Laudable Linkage

Posted on November 30, 2024 by Barbara Harper

I haven’t been online much this week, but here are a few good reads I’ve found:

The News Media Is Broken. What Now? HT to Challies. “I explained to my friend that I’d spent the last few years consuming news from both sides of the aisle, hoping to figure out what was going on. I complained that it hadn’t worked. ‘Instead of just being confused,’ I said, ‘I’m also exhausted and angry. Who can I trust to report the truth?’ I didn’t expect his response. ‘Mike, it’s worse than you think, and I’m more frustrated than you are.'”

Ashamed of the Gospel, HT to Challies. “I trusted in Jesus and his payment for my sins, but the thought of approaching a stranger (or anyone really) to evangelize left my stomach queasy. I read stories of people who unnerved passersby and their loved ones with constant questions like, ‘Where will you spend eternity?’ I could not relate. Besides writing about my Christian faith on social media, my evangelism was non-existent.”

5 Ways to Be Sincerely Kind to Someone You Disagree With, HT to Challies. “Kindness in dialogue is powerful, especially when we are speaking with someone we disagree with. Kindness opens up not only relational doors but intellectual doors. In other words, it helps us not only to like each other more but to understand each other better.”

What Does the Bible Say About Manifestation and the Law of Attraction? “Many Christians don’t recognize that these seemingly harmless exercises usually rest upon a philosophy that has permeated the world of self-development. It is a philosophy that runs contrary to what God’s Word says and contains spiritually dangerous teachings. Still, many believers seeking to pursue self-development have adopted its practices without realizing what they are getting into. I’m talking about the philosophy manifestation”

What To Do Before You Read the Bible, HT to Knowable Word. “There is one aspect that I find myself attending to with more focus than I have before: the pre-workout warmup. . . . As I have grown in Christ and sought to challenge myself to embody Paul’s charge not just to train my body, but, more importantly, to “train yourself for godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7), I have learned that in my spiritual training, I need a warmup routine as well.”

Praying for Daniels, HT to Challies. “Since the election, I’ve been convicted to pray for God to raise up “Daniels”- men who understand the times and know what our country should do- on both sides of the aisle. We need to pray for gifted men and women with character who are capable, competent, and able to solve difficult problems.”

Unless humility precede, accompany, and follow every good action which we perform, being at once the object which we keep before our eyes, the support to which we cling, and the monitor by which we are restrained, pride wrests wholly from our hand any good work on which we are congratulating ourselves. All other vices are to be apprehended when we are doing wrong; but pride is to be feared even when we do right actions, lest those things which are done in a praiseworthy manner be spoiled by the desire for praise itself.–Augustine

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on November 29, 2024 by Barbara Harper

I chose this week’s FFF meme because winter seems to be settling in early. It’s not snowing, but we have low temperatures forecast for the next week.

This has been a full week, in more ways than one. I’m sharing blessings with Susanne and friends at Living to Tell the Story.

1. Lunch with Melanie. We usually meet for lunch once a month or every six weeks. Due to scheduling conflicts and health issues, we haven’t seen each other since August. So we had a lot to catch up on at Cracker Barrel this week!

2. The Fantasy of Trees is a fundraiser for the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital. Different groups decorate Christmas trees and gingerbread houses and put them on display for sale at this event. There are so many, and they are so expensive, I don’t know who buys them–probably businesses account for some of the sales. There are also booths for kids to make Christmas ornaments and a stage where various area groups sing or dance.

We had gone a few years ago and enjoyed it, but not enough to go back. This year, however, some of Timothy’s friends were performing there. That made it much more enjoyable.

Here are some if my favorite trees:

I liked the pink theme here. 🙂

This Snow White themed tree was in a section of fairy tale motifs.

It was hard to get a picture of this one because two guys kept getting in front of it and waving their hands–I guess the Abominable Snowman was supposed to move, or at least these guys thought it should.

And a couple of favorite gingerbread houses:

This Mother Goose house was so detailed and well done.

And I loved the pink decorations here.

