though he sometimes pitches in. He would likely do anything I asked him to around the house, but he works long hours and I don’t want to pile more on him by expecting him to do housework as well, plus his weekends are usually pretty full. He takes care of the outside, the cars, and pays bills. I did have my kids do basics like picking up their toys and such when they were little, and I don’t remember when they first started having regular household chores, but for many years almost every Saturday I would make a list of what needed to be done — usually vacuuming, dusting, and taking out small garbage cans — and let them take turns having first pick of whatever jobs they wanted most preferred to do. They also took turns unloading the dishwasher and taking out the kitchen garbage every night after dinner. They were responsible for their own rooms (when they were very little we cleaned their rooms together, but of course as they got older they took on more and more of it on their own). We had to adapt that as they started going to college. Now with just one at home, I’m having to take back some of those chores! But there is less to do in the realm of laundry and dishes, so I guess it balances out. They were also expected to help out with family projects like painting rooms, taking down wallpaper and tile when we remodeled the bathroom, etc. It was not only a help to us, it was a learning experience for them, and it had moments of fun family fellowship as well. They also divided up the grass-cutting.

Back to my dad for a moment, I told more of his story here, and he eventually did come to know the Lord. As I wrote there:

I was surprised that I had a great deal of anger in the years after he died — anger that our relationship wasn’t what it could have been, and though I couldn’t talk to him about it, anger at his anger. I felt it was kind of silly, really, to be angry at that point when there was no way to reconcile anything with him. I have read, though, that those feelings are pretty normal. What helps is to know that since he did come to trust Christ, now in heaven, where “the spirits of just men [are] made perfect,” knowing what he knows now, everything is all right on his end and he would do things differently if he could.

I just wanted to share that for anyone wrestling with similar family issues. I can forgive him now on that basis but more importantly on the basis of Christ’s forgiveness of me.

The Week In Words

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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 especially spoke to me this week:

From a friend’s Facebook status:

‎“The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.”

That caused a laugh as well as a reflection on its truth. There is a time for dreaming, but those dreams will never come to fruition without action most of the time — excepting those times, of course, when the Lord wants us to just wait on Him.

From another friend’s Facebook:

‎“Fundamentally, our Lord’s message was Himself. He did not come merely to preach a Gospel; He himself is that Gospel. He did not come merely to give bread; He said, ‘I am the bread.’ He did not come merely to shed light; He said, ‘I am the light.’ He did not come merely to show the door; He said, ‘I am the door.’ He did not come merely to name a shepherd; He said, ‘I am the shepherd.’ He did not come merely to point the way; He said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ ~J. Sidlow Baxter

I am most blessed when teaching, admonition, etc., points me straight to Christ Himself.

The following two come from the October 14 reading of Our Daily Walk by F. B. Meyer, commenting on Galatians 6:2: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

But sin is not the only burden we are to bear with our brethren. The young man or girl who fails to make good; the business man who meets with sudden reverse; those who suffer bitter disappointment; when faces are averted, and tongues are busily engaged in criticism–let us seek out the one who has consciously disappointed everybody, and help by our strong and tender sympathy. It is like the coming of the good Ananias into Saul’s darkness, with the greeting: “Brother Saul!”

And:

Sympathy means suffering with; and as we endeavour to enter into the griefs and sorrows of those around us, in proportion to the burden of grief that we carry do we succeed in lightening another’s load. You cannot bear a burden without feeling its pressure; and in bearing the burdens of others, we must be prepared to suffer with them.

I have to confess sometimes I want to help in a way that doesn’t cause me too much pressure or time or other expenditure of energy or attention. This reminds me of David’s declaration that he wouldn’t give to the Lord that which cost him nothing. To truly bear one another’s burden does cost, and I am so thankful the Lord chose to bear ours to the point of taking on human flesh, suffering, and dying for us. May I be willing to feel that pressure of bearing another’s burden just as others have done for me. And the first is a reminder to reach out to others especially when they’re feeling ostracized.

This last one comes from Warren Wiersbe’s With the Word commenting on Joshua 1:6, 7, 18:

‎“Be strong!” is much more than an admonition, for God’s commands are God’s enablements.

In that passage God is speaking to Joshua just after Moses had died and Joshua was named the new leader, and just before the Israelites’ entry into Canaan. If I were in Joshua’s situation, I’d feel a good bit of trepidation, but the rest of the chapter is filled with God’s promises and admonitions. Implicit within God’s commands is the ability to obey, not in our own strength, but in His. I think of  the lame person whom Jesus commanded to rise and walk and the man with the withered hand whom Jesus commanded to stretch forth his hand — things they could not do — yet they did not argue with Him about why they could not obey: they just did, at His Word, and found in the command the ability to obey. In Joshua 3, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant had to step into the waters of the Jordan River first before God parted the waters. Those situations are all such a rebuke to me, because I tend to want to experience the promises and know how things will work out before obeying.

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.

The Week In Words

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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 caught my eye this week:

From a friend’s Facebook:

“Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.”

Seen at Challies:

I will stay in prison till the moss grows on my eyebrows rather than make a slaughterhouse of my principles. —John Bunyan

From I’m Outnumbered!: One Mom’s Lessons in the Lively Art of Raising Boys by Laura Lee Groves in a chapter about media, p. 117:

A reader is an understander — he knows what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes.

She goes on to talk about how reading can develop empathy, compassion, and understanding by experiencing another’s viewpoint. I don’t think I had ever thought about it quite like that, but I agree.

From Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God by Noel Piper, in a chapter about Esther Ahn Kim, quoting from her book If I Perish,

Wherever Mother was, it was like a chapel of heaven around her.

I don’t think my kids could say that of me, but I wish they could. This was particularly remarkable because they were surrounded by idol-worshiping relatives, and her mother did not have church or a Bible but tried to live by what she was taught as a child by a missionary.

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.