Too Much? Balance?

Please be patient with me today Dear Reader, I know I've written about my pet peeve before but some things have been stacking up towards needing to write about it again, then my good friend wrote a little something and it got me all charged up. Read this and then come back here for my tirade of agreement!


My friend, her family and mine and a few other friends have heard a lot about how we are being overly protective. We are Christians: Christ followers, God listeners, we do have a big tendency to listen to what God says, in His written word and in personal answer to prayer, over what the world or even well meaning friends have to say. But that doesn't mean that what others say and confront us with doesn't eventually wear on us to the point where we feel we need to speak up.


In the past those speak-up times rarely change the mind of those who have confronted us directly or indirectly through others, mostly because those folks are not you my Dear Reader. But they do have a way of encouraging others and encouraging those of us in our circle of influence. I hope that this is one of those times, for her post was for me, I hope this is for her and our other friends.


Overprotective, and balance, two words that drive me nuts and ones I feel that Christians, Christfollowers, should avoid using. Yes, shout out "balance" to the girl hoicking herself up to walk on the top of the stone wall. Yes, inquire, "Is that balanced?" to the person using a scale to measure an important item. But balance in things of soul building or soul destroying nature? No way. Feed on food in moderation but feed on the things of God 'til you think you'll pop and then some more.


Does God call us to a balance between deceit and honesty? Between thievery and earning your wage? Between preserving life and destroying it? Does He ask for a certain behaviour and then settle on the realization that you just can't make it there?


Over? Can you over do it on prayer? How about kindness? Charity? Peace? Not in your self-preserving vision on life, but with Christ's vision. Did he warn us that we could indeed go too far beyond what the Good Samaritan did? Did he tell us that yes, indeed we could do too good of a job taking care of our elderly parents?

So then Paul was lying when he suggested that we pray unceasingly? To imagine that every word out of our mouth, every thought in our head could become captive to Christ, become a prayer to Him, that would be crazy? Paul was just excited and talking about something no one can do?

I do not believe that a life lived in Christ is a call to a life lived in mediocrity. There was, and is still, nothing mediocre about Christ. Simple yes, mediocre never. There is simply doing what is right and avoiding, so as to not do, what is wrong.

When things seem as if they have gone too far, take a second look. Is it really that a virtue has been taken too far or is it actually a sin dressed up to appear as a virtue.


So when folks say, "oh dear, he is over protective," when they hear about or see a father who locks his children up in the basement, beats them when they go outside without his permission, are they actually seeing protectiveness that has gone too far or are they instead seeing a bully, tyrant, hate filled man? A man who is not attending to the words of Christ? What is really being seen is a self-centered person not a protective person. Over protection is an oxymoron, you can not over protect. If you are actually harming something or someone you can not be said to be protecting that thing. Satan dresses up the road he would rather have us travel with all sorts of baubles and tresses so that we are lured into his life of perpetual lies. Look at what something really is not what he says it is.


When you look at a cold hearted frigid woman and the deprived man she is married to, do you pity him because she is too pure? Too Victorian? You ought to pity him because she is not pure enough, if she were actually pure, and not just self-absorbed and drug away by Satan's lies, she would know that God gave her and her husband an amazing gift to be enjoyed and celebrated, to be honored. But when we constantly tell our unmarried children, "don't do that (sex or anything sexual) because it is naughty or nasty" we are indeed lying to them. Sex is not nasty. Sex outside of marriage is a sin. There is a huge difference. So the poor woman who can't bring herself to have sex with her husband because it is naughty is not being pure, not in any way shape or form.

We call women who behave in this way, who do not care for coming together with their husband, who cringe at the idea of sex, a prude. And while that is correct in the vernacular of the word, what we commonly think of the word meaning, it is actually incorrect. Prude comes from prudefemme, "a worthy or respectable woman". We, through our being drug away from goodness by Satan often begin to use terms in the pejorative when they were never meant to indicate something negative or wrong. We, in our sinfulness, do not like worthy and respectable women, we would rather they take it down a notch and be human like us. So we call them a prude, and soon the word and concept becomes distorted and people use it to describe a person who does not have the proper vision of sex and purity.

You actually cannot be too pure. We can speak of gold as being ninety percent pure because it has impurities, because things that are not gold are in it, but it can never be a hundred and four percent pure. Purity can not be over the top.

And so while it may be advantageous for a ring to not be pure gold, to have a certain level of impurity in it so that it can hold up to daily wearing, we stop our analogy at this point because we are speaking of the Christ-like nature that we are to take on. "Follow me as I follow Christ," Paul says. He does not equivocate on this, he does not hold out a here or there where you might not want to follow Christ as he does or where he himself ain't going because it is too Christ-like.


Come on. Can you really take a virtue, a character of God, too far, be too kind, too forgiving, too loving. too faith-filled? Really, is that your answer? Because if you answered "yes, you can be too much of these things" and cite times when perhaps you were taken advantage of, over looked because you were too humble, then I gotta ask, in whose estimation are you looking at that with? Christ's or man's self-preservation?