3. Kern’s Food Hall is several restaurants and a few businesses in one building. Jason and Mittu have been here several times and told us about it, but it was our first time. There’s a burger place, pizza place, and taco place, but there are also a lot of ethnic foods, from Ghana, Cuba, India, and I forget where else. Being the non-adventurous eater that I am, I got pepperoni pizza. 🙂 But everyone else branched out. We’re planning to bring the whole family here again when Jeremy comes for Christmas.

4. Thanksgiving is always an enjoyable day, with feasting and family and a time to reflect on what we’re thankful for. We printed out some Thanksgiving place mats here and made our annual Thanksgiving tree.

Updated to add: I neglected to mention my dear husband cleaning bathrooms and vacuuming while I was in the kitchen Thanksgiving morning.

5. A spare microwave. Thanksgiving Day started out with our microwave dying. Not a good thing on one of the busiest cooking days of the year! Thankfully, we had a small one in Jim’s office from when his mom lived there, so he brought it up to the kitchen.

I hope you had a blessed week as well.

November Reflections

Posted on November 27, 2024 by Barbara Harper

It’s a little early for an end-of-month wrap-up, but between Thanksgiving tomorrow and other posts over the weekend, this seemed like the best time for it.

It’s still hard to believe it’s time for Thanksgiving, and December will be here Sunday!

We’ve had a relatively quiet month, which is appreciated right before the busiest month of the year.

Family Funnies

Our Alexa often doesn’t respond to me, even though I try to speak to it loudly and clearly. One night, after I tried unsuccessfully to get it to do something, Jim strolled in, spoke to it, and it responded. I said, “I don’t think it likes me.”

Jim said, “Alexa, you behave.”

Alexa responded, “Hmm. I’m not sure how to help you with that.”

Creating

I only made one card this month, for my friend Melanie. Her actual birthday is tomorrow, but we got together yesterday. She likes purple. 🙂

Reading

Since last time, I finished:

The Edge of Belonging by Amanda Cox, fiction, audiobook and library book. I loved this one! A homeless man finds an abandoned baby girl and tries to care for her himself, naming her Ivy. The story shifts back and forth from this timeline to 24 years later, when Ivy tries to find out how her patchwork family came together.
The Secret Keepers of Old Grocery Depot by Amanda Cox, fiction, audiobook. Three generations of Tennessee women try to protect each other with secrets, but instead strain their relationships. Good.
Mrs. Tim Carries On by D. E. Stevenson, classic fiction, audiobook. A fictionalized journal of a young wife’s doings during WWII while her husband is overseas. This was okay.
Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives—Including Your Own by A. J. Harper, nonfiction. Some bad language, but otherwise good writing advice.

I’m currently reading:

2 Corinthians for You by Gary Millar with our ladies’ Bible study (one chapter to go!)
Ezekiel: The God of Glory by Tim Chester
What’s a Disorganized Person to Do? by Stacey Platt
The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 – 1963, compiled by Walter Hooper. I’m just reading a few pages of this at a time.
Waking Up In the Wilderness: A Yellowstone Journey by Natalie Ogbourne
The Painted Castle by Kristy Cambron
Across the Ages by Gabrielle Meyer, audiobook

Blogging

Besides the weekly Friday Fave Fives, Saturday Laudable Linkage, and book reviews, I’ve posted these since last time:

God Knows What You Can Take. God does give us more than we can handle, but not more than He can. Yet even within that framework, He knows our weaknesses and what would be too much.
Praying for the Election.
Achy Joints. The body of Christ is held together by joints and a surprising lubricant.
Enjoy the 80 Percent. We tend to fixate on small irritants instead of enjoying the vast majority of things to like about a person or situation.

Writing

I did get some good time in on my manuscript, but that will probably take a back seat next month. I want to get things done for Christmas first, and then we’ll see if there is any time left.

I’ve mentioned Ciara Dierking a couple of times, the young wife and mother who lost all four limbs after a horrific illness. She said something in her interview with Revive Our Hearts that stood out to me: “What we deserve is God’s cup of wrath, and what we’ve been given . . . Even if He gave us nothing else beyond just not giving us the wrath, He has given us so many blessings.” What a perspective for thanksgiving. God has blessed us so much with salvation and forgiveness and the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit in our hearts, we’d have enough to be thankful for eternity. But He heaps on more blessings every day.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends. I hope you have a special day with people you love.

