The Lord has really blessed — I got everything on my list from this post done plus got most of my shopping done and a handful of other errands. I found some really great deals — that I can’t tell about til after Christmas — the stores weren’t too crowded, people were pretty pleasant, and I got a special little project for my siblings done (actually Jeremy did most of it) — that I also can’t elaborate on til after Christmas.

I feel about like I’ve just run a marathon, though! After I wrap presents and kind of assess where I stand, I’ll see if I need to do any more shopping tomorrow. I do still need to make a pre-Christmas grocery store run, but I want to avoid other stores Saturday and Monday!! (We don’t usually shop on Sundays, anyway.)

Oh — and I need to do laundry and declutter in there somewhere.

My learning style seems to be “Do it wrong first and then you’ll see a better way.” I’ve been kicking myself for not getting some of this done earlier and I have seen ways I could do better next year. I am thankful the Lord is gracious and helps us and gives us strength.

Jason, my middle son, is having two wisdom teeth pulled tomorrow. Fun way to spend Christmas break, eh? We saw the oral surgeon last summer, and the x-rays showed the bottom two were coming in at an angle that would push the rest of his teeth in, and the roots of one were very near a nerve. He said we could wait til Christmas to have them pulled, but he wouldn’t advise waiting much longer.

He only has the bottom two — the x-rays showed no wisdom teeth at all on the top. So that’s good.

I’d appreciate your prayers that all will go well with no complications as he heals. He’s never been under anesthesia before. He usually handles physical problems, the few he’s had, very well.

I told him at least this will take his mind off the fact that his girlfriend is five states away for the rest of Christmas break…

Our Thanksgiving is pretty laid back. We’re usually all scattered different directions for weeks before and after, so it is nice to have a relaxing day set aside for the family without much planned besides the turkey dinner. We’re not football fans, so we have the afternoon after dinner to take a nap or watch a DVD or talk. I hope you have a wonderful day of thankfulness to the Giver of all good gifts.

I posted this list of what I am thankful for last year, and as I read over it, I couldn’t think of a thing I would change.

It is a good thing to give thanks unto the LORD
and to sing praises unto Thy name, O most High:
To shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning,
and thy faithfulness every night (Psalm 92:1-2).

1. God Himself, for all that He is and all that He does, and for all that He has done for me. I could make a lengthy list just from this alone.

2. My husband of almost 27 years, his kindness and patience and care.

3. My three children with their unique personalities and all the joy the have brought to my life.

4. My father, mother, step-father, brother, sisters, and extended family.

5. My country. America is not perfect and has its problems, but it is still the best place on earth, IMHO.

6. My home. I have been discontent with this particular house, but I am grateful for having a snug place to live and realize that by some standards this would be considered luxurious.

7. Seasons. I love that I live in a place where there is a definite and beautiful change from season to season.

8. Music. I love it. It uplifts, soothes, encourages, inspires…I can’t imagine life without it.

9. My church.

10 Christian friends.

11. Food, especially the accessibility and variety we have here.

12. Computers!

13. Books. The Best of books, the Bible, foremost, but also the many books I have read along the way (and still hope to read) that have taught, entertained, inspired, encouraged….I could go on and on.

Often when I take Jesse to school, the right hand lane of the main road that I turn onto from our subdivision is backed up a bit. Many people in that lane will migrate to the right after getting through the traffic light to get onto the highway entrance, so often I get into the second lane, and then get back into the right hand lane for my turn at the traffic light after the highway exit. I could just stay in the right hand lane in the first place, but it’s so backed up that I would miss the green light and have to wait til the next one, and it’s relatively easy to change lanes, so I usually do.

This morning I don’t know if I just wasn’t paying attention or no one was turning onto the highway and freeing up that lane, but all of a sudden it was about time to turn and I wasn’t in the right lane yet. I saw a bit of space and swooped in front of another car…but then I felt bad about it. I wasn’t intentionally cutting them off but it probably looked that way. I often tell my children that when they’re driving and they’ve made a mistake by missing their turn or exit, they need to inconvenience themselves by going to the next exit or turn and turning around rather than inconveniencing or even endangering other people. But it is just so tempting to zoom in.