Can you take something He, God, asks you to do too far? Can you be too repentant for your sins and evil thoughts? Can you listen to the Holy Spirit too much? Or would he just have too much to say to you, ask too many things of you, ask you to do something he knows you cannot do even though you lean on the strength of Christ to do it?


God calls me as a parent, well he calls all parents actually, but yes, I can really actually only speak for myself and demand a certain level of obedience from myself, He calls me to protect my children. That is my job as a parent. That is my only job actually, all else falls under love and then protect. Education protects from abuse and exploitation, training in skill and attitude for work protects from poverty and freeloading.


But shielding from the world, protecting from sin, it keeps my children's hearts for God's work, it lessens the footholds for Satan in their lives, it bends them more God's way and less Self's way, self absorption.

What is my scripture for that? I immediately want to say, there are so many scriptures, from the beginning to the end of the whole of the Bible, that build my understanding of what my job as a parent is that I am at a loss as to which one to cite. Then there is this good one here that speaks of this and this one here that speaks of that, really we could go on forever. But now I have gotten a tap on the shoulder and I know that there is a verse I can cite that goes to the heart of our call, Dirt's and mine, as parents. It is one verse really but it is in three of the gospels and it is Christ's very own words, often found in red:

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!" Matthew 18:6-7

"And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck. " Mark 9:42

Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves." Luke 17:1-2

Some version say be careful. Can you be too careful? Read those verses again, can you be too careful? Really? Care to drown?

I protect ultimately because I love, not because I fear. To acknowledge that Satan is outside our doors, prowling, waiting for his chance to devour and destroy us, is not the same as being in fear, paralysing, poor reaction causing, fear.

Fear and panic are not emotions that bring about care or careful ways. They are in fact ungodly. But often we go to fear and panic after something has happened. Satan has gotten inside our lives perhaps because we have not been previously careful. We have not been filled with care and attentiveness, something has now gone a wry and we panic out of fear of more things going a wry. This is not how we are to behave, we are to at first be care-filled, that when things go wrong around us we do not compound them with our panic and fear.

Misery loves company the old adage goes, the Biblical concept of that would be a little leavening ferments the whole. Do you tell me I am too over-protective because it is too much trouble for you too be likewise with your child and therefore you want me to parent like you do? Is it really my best interest you have at heart or do you just want your whining child off your back? You want to give in, but you want company in your misery and so you ask, beg and then criticize when my child doesn't get to accompany yours to the mall to hang out, or on a road trip with friends, or to a nice little college to find themselves? Or maybe you would just like my child to date a little so that you don't have to wonder if your kid could have actually found a spouse without having to get pregnant first?

We as a society, including Christians, spend the majority of our children's early years, and a boat load of our money on a career for them that may or may not last about thirty years (and in some cases never get off the ground) yet we spend little time or resources preparing, preserving them for a daily relationship that is to last "until death us do part" not to mention the relationship that will last an eternity.

Bible verse? How 'bout a whole chapter, Genesis 34, a great illustration of where neglectful parenting can lead. This chapter spoke loudly to Dirt and I as we began to take seriously the great honor it was to raise four daughters for God. Not only does it show what can happen to a good girl when she is allowed to hang out with just the women folk in the market place, but it shows that neglectful parenting not only can have consequences for your very own family but many people can be greatly effected. A great many people can be affected by the nonchalant cultural choices we often make with no regard to what God's word may actually say on the topic or where the Holy Spirit could lead you to if you were to only listen first then act, instead of acting first and then listening to the correction through ill consequences.

We are not saying we have done everything right, that we have been as protective as we should have been. We are not saying that we are not the cause of some of our children's sin. We indeed are and for that we ask them and God for forgiveness, and we pray that we are able to find the right road again. But please, do not then ask us to be less careful with their lives, their very souls. Stop telling us not to parent as God has called us to.

Living Among The Window Ledge People

So I've said a few time before and promised an explanation of not having rules especially in departments where some expect us to have rules.

Our daughters, all four, have never dated and won't. Two are now married. Some folks then wonder what our "rules" look like, how it is we "do" that. How do we keep them from dating, what our definition of dating is, when they will get to make that choice for themselves and what the consequences for rule breaking in our house looks like.

They seem to have at least a brain strain or more like a brain fracture when we say we don't have a no-dating rule. "Then they can date if they want to?"

"No."

"So then you have dating rules."

"No."

Eyes glaze over and they shake their head and wonder if we are just being obstinate or silly or knowing us slightly, both.

We see it like this.

We don't have rules about walking on the window ledge when you are in a building five stories up and better.

But we seem to live in a society that once you are above the fifth floor, the only accepted way of getting from room 502 to 534 say, is to climb out on the ledge and walk hopefully to the corresponding window and then climb back in.