A Surprising Reason to Be Thankful

Posted on November 24, 2024 by Barbara Harper

From our earliest years, we’re taught the good manners to thank someone when they give us something or do something for us. Thanking them shows we recognize and appreciate the kindness, consideration, time, trouble, and expense they’ve gone to.

How much more should we thank God for so many undeserved blessings? Thanksgiving praises Him and acknowledges that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:7).

But recently I came across a surprising reason to be thankful.

Ezekiel 16 is an extended metaphor comparing God’s care of Jerusalem to the care of a man who found an abandoned baby girl, cared for her, fed her, and clothed her royally. When the baby grew up into a beautiful woman, the man loved her and wanted her to be his. In verse 14, God said, “And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you.”

But instead of being thankful, Jerusalem “trusted in your beauty” and then became promiscuous with just about anyone she could find, taking God’s gifts and making idols, even sacrificing her children.

This passage reminds me of King Uzziah, who “was marvelously helped, till he was strong. But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the Lord his God” (2 Chronicles 26:15-16).

It’s a sad facet of our human nature that we can take God’s good gifts and use them for our own glory or gain.

We become prideful, forgetting anything good in us comes from Him. And then we turn from Him to false idols like the people in Romans 1:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity (Romans 1:22-24).

When we thank God for what we have, we remind ourselves that everything is a gift from Him. In 1 Corinthians 4:7, Paul reminds us, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”

It’s not that God wants to lord it over us or browbeat us with the reminder that we should be thankful to Him. But He knows our hearts are “prone to wander,” as the old song says.

So thanking God not only gives Him proper praise, but it keeps our own souls healthy. We remind ourselves that everything we have comes from Him and is to be used for Him. We respond with humility, appreciation, and loving service.

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Laudable Linkage

Posted on November 23, 2024 by Barbara Harper

I came across quite a few good reads this week:

What Would Happen if You Became a Christian? A Thought Experiment, HT to Challies. “Let me invite you into a thought experiment. What if you became a Christian? What would change? I’m talking about an actual disciple of Jesus, not a Christian in name only. What would be different if you became a Christian?”

He No Longer Sleeps. “Do you remember that Jesus is in your boat? He’s with you. He sees you. And He’s not asleep or unaware or busy with someone else.” (This post has Mendelssohn’s “He, Watching Over Israel” from Elijah in my thoughts this week.)

When You Long for Justice, HT to Challies. Mixed emotions after a sexual assault.

When Offenses Come: How to Forgive and Move On, HT to Challies. “The air of our Father’s home is grace — grace from basement to attic and floor to ceiling, grace in every room. He crowns us with grace, clothes us with grace, sings over us with grace (Romans 5:2). Far be it from us, then, as the children of this God, to replace his grace with malice, gossip, passive-aggressive paybacks, or bitter distancing from a brother or sister whom God has forgiven.”

Do Children Need to Consent to Puberty? HT to Challies. I am continually amazed at the world’s warped thought processes. This article explains why the answer to the title question is “No.”

On Winning the War: The World. This is the second in a series of fighting against a Christian’s enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil.

On the Other Side of the Wall. A lovely tribute and a great way to think about loved ones who have passed on.

The Messages We Receive, HT to Challies. “Messages about who we are—our identity—are powerful. They can shape how we see ourselves, how we see the world, and how we see God. It is a matter that regularly comes up in counseling conversations. When people have hard experiences in their lives or have been mistreated by others, it always proves valuable to explore what messages those experiences have communicated about who they are.” I especially like her examples of reframing messages with God’s truth about us.

What Is My Spiritual Gift? Maybe You’re Asking the Wrong Question, HT to Challies. “In view of the ink spilt and bytes downloaded on the matter of discovering one’s spiritual gift, you might be surprised to learn that such introspection is completely absent in all these passages. Either Paul and Peter failed to answer such a vital question . . . or we are asking the wrong question. I think the latter is the case.”

The Plimsoll Line, HT to Challies. “’The Plimsoll line is a reference mark located on a ship’s hull that indicates the maximum depth to which the vessel may be safely immersed when loaded with cargo.’ . . . . Years ago I decided to include the Plimsoll line in my marriage.” In this case, the Plimsoll line has to do with one being an extrovert and one being an introvert.