I told Jesse that I’ve often wished I had a device that would flash a sign in my back windshield to the car behind me. Often I’ve wanted one that says to a close follower, “Please BACK OFF!” But I’ve also wished for one that said, “I’m sorry!”

The car I zoomed in front of made the same turn I did, and I thought, “Oh no — it’s someone from our school and they are going to think really badly of me.” But they didn’t turn into our school driveway, and I felt worse that, with a Christian school magnet on the back of my van, I had been a poor testimony.

I wish there was some way to indicate to that driver my regret. But I guess the next best thing would be to avoid thinking less than charitable thoughts the next time someone cuts in front of me and to tell myself they’re not trying to be mean or selfish or thoughtless — they’re just trying to take a chance to get into the right lane.

• According to my blog stats on my WordPress dashboard, yesterday was a record day for my blog with 877 views. The previous record high day was something in the 500s. Most of those appear to be from the Thanksgiving reading, poems, and quotes posts — a lot of people must be looking for material for the holiday. I hope they found something useful. I don’t know if that number means people actually saw my posts or if my posts just came up on an Internet search — probably the latter. Of course, with over 29,000 spam comments (most ably captured by Akismet) since the inception of this blog, maybe a lot of those views were spambots.
• I had written earlier about dental woes…..I had an appointment to have a permanent crown put in this past week and thought I was done for a while. But the dentist said with this one he had had to drill away very close to the nerve (in fact, I narrowly escaped a root canal) so he just wanted to put temporary seal on this one for a few months and see how I do with it. Unfortunately it does hurt when I bite down directly on it, so I don’t know what the alternative is. I don’t want to go through another bridge experience — not only is it traumatic, it’s expensive, especially after just having paid for a crown for this same tooth. But I guess we’ll see what happens. When I went to have my permanent bridge put in on the other side, that part went relatively easily (it was the extraction and drilling earlier that was hard to sit through), so I was expecting this visit — just taking off the temporary crown and putting on the permanent one – to be pretty easy. But getting the temporary off hurt and then the scraping to get the temporary glue off was quite painful. The assistant kept saying, “That’s not too bad, is it?” No, I always sit in the dentist’s chair with white-knuckles hands grasping the armrests. And I get to do it again in a few months since he only wanted a temporary seal this time! Argh. I wonder if I can get numbed for that.
• I don’t know why I put off things I dread when it would be such a relief to get them over with. And I don’t know why I dread making phone calls to make or change appointments, but I do. I finally called this morning to change Jason’s appointment for getting his wisdom teeth out. That was scheduled for Wednesday — the day before Thanksgiving. I had been trying to talk him into changing it to Christmas break because he’d have a longer time to recover. Plus his girlfriend will be here for Thanksgiving break, and it wouldn’t be much fun for her to have her boyfriend sleeping off the effects of anesthetic and waking up with chipmunk cheeks and pain. It took us a while to figure out when to try to reschedule it for, but we finally got that done.
• Speaking of girlfriends….this is our first experience with one. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the whole courtship vs. dating issue. We don’t embrace everything involved with the courtship model, but we did feel the repeated date/go together/break up cycle was not good training for marriage, so we encouraged them to avoid pairing off or having a specific girlfriend during their high school years and rather do things as a group. So they’ve been “in like” before, but this is the first full-fledged actual girlfriend. I have to say it has been nice to have another female around the house! She’s very sweet and everyone seems to like her and she seems to like all of us. They are able to spend most Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings here, and it has been fun getting to know her (and seeing how Jason acts. 🙂 )
• We finally saw the Amazing Grace DVD this past weekend. You have to remember that it is a Hollywood film about a Christian and not a Christian film — there are a few words I wish they hadn’t put in — but otherwise I thought it was very good. The film seems in keeping with other things I had read about Wilberforce, and the filmmakers portrayed him as a genuine, heartfelt, joyful believer who acted on his principals tenaciously until he saw them through. It was amazing to hear the arguments of the opposition for the slave trade — the economy, the charges of sedition, etc. — while ignoring the face of human suffering. All in all it was a very inspiring film. I’d like to find a good biography of Wilberforce.
• I’m still working on those missionary Christmas gifts. Even a ministry you love and enjoy has its frustrations…..I won’t go into that, but I am hoping to have even the Stateside packages out this week and be able to close the door on that and start thinking about our own Christmas. There is no more “surface mail,” the cheapest overseas rate. The way it was explained to me was that most customers preferred speed to a lower price. So even still I think everything will get there on time, and I think the higher shipping methods are more reliable. We’ll just have to see what it all costs and then decide if we should change anything for next year. We want to be a blessing and to be generous, but we want to be good stewards, too, and need to find the right balance.