We stand in room 502 knowing that we need to get to 534 and listen to insane people talk about how easy and sort of fun it is to go by way of the ledge. They seem to think we are nuts for thinking it absurd to go about in this manner. They have always gotten from room to room that way, they are fine. Only a few folks fall to their death, and some survive to come up and climb right back out on that ledge.

Sorry, but we think you are crazy. You have perfectly good hallways. Why would you want to risk the fall, the chance that you might not be at the right window, so many other pit falls of taking the window ledge instead of the hallway.

But because we live in a society that refuses to take the hallway from room to room, we seem to have a no-window-ledge rule. Because what do you say when someone starts climbing out on the ledge and looks back at you and says, "Are you coming?"

"No, what are you, nuts? We don't use the ledge."

"Oh, you have a window ledge rule don't you?"

"Well I didn't before today, didn't know I needed one."


That is how we feel about dating. We don't really need a no-dating rule because quite frankly it is as ridiculous as getting from room to room via a window ledge. It doesn't assure you that you will actually get to the room you are seeking and on top of that it is plum dangerous and unnecessary to boot. It is just that nearly everyone in our society climbs out the window and goes along the window ledge.

We firmly believe and it has been proven that God will bring along your spouse when and where you need them. It will be evident, not necessarily just to the couple involved, but to their immediate community. It will be confirmed and known to those who need to know.

If God cares about the hairs on my head, the job I hold, the house I live in, the vacation I take, why would he not care about the second most important relationship, topped only by my relationship to Him? And care enough to bring the person that I need, and needs me, into my life at the appropriate time?

I do not need to entertain myself until then, get to know the opposite sex, and play around with falling off the ledge. This is baggage that gets in the way of the eventual relationship He will bring to me, and is the makings of footholds in my life that allows Satan to climb all over me.

And that is just the stuff that is bad for me personally. Dating also allows for me to defraud others. The people I date, when they think I care more about them than I do, they are defrauded. I can't possible be honest with how little I do care or they would break it off and I would not be able to gain the personal pleasure that I get from having someone to do things with. Having to do things alone or with your brother or your mom or dad, is a pitiful drag and down right embarrassing why would I be honest and make myself have to get through day to day life in that embarassing uncomfortable manner?

I also defraud their family and mine. They become close to me and my family to them, only to loose when we say it didn't work out. They are left with an unusable Christmas gift in the closet when we timely break up in November so that we don't have to do that uncomfortable Christmas, but we aren't really that into one another, thing. They are left with emotions that have no place to go now, or they continue to get together with my ex because for some reason they seem to like them better than me and they waited so long for a brother or a sister and now it looks like they will have to wait even longer and won't that be weird when I finally do get hitched what will they do with my old ex that they still like?

Not to mention the constant danger of slipping off the ledge and plummeting to the death of our purity. Physically and emotionally as well. And it is not enough just to "avoid" actually falling. We believe that to constantly tell yourself you cannot do a certain something, but enjoying getting up to certain edges only to exasperatingly back off before it is too late, is as dangerous to future intimacy as actually doing what you are not supposed to until you have committed yourself before your God and community.

So no, we don't have rules against dating any more than we have rules of walking on the fifth story window ledge.

More later. As always. Please pelt us with comments and questions, it spurs us on.

A Little More...

Ready for another freak fest? If A Final Lesson In Faith was just whetting your appetites for knowing exactly how weird we all are, the Vicks and the Bowermans, and all that the bond includes, then I sure as heck have more where that comes from. I think these are turning out to be the story build up for what this blog was really all about: Dirt and Lanny's personal journey with God, 'Building a Future of Purity for Generations'.

What Happened on the Way to a Book of Sorts
Instead I got all caught up in telling you more of the Farming and Funny Stories aspect of our lives with a few of God's lessons for Dirt and I, mostly me (you know those slow students), thrown in. Then I had a great idea to have an extra blog to put my long stuff on. Yeah, I know, you are wondering how long the long stuff is if what is written here isn't long stuff. But its for long, consistent stuff. Mostly I had abandoned it when spring rolled around and I was having difficulty getting my work done. And some people who were encouraging my writing were now wonder where their dinner was and who was going to move the tractor out of the middle of the field cause a thought had struck the person using it.

Well I'm back in the saddle, again, I think this time I know where the stirrups are located so that I can confidently take off. This and the post I wrote on Monday will go there, the Stories_From_Dirt_&_Lanny blog along with my feeble attempts at some rather lame non-fiction (they get to stay there and maybe I'll add more) and it will begin my long awaited start on my book, well long awaited by about four people in my life that is. Maybe you'll enjoy it, maybe you won't, it will quickly take a strong turn that quite a few folks don't have the time for.

Building a Future of Purity For Generations to Come was originally a "class" Dirt and I put together for a few people who often asked us how we got to where we got. There were just a couple of folks who wondered how we managed to have sweet, non-mouthy, non-hussified, hard working girls, that didn't date and didn't hang out, but still managed to get married. We would always answer with, "it isn't us, it is God, we just try to listen and do."