10 Correctable Mistakes We Make When Preaching and Teaching, HT to Challies. Some of these would apply to writing as well.

67 Screen-Free Activities for Kids, HT to Redeeming Productivity.

“Better to be disappointed a thousand times—yes, and be deceived—than once miss a chance to help a soul. The love of God suffices for any disappointment, for any defeat. And in that love is the energy of faith and the very sap of hope.” Amy Carmichael

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on November 22, 2024 by Barbara Harper

This has been a cold, blustery week. Thanksgiving is coming up quickly. I’m pausing with Susanne and friends at Living to Tell the Story to reflect on some of the blessings of the week. If you’d like to join in or visit others who do this exercise, Susanne has a place to share a link to your post.

1. Operation Christmas Child. I love this concept of sending useful and fun supplies to children in another country. We turned our OCC boxes in this week. I heard of some families filling a box with their children to help turn their focus on others.

2. A production of A Christmas Carol. The Christian school associated with our church is doing Dickens’ Christmas story this year. They invited the church and home school community to their dress rehearsal before the regular performances start. There were a few chuckles over missed cues or prop malfunctions, but overall, everyone did a great job. I appreciate the school giving these young people an opportunity to hone their talents.

3. A quick dinner with Jason, Mittu, and Timothy. The play rehearsal was on a Wednesday afternoon, and went overtime–and we have children’s ministries and adult Bible studies Wednesday evenings. So we dashed out for a quick dinner at McAlister’s Deli in-between.

4. An artificial Christmas tree. After 40+ years of choosing a live tree every Christmas, we finally caved in and bought an artificial one. The prices of live trees were so exorbitant last year, we figured an artificial one will pay for itself in a couple of years. I’ll miss the excursion to choose just the right tree and the fragrance it brings. But we’re already looking forward to not having to string lights and water it. We haven’t put it up yet but hope to do so soon.

5. A gift card solution. I receive a lot of gift cards from my family. They fit in a pocket in my purse, but when I need one, I have to pull out the whole stack of loose ones and shuffle through them at the cash register. Then it dawned on me to look for a small credit card-type wallet to keep them in, and I found one here–on sale and pink!

To those of you in the US, I wish you a joyous Thanksgiving with those you love.

Review: The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery

Posted on November 19, 2024 by Barbara Harper

The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery by Amanda Cox

In The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery, a novel by by Amanda Cox, Sarah Ashby’s husband has just died. She returns to Brighton, TN, where she grew up and where her mother and grandmother still run the Old Depot Grocery Store which her grandfather began. All she wants to do is settle back in Brighton and help run the store she loves so much.

But her mother, Rosemary, doesn’t want Sarah to feel stuck in Brighton like she did. She keeps pushing her to move on and see the world.

And even if Sarah stayed, the old grocery isn’t doing well since the big new chain store opened nearby. Rosemary is pushing her mother, Glory Ann, to sell while they have interested buyers. Besides, Rosemary has urgent reasons to sell, reasons Sarah and Glory Ann know nothing about.

But the Old Depot was Glory Ann’s husband’s legacy, his way of ministering to the community. He never gave up. How can she?

The novel is told with a dual timeline, the second one in 1965 detailing Glory Ann’s life from her teen years. She was engaged to her blue-eyed farmer boy, Jimmy. But he was called up to fight in Viet Nam and was killed not long after. She didn’t have a chance to tell him that she carried the baby conceived from their one night of indiscretion.

Glory Ann’s father was a preacher who arranged for Glory Ann to marry Clarence, the son of an old-time friend. Clarence has been told the situation and is willing to marry Glory Ann. She resists, but her father says her sin will destroy his reputation and ministry as well as hers if it becomes known.

Glory Ann, Rosemary, and Sarah each have secrets that they think are protecting the others. Instead, misunderstandings and assumptions strain their relationships.

I love the way Amanda wove the different threads of this novel. As with her first novel, which I loved, The Edge of Belonging, the story has multiple layers: unplanned pregnancies, the nature of true love, the nature of everyday ministry, the damage secrets can cause and the freedom truth brings, PTSD. (Her first novel had a character with PTSD, too, making me wonder f someone in her family did.)