So — it looks like my week is cut out for me. Hope you have a good day!

Years ago when Jesse was small, we had a series of books about Christopher Churchmouse, a mischievous little rodent who lived, I believe, in the church basement with his family and learned about right and wrong and spiritual truths.

We enjoyed those books, but those mice were evidently better behaved than the usual run of the mill mice.

I walked into our missions closet the other day to assess what was needed to stock up for our missions conference and discovered one set of shelves had been visited by mice. They left their little calling cards all over the place. I had just been in there two days before, and there had been no sign of them.

I thought at first a squirrel had been in there as we’d been having problems with them in other parts of the church (scurrying above the ceiling, peeking a head out the AC vent during choir practice, choosing some hidden corner as a final resting place and smelling up the whole facility). Some of the men have been diligent to climb around up there and remove the dead one (after a lot of work trying to find it), repairing holes, setting humane traps, etc. But a couple of the men said they felt like the missions closet visitors were mice rather than squirrels. So they set a trap and my husband and I went about cleaning things up.

I have to say, it was very disheartening! Thankfully the droppings were primarily on one set of bookcase-type shelves rather than all four. There were four bars of homemade soap that one of our ladies makes, and the mice really liked that stuff. They gnawed corners off all four bars. They also gnawed across several towels (looking for nesting material, maybe? I don’t know).

We vacuumed up all the droppings, took the towels home and washed them in hot water and disinfectant, and cleaned everything else off with disinfecting wipes. The towels above actually look better there after having been washed than when we first brought them home — here they just look like a few threads have been pulled, but before it did look like actual gnaw marks on them.

And we found out some of the towels weren’t very good quality: they burst into little fuzz balls after washing. It’s not unusual for new towels to give off more lint at first, but this was ridiculous. So I am glad some missionary family didn’t get those.

What’s funny is that the mice passed up boxed macaroni and cheese and jello for soap and towels. We don’t usually keep food in there for just such reasons, but one class gathered up some mostly canned and a few boxed goods for the closet without checking with me first. I decided to go ahead and put them in for a few months to see if anyone wanted them, but no one even looked at them, and some of the expiration dates have already passed. So between that and the critters, I am making it official policy: no food in the missions closet!

The trap did catch one mouse, I waited a couple of weeks before restocking the closet just to make sure we didn’t have any more unwanted “visitors.” I think they caught a couple more in other places, but so far the closet has been clear. Our missions conference started last night, so I restocked on Saturday. I put the new towels in big Ziploc bags so hopefully this won’t happen again. I hope as we take the various missionaries through there we don’t face any “surprises!!”

I’d like to hear if your church has a missions closet and how they organize it. I can always use new ideas. We don’t do a “points” system as I have heard that some do — the different families have different needs, different numbers of supporting churches and kids, etc., so we leave it open. Most lean more toward being reluctant to take too much than overdoing it — we sometimes have to encourage them to feel free to take whatever they might need. Most are on the road and can’t take a whole lot.

I was surprised that the most often chosen thing was queen sized sheet sets. Next would be towels and dish towels. We have some small tools and tools sets that are popular with the men, and sport balls of any kind are taken often as well. We have a bin of boys’ toys and girls’ toys, and most families will let their children pick one of two items out of there. Christian books and CDs are also popular as are travel irons. We have several toiletries, regular and sample sized, that I thought would be taken often, but I was surprised that they’re not.

It’s a fun ministry. It’s almost like playing Santa’s helper. 🙂 And every now and then there will be an unusual item someone donated (most of the items I purchase from our mission’s budget, but we’re open to new donated items as well) that turns out to be just what a particular missionary needed. It’s neat to participate in a ministry where you get to be a conduit for the Lord to work.