People wanted to know what we had been listening to, what rules we had come up with. That was the hard part. There weren't very many "rules", hardly one really. Mostly it was understanding what the end result of direct parenting really is and what God means for us to be doing with our lives and our gifts. And really, it is more than how we got to where we got 'cause we're still gettin'. And it may appear to some folks that the title and what the main theme of most of Dirt's and my yapping is all about sexual purity. But purity is about way more that what the bathing suit covers. Way more. And our purity in God continues to develop, hopefully not degrade, the further we run the path with Him.

But as far as rules for it, so you can just follow a set of check off-able rules, it doesn't really work like that. It's kinda like a blob, hard to hold onto from the outside, but if you could just crawl into "it" you would be surrounded by it all the time.


Where to Start
It is hard to really pin down when this journey started for Dirt and I. We could start at our own marriage, but then when we came together we were bringing two stories together that really weren't even identifiable at that time and we really didn't know at that time what we were doing and how much our very lives were setting up.

So we'll just go with Anne's birth to the Bowerman family and the bonding and increased family building that scenario all began for us and we'll work backward and forward from there and see how it goes.

A Helpful Tool
This is a telling of a people's history and how God moves in their lives, and it is told from one of the more random, seemingly disjointed people in the group. You know full well Dear Reader that you almost need a road map once I get started talking. Okay, yes, you need a road map. That's a great idea. But you'll have to draw it out yourself as we go along. So get out a big sheet of paper and write "God" in the center.

Actually lets make sure we are all on the same paper, write, "Triune God." As you write it you could hum the hymn lines "God in three persons, blessed Trinity." I did just now, so maybe you can too.

Now, anywhere you want to, you can write Dirt and Lanny or if you want to be all formal like, you could put Phil and LeeAnn Vick. Then after you read A Final Lesson In Faith you can put down Mike and Rebecca Bowerman. None of our entries will be in chronological order, if they were you might not need this road map. So don't put them in a nice straight line vertically or horizontally. Come on you left-brained engineer students, you can do it, just close your eyes and stab at the paper, now open your eyes and just start writing.

You can draw a line from the center, God, to Dirt and Lanny. And you can draw a line from the center, God, to Mike and Rebecca.

Now that you read A Final Lesson In Faith you can draw a line between Dirt and Lanny, and Mike and Rebecca. You could even illustrate this line. Lets see... you could draw a horse, or a cider press, or a microphone, a hospital, an ultrasound, well heck you know what your capable of drawing and you read the story, no skipping stories, they are all important, so you know what you can draw there for now. I might say, don't fill in the whole line because there might be more things you want to draw there.

Now lets see what do I want to tell you next.....

Oh yeah. Lets have a little humor and some launching points for concepts. Lets talk dating.

Dating
Not, I repeat, not one of my favorite subjects. It's true, I have major issues with dating, and all of them will unfold soon enough, but one of the foundations to having problems with it was that in high school I sort of wasn't allowed to get my own dates just in case one of my brother's friends might be short a date and they would need me to fill in. He was a senior and I was a sophomore and he ran my life. Oh, by the way this is actually the one brother that doesn't have huge issues with me now, it pays to have at least one other black sheep with you in a relationship circle.

I don't know how dating went for Dirt, he was at a high school out in the booneys well not as booney as he could have been, but definitely in a different school district and different sports league, no reasons for our paths to cross at the time and besides he would have been my brothers age and in order to date him they would have had to be friends. So I really have no idea how dating went for Dirt. Beings that he was the oldest I'm thinking no one told him who he had to go out with on Friday night no matter what plans he had made Wednesday afternoon.

I know very little dating incidences of his, and I'm betting you won't get much out of him either Dear Reader if you asked directly. He has one or two stories he repeats. So I'll tell you the one he tells most.

Dirt had a restored 1954 Ford Victoria that he drove around. And he had a girlfriend with long blond hair (who didn't in 1974 in America?). He was driving down I-5 one afternoon when he glanced over to his "girl" as she was finishing up brushing her hair, (probably for the fiftieth time in the hour) and caught her pulling the hair out of her brush and tucking it under the seat.

I'll just let you absorb that scene a moment.

Dirt's brain lit on fire. (It doesn't do that very often) and he immediately pulled over to the side of the road and demanded she get out, remove the hair ball and dispose of it properly. We don't need to mention her name, she doesn't belong on our road map. This is just one of two of the only dating stories heard from Dirt. Not much to go on.

I'm thinking that this isn't the incident that made him go all crazy, mad scientist crazy, when he noticed his first little girl getting a little older, not so little girlish any more, starting to look like the little girls he found himself hanging around for no apparent reason. I'm thinking his crazy was based on thoughts that look a lot more like my dating stories, the ones where someone in the car needs to be taken to the hospital for door handle and window crank extractions and it wasn't the boy. I'm just thinking that maybe just maybe he had scenes like that in his head when he started to go crazy. He hasn't shared any. But I'm thinkin'.