I listened to the audiobook, which was free from Audible’s Plus Catalog and read by Stephanie Cozart. The narration was well-done except the fake Southern accents were a little overwrought and grating to me. I think I would have liked this better in print.

But I did love the story and highly recommend it.

Enjoy the 80 Percent

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Barbara Harper

Many of you know that writer Elisabeth Elliot has been my “mentor from afar” for over forty years.

One of my favorites quotes comes from her book Love Has a Price Tag:

My second husband once said that a wife, if she is very generous, may allow that her husband lives up to eighty percent of her expectations. There is always the other twenty percent that she would like to change, and she may chip away at it for the whole of their married life without reducing it very much. She may, on the other hand, simply decide to enjoy the eighty percent, and both of them will be happy

That’s so true, isn’t it? We tend to fixate on the small things that bug us rather than the great majority of things we love.

I was thinking recently that this principle applies to more than marriage.

Take friendship, for instance. My best friend in high school had a lot of good qualities, but she was slow-moving, especially when we were to go somewhere together. Any attempts to hurry her led to even more slowness. Constant harping on this one issue would only have driven a wedge between us.

Or neighbors. A good neighbor is a treasure. A bad neighbor is a pain. We don’t want to offend the person who is going to live right next door to us for years, maybe decades. So we pick our battles. We can live with some irritants to keep peace.

We might love our work, but it’s not all sunshine. Even with the best job, there are always a couple of unpleasant aspects.

And what about churches? None is perfect. You’ve probably heard the old cliche: “If you find a perfect church, don’t join it, because then it won’t be perfect any more.” No one church will be and do everything we might like.

When I hear of people leaving church because of some disappointment, I often think of the Corinthians, the epitome of dysfunctional churches. If we had visited such a church in our searches, we would not have gone to this one twice.

Yet every time I read 1 and 2 Corinthians, I am amazed at how patient the apostle Paul is in dealing with them. They had much more than 20 percent that needed to be dealt with, but he never gave up on them.

Enjoying the 80 percent of any relationship doesn’t mean we can never address the aspects we don’t enjoy. But sometimes, as the KJV puts it, we need to forbear with one another. Other translations say bear with, make allowance for, tolerate, or even put up with each other.

And the Bible goes beyond just bearing with each other. Ephesians 4:1-3 says: “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity, and peace: these are all more important than whatever irritates us about each other.

A couple of other thoughts that help me with this: there’s probably more than 20 percent about me that others have to “put up with,” yet they graciously do. My husband and friends don’t constantly find fault and criticize or insist I do things their way. I can extend that grace to them.

Also, even though God is in the business of correcting and sanctifying us, He does it with patience and grace. He doesn’t pile up everything we need to deal with all at once. We’d be crushed under the load.

One caveat to this 80 percent principle: it depends on what’s in the 20 percent. If a wife likes everything about her husband except the fact that he beats her, that behavior is not something that should be overlooked or ignored. If one friend learned that the other was embezzling his company, or cheating on his wife, he would be wise to step in. If we love the music, fellowship, people, and preaching of a church, yet the leadership denies that Jesus is God, or tells us we get to heaven by doing good works, then we need to find another church.

But in most cases, the 20 percent we don’t like is comprised of smaller issues. Can we not overlook them, for God’s glory and for the love and fellowship of His people?

Ephesians 4:2-3: bear with one another in love

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Laudable Linkage

Posted on November 16, 2024 by Barbara Harper

I hope you’ll find something of interest in this collection of good reads.

Love the Church Like Jesus, HT to Challies. “Imagine you see a bride early on the morning of her wedding day — and she is a mess.” But she’ll look very different at the wedding, and it would be wrong and foolish to tell others how awful she looked that morning. The author provides an interesting comparison to the imperfections of the church and what it will be someday, and how we look at it as Jesus does.

Why Am I So Spiritually Dry? HT to Challies. “As I crunched my way through my neighborhood and watched the clouds for rain, I realized that dry seasons can be for our good. Sometimes spiritual dry spells come with a diagnosis and sometimes they don’t, but the only way through them is through them.”