Dirt, the Mad Inventor
I'm thinking that that is what he was reflecting on as his first baby girl was rolling through the years of eleven, twelve, thirteen... He could see a trend and he wasn't liking it. He knew what was down the road and like he always said to me when I thought adult guy friends for me were harmless, "I (Phillip Vick) know how guys' minds work!"

He began to invent all sorts of surveillance and protective devices for his daughter. Polishing up a rifle on the porch swing was not enough for him. Sure he thought that whole, "so you want to date my daughter" contract was funny and so right, but he knew no piece of stupid paper was going to protect his daughter. That was his job. Only he thought he had to do his job and insist that she date. "Normal people date, I want my daughter to be normal, therefore she must date".

Not right away mind you. Dating could and should be held off for as long as possible, most likely sixteen, 'cuz after all what was the sense in dating if you couldn't go in a car. Yeah, you'd miss those fun door knob extraction moments, that's worth waiting for.

So he began to invent, well in his mind anyway, nothing went into actual prototype development. Mind you this was early nineties, no GPS, cell phones were barely on the scene, PCs were slooooooooow. But yet Dirt figured he could put a device on the guy's car and go inside and watch the little red dot on the map and see when it stopped and if it was a preapproved stopping spot and if it wasn't he would run out to the helicopter pad and take off, I would stay in radio contact and let him know what was going on.

Realizing of course that there would be some delay in his arrival at the scene he knew he needed some back up technology. That is when he began to actually hope for the need for expensive orthodonture work. He would supply the orthodontist with his very special braces. These braces would have sensors that could detect external pressure. On receiving that impulse, a magnetic pulse would be activated slamming shut the top and bottom braces and locking them in a closed position. He was also working on some sort of clothing connection.

But before he could work up the clothing concept and get it all off to the workshop for prototype development a friend of ours handed me a book one day.

A Book and Author Come to Us From a Friend
I sat there at her house reading it and almost finished it on the scene. If I'm interested I can usually eat a book in one sitting and this one was relatively small and I was very very interested in it. The title was, I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

Now I grant you, it was written by a youth for youth, not necessarily for parents. It was a young man's perspective on why dating is essentially stupid, unnecessary and potentially very harmful.

His, Joshua Harris', thoughts on the subject blew the doors off of my brain. Most of what he said struck very familiar cords and the new thoughts were pretty fascinating.

I handed the book to my then approaching thirteen year old daughter. She too nearly read it in one sitting. And when she was done she said, "the rhinoceros that was in the middle of my road is gone. I will not be dating."

Holy Cow Patties that was way too easy.

But we, Dirt and I didn't question it, Dirt was just happy to put away the graph paper, resin mold, and electrical conduit. I was just glad.

And we rested, got on with the other parts of life, continued to talk openly about what we thought marriage was all about, in God's eyes, and how a young person might prepare for it. But mostly we were free to focus on sewing, sheep raising, gardening, chicken management and stitching up ducks torn up by dogs. God was good. We often thanked him for sending a book like Josh Harris' into our world just in time for the sake of our daughters.

Sometimes late at night I would lie awake crying to myself, wishing I had had that book. My life would have been so different. So much black and stormy, soul crushing stuff could have been avoided.

But then I started thinking, and I think some thoughts were stirring in Dirt's mind too. What if a teen (hate that word) couldn't get passed the rejection of the concept by their peers? What if they weren't brave enough to risk doing something different even though convention (just since the beginning of this century any way) was proving not to be such a hot way to start life? What if they were willing to risk a baggage car load of baggage that they would carry into their marriage just so they wouldn't look weird? Every day having to chalk it up to growing up?

There's More to the Path
Those thoughts got Dirt and I thinking and searching for some answers from God. And sure enough He was faithful to bring us some more information. More information came in concrete form from the same friend who handed me the first book, my dear friend Terry. And some stuff was coming out in Dirt's and my thoughts that were stirred by Scripture and biblical principles.

But that will be another day's story. I guess today's story isn't all that freaky for some folks but not everything that goes into the pot roast pan looks like meat.

Have a great day Dear Reader!

A Final Lesson In Faith

It's story time. Only this story is absolutely and completely true, no fake letters, no fictional characters.

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It is a story that is at once my final lesson in faith and a story about grafting on to a tree. I know, its weird 'cuz the pictures that go with this story are our haying pictures from this summer. We didn't have enough from our farm so we needed to get hay from the Schactlers this year, (extra horses, but a dad's gotta do, what a dad's gotta do).

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Haying is hot, dry, dusty, scratchy, heavy work. It is never ever done when it is rainy, and good hay that last until next April, or May in the case of this year, has to be accompanied by sure warm weather, not cool damp weather. There you have it in a nutshell what haying season is all about. So now you can look at the pictures for the other story they tell. Tree grafting. But the back story of tree grafting is my final exam in faith.

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Nearly eleven years ago, eleven year ago this October, I invited the youth group my husband and I were getting involved in out to the Farm for some cider pressing and fall fun. The only youth in site were my own kids. The interim leader, a nice hard working fellow, and a young married gal who worked with the girls had also come out to help with the youth, that didn't show up.

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I was disappointed but that was how it was supposed to be. We stood around for a while staring at the driveway, wondering what other activity had pulled the kids away that said they would be there, oh don't get me sidetracked, you know what I mean, we'll just leave it at that shall we.

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After we were certain that no more youth were coming, the fellow stood and talked a little longer to Dirt but then left because he had his own family to tend to if nothing was pressing him out here. But the young gal was easily swayed to stay and go for a horse back ride. I was all of a sudden extremely happy that not one youth had showed up. My girls were busy pressing apples with Dad and now I was going to get an afternoon to spend with this intriguing younger woman.

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She was the singer on the worship team at the church we attended. The Sundays that we pulled into the parking lot and heard the worship team practicing and warming up and I heard her voice, I knew it was going to be a good day. Her husband was a big guy and she was just a little thing. Her age was hard to pin down, I'm bad at remembering such things so even if she had told me a zillion times I would not have remembered. They kinda looked like they could be fresh out of college or darn near our age, just no kids.

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Well in actuality I was turning forty and she was fast approaching thirty. I get confused on ages. Addition and subtraction of years is like square footage in buildings, my mind draws a blank and then heads in the wrong direction. Convention would have put us in different friendship groups for several reasons. I'm ever so glad I also have a hard time with convention too. 'Cause I wanted to get to know her. I wanted her for a friend. I wanted to crawl inside her life and her in mine.

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We saddled up the horses and rode off for most of the day. We weren't to far into our ride when she began to tell me about her troubles with having children, her and her husband had already been pregnant many times but none of the pregnancies went very far. My heart broke. Funny the things you can assume when you just look at the outside of a situation.

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She began to tell why it was particularly hard for her right now. Her new sister in law was setting out to become pregnant or was already, I couldn't hold on to the story my head was already reeling at that point. All I was feeling was bizarre sense of joy because I knew we were going to be fast friends and extreme sadness for her all at once. I hardly remember where all we rode. There were parts of her telling and parts of the landscape that for me are inseparable but the whole of it is gone. I'm not so sure they registered at all that day.

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For a few days I stewed over my new friends plight. Then one night I began to pray and I couldn't stop. I began in my bed like I always do, thinking I would pray myself to sleep as normal. But I felt the Holy Spirit asking more of me. I was covering a lot of territory in my prayers, way more than I ever did before. I kept coming around to her and her husband. Praying several approaches.

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I wonder what the sleep cam pointed at my bed would have shown that night. On the bed flat. On my knees like the children in pictures, hands folded elbows on the bed. On the floor, face buried in discarded clothes and lint, not caring a wit. Praying hard. Praying for many things. Surely I must be done.

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Back up on the bed, lying flat, just a few more prayers to lull me to sleep. A couple of hours and a half dozen prayer positions later I have covered every topic imaginable, they bubble from my heart, flow out of my brain and drip from my lips to God's ear.

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Then I pray that God give me strength to allow my children to do what he needs them to do. Not what I want them to do. Oh that was hard. I had a lot to prove with my children. Mostly I had years of proving things to my family my mom and my siblings, but now my mom was gone, nothing to prove to her any longer, I got the feeling that nothing would prove that I was a grown up to my siblings, so what the heck. I knew that my children were ultimately God's not mine. I knew that, was I ready to pray that?

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Totally. No more me. Tell me God what you want and I will do my best to raise them so that they are the tool you will use. Over and over for each girl, all four. Lord what do you need them to be? I prayed in general and I prayed specifically. I prayed to know how to help my girls overcome some character hurdles, you know the ones, same sort of trait, a little this direction and it's a tool for destruction, a little this direction and it is a tool for righteous living.

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"Lord God take them and use them. They are yours not mine." I heard footsteps just then in the hallway. Heavy, uncertain from where, I don't remember, but familiar footsteps. Dirt was sleeping in bed next to me, I was staring out our door into the hall. The commanding hard heavy footsteps ended at my door.

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"He'll take them now you know. You know they'll die now don't you. They always do when you say stuff like that."

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"Absolutely not!" I yell. "I know who you are! You are a fraud! Go away from here!" The footsteps retreat but now they are weak and sad.

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I listen for a few minutes. I don't hear anything but I can't help myself. I throw back the afghan I had over my shoulders and dash up the stairs to the girls and begin touching them making sure that they are peaceful. I stay for a few hours to pray at their bedsides. As the light from the window begins to move from grey to a glow, I retreat down stairs.