Do You Feel Overwhelmed When You Pray? 3 Reasons not to Lose Heart. “Take heart, weary prayer warrior. When our feelings overwhelm us and the trials of life threaten to drown us, we can look to the unchanging truths of the Bible for strength and hope.”

Responding When Those We Respect Disappoint Us, HT to Challies. “While we understand intellectually that every person we meet is fallen and desperately needs God’s grace, that knowledge gets tested when someone we deeply respect disappoints us.”

The Spiritual Gift Inventory I Believe In. “In many churches, it is standard practice to have Christians take some kind of a spiritual gift inventory. Through a series of questions that probe an individual’s interests, passions, and successes, these tests claim to help people discover the ways the Holy Spirit has gifted them to better love and serve his people. Much has been written about such inventories and many people have expressed a degree of skepticism about their usefulness or accuracy.”

Marriage Happy, Marriage Holy. I really don’t like the saying that marriage is to make us holy, not happy. Scripture depicts marriage as happy. Yet when two sinners live together, they are bound to have differences and irritations. Tim Challies shares some of the surprising ways marriage can help sanctify us.

God’s Good Gift of Hobbies, HT to Redeeming Productivity. Steve Lindsey discusses many valuable benefits of hobbies. .

Why I’m Grateful to Live in 2024. Though there’s a lot wrong in the world, we’re also immeasurably blessed.

The Criticized Leader, HT to Challies. Good advice even for followers.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago Ciara Dierking, who lost all four limbs after a near-fatal illness. Revive Our Hearts has two episodes of a podcast with her. You can listen to or read the transcript of Part 1: What Did I Do to Deserve This? here, and Part 2: More Grateful Than Before, here.

He makes us wait. He keeps us on purpose in the dark. He makes us walk when we want to run, sit still when we want to walk, for He has things to do in our souls that we are not interested in. –Elisabeth Elliot, Secure in the Everlasting Arms

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on November 15, 2024 by Barbara Harper

I am astonished that we’re halfway through November already. I wish there was a way to slow time down. The best alternative is to pause for a few moments and savor the blessings along the way. Some of us do so by joining in with Susanne and friends at Living to Tell the Story on Fridays. Feel free to join in!

1. Puttering is what I call doing a series of odd jobs around the house, the kind that are useful but not urgent. For me, puttering this week included cleaning out the catch-all basket on the counter, assembling items to take to the thrift store, removing things from an old frayed purse into a new one while cleaning out and sorting through them, etc.

2. Veteran’s Day. I am so thankful for those willing to serve our country in the most sacrificial ways.

3. Dinner with Jesse. We don’t see Jesse, my youngest, as often as we see Jason, Mittu, and Timothy. He lives a bit farther away. When we found out he had Veteran’s Day off, we invited him over for dinner. J&M couldn’t make it. While we missed them, and we enjoy time all together, it’s also nice to visit one-on-one. Jesse likes salmon, and we had some in the freezer from a half-price sale, so Jim grilled those while I made Red Lobster-style baked potatoes and mixed vegetables. I make Choco-Peanut Butter Dreams about once a year in the fall and decided to do that as well. I sent several home with Jesse and brought some to J&M Wednesday and still had several to munch on through the week. (The recipe is included with My Favorite Cookie Recipes.)

4. Easy fixes for weird technological glitches. One day my Word grammar checker suddenly started making suggestions in French, including marking words as misspelled and giving me French alternatives. Of all the weird things! I poked around, trying to find the place to reset the language for it, then finally Googled it. Then my phone stopped receiving e-mail from either account. A quick search and reentering of my password had it working again. I am learning to search first before texting my children for help. 🙂

Then, right before leaving for an appointment Thursday, my computer started making weird tapping noises. Jim rebooted it, and that took care of whatever the problem was—or at least stopped the noise.

5. A good eye doctor appointment. Everything is about the same as last year, except I’ve had an odd shape in my vision for a few weeks. He didn’t see any problems when he dilated my eyes, so that was a relief.

Bonus: My youngest sister has been unemployed for ages after being laid off. After much prayer and searching, she got a job this week!