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"Where you been," is the muffled question that comes from under the covers as I lift mine and crawl in. Exhausted but rested all at the same time.

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The next day I don't see any miraculous changes in my girls. In fact, are things actually worse? Walking through the beginning of that week, excited and looking, no answers. Now it is Wednesday and I am still excited. I get to see my new friend the one I prayed for a few days ago on that weird night. I wonder how she is.

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When I get to the hall where we hold our youth group she grabs me by the arm. She says she has to go back to her house to get some stuff she forgot for tonight. Okay. I leave Dirt and the girls to continue to set up. In the car she spills it faster than I can.

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She is pregnant!

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Everything is going to be okay. Everything I prayed for is what I was suppose to pray for. Everything is going to work out. She was already pregnant the night I prayed, obviously, but everything I prayed for is going to be okay.

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I'm so stinking excited I don't even remember what I told her or if I even did. Cloud nine. So when she starts getting sick, I'm smiling. Oh I can commiserate with her, I was sick from the moment I conceived to the moment their shoulders came out. I was no stranger to morning, afternoon and evening sickness. But I was happy.

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Then the bad news came, my friend miscarried. I'm really confused. I go to pray. I don't understand. I try not to be selfish but I hurt as if it were me. I can't stand it. Now I am just crying and I hear my Lord say to me, "pray for the pregnancy to go well."

What? What are you saying Lord? Didn't you hear? Don't you know? There is no more pregnancy.

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But the Lord's voice insists. "Pray for the pregnancy."

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Now I am confused. Am I not hearing well? Am I misunderstanding? Is it okay for a woman to get pregnant right away? My nurses training kicks in, I don't think so, the body needs a rest.

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"Pray for the pregnancy."

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I do, I find words that work. I pray for the pregnancy.

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I keep hearing the voice, "Pray for the pregnancy." Every day it hounds me. I am. I am praying. Poor Rebecca. She looks awful. She is still sick. Says that this has happened every time she miscarries until she goes and gets the remaining tissue cleaned out. Oh my poor friend, my heart aches, I cannot take it. I cannot think, I can hardly drive or take care of my own children. I feel so drained. Its the holidays and I don't care.

I keep hearing His voice. "Pray for the pregnancy."

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I come into my bedroom, The bed that betrayed me. I thought everything was going to be okay. How much longer, how many more times, this is killing me, what about her! I can't take it. I fall on my knees at the end of the bed. Back to the door. Not where I usually pray but I don't care. I am spent.

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"Pray for the pregnancy."

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I'm done I don't have anymore words. I'm tapped. I don't know what in the world to say. All that is coming out now are moans. Pathetic helpless moans. Deep from my gut. Wounded, dying animal sounds. My arms are limp but there all that holds me up, upper body sprawled on the bed, lower body crumpled on the floor. I can't do any better than this? I can't lift my head, put my hands together in a proper prayer position. I don't think I'll be able to move again. What if someone comes to the front door? They'll see me. I don't care.

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I don't care if anyone even my girls see me. I can't move. I can't talk I can't form a thought. Moans just keep spilling out. I am farther and farther from myself, my dignity. I have none anymore. I don't care. The pain is too great. It has me pinned to the bed and floor. Nothing matters but the pain. My heart is a wreck but from somewhere it just continues to cry out with these unlady like moans. No birth moans sound like these, no death sounded like this, no pain I every heard in the hospital ever sounded like this. Yet it is coming from me and I don't care, I just yield to it.

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It stops.

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I remain on the floor and the bed. Sleeping but awake. I feel a nudge and I rise. I am not tired or exhausted. Am I sure? Nope, I feel fine.

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I go about my days. I hear His voice ask for prayer for the pregnancy and I attend to it. No more questions, no more made up words that fit my world and sort of cover the request. I just open up my heart and let the non-words pour out. Where ever I may be. Grabbing something out of a cupboard. Tending to a child's needs. Vacuuming a floor. Ignoring the crumbs under the chair. It all becomes so much easier, no struggle.

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When I'm not praying I have a zillion questions, but no one to ask. I don't know her people. She is drained and so is her big husband. He looks so small lately. She looks so sick and pale. And tired. And he looks so small. But I continue to pray the words that don't make sense, the words that ask that the pregnancy goes well, I continue to not ask questions and just pray.

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I look around at church and I don't see her any where. He isn't there either. We church in a school, there are rooms everywhere that we use. I look everywhere. Dirt has gone home, we do stuff for the church and now we have two services, with the farm stuff we can't both be there the whole time, so we drive separate cars and he has already left, the sound equipment has all been put away. But there are still various children's church people putting away their things.

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I'm ripping open door after door trying to find a particular woman, she would know, sister of the pastor, kind of in charge of a lot, interum youth leader's wife, she'll be the one that knows. I find her. She is squating picking the days work up off the floor. I blurt out my question, "Where's Rebecca, is she okay?" before she even has a chance to turn around.

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When she turns around there is a smile there that I know only means great stuff. And sure enough what spills from her mouth is phenonminal news.

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She, Rebecca, my dear little friend, had gone in finally to have a DNC to clean out the remaining tissue. The doctor as always first took and ultrasound to check on what was still in there. And there was a baby.

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This hay bucking baby to be exact (this is where the pictures actually do sorta go with the story). She was in there, making her momma sick but she was growing, determined to put her mark on the world.

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The gal I had found that had the news for me continued to talk, something about a twin, that was what was miscarried, I sort of heard. But then I was in my car with my girls driving home. I think. I do remember passing the RV repair place right about the time I became aware of the pain in my chest. Like it was going to burst with joy.

I miraculously made it home. Dirt was there, sitting on the end of the bed facing the door. Like he had been waiting for me. Right in that spot.

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My excited words began to tumble out as I grabbed his shirt and pulled my face in close to his. I was saying I couldn't believe it and he wouldn't either. I told him all I knew but the most I knew was that she indeed was still pregnant.

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He looked up at me and said, "What did you expect, are you really surprised?" Oh he was Phil Dirt alright, that would come out of Dirt's mouth. But it wasn't just him in there telling me that. It wasn't mean. It wasn't a "I told you so." said in a critical spirit meant to put me down. It was a check. It was a, "people have told you you have a gift. You have a gift of faith, now buck up and use it."

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Okay, step off of cloud forty-six and back down to a normal cloud nine. No biggy just normal kingdom stuff. Things look bad from a world perspective and it really isn't and He proves it over and over and over through us.

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That is just the begining of the odyssy that has built this family, these two families, that keep making more families between them but in reality are just becoming one giant confusing family.

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This is Anna and Abbey, Anna is the designated driver for haying season. She loves to drive her daddy's truck. Abbey was the next little miracle baby to come to Mike and Rebecca, in much the same way Anne did. Anne did have a little more drama just before she was born. Rebecca ended up in the hospital on bed rest at twenty-three weeks with a tear in the amniotic sack. I of course stopped by the autoparts store and picked up a bottle of Stop-a-Leak for her. Just the thing a good friend does.

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Yeah, the doctors saved the day and helped Anne be born eventually on Father's day but we all knew the girl had an appointment. Rebecca and I continued to bond and continue our bonding still. Still learning how to carry someone so dear right in your hip pocket even though oft times you're quite poked in the behind with the friendship. Sometimes it is a gentle nudge and sometimes it is a rather unexpected stab, ones that could send most friends down the highway.

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"Ow. Oh it's you," we say. And then we rub our bruised hiney and listen closer to the words that we know are meant for our wellbeing.

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It isn't just Rebecca and I, it is Mike and Dirt It's even Pop and Patty MorMor, and Eric and Steph with Kai and Aksel, it is even Mike and Michelle when they can handle the confusion.

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I have other friends that I would die for, whose children are constantly on my prayer list, who I am pained for, whose trouble I grieve. But this is different. Anne and Abbey are as good as mine, as my very own.

Sisters from different mothers.

Okay, so it isn't the rhyming phase the "brother" one is, but these ain't no boys. These are two of Dirt's and my six girls.

Have I Ever Been Gone So Long Before?

I'm outta sorts, I have written so many posts in the last few days. But none have shown up here.

I have even tried, desperately tried, to write silly willy nilly posts about pruning, cats, (not pruning cats, pruning trees and watching cats), nutty dogs, hard jobs, good friends, bad scenes (the naked bottom of a trifle bowl), homemade pizza, frozen water, wild birds, new cake recipes, downloading books from the library and how they are "returned." I have a ton of things to tell you, to joke with you about and I even have a huge list of daily thoughts about God and exhortations for both you and I Dear Reader, to become better at following Him, hearing Him. But all those posts are drafts, or ended up stuck on my One Note.

Somehow in all those posts amid the joking about dogs and girls are snide comments about our new President. Many of them entirely juxtaposed and non sequitur. But un-deleatable. Yet un-Publish Post-able. So there lays my quagmire of no posts as of late.

If only I could get my hands on a glass of kool aid that is a flavor I like, I could drink deeply then, chug away at the mind numbing, moderate-education erasing fluid that millions upon millions of my country men have draught down into their gullets to course through their veins and block their brains from clear reasonable thinking on at least the level that we would expect from a junior high student.

"And yet, they were willing to put all they were and all they had on the line - their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor - for a set of ideals that continue to light the world. That we are equal. That our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness come not from our laws, but from our maker. And that a government of, by, and for the people can endure. It was these ideals that led us to declare independence, and craft our constitution, producing documents that were imperfect but had within them, like our nation itself, the capacity to be made more perfect." Barak Obama, from an inauguration week speech.

He says wonderful things such as this and our nation's mind goes numb, forgetting who is saying this or because of who is saying this, we look no further for hints of what the man holds as truth. I'm not at this point even really speaking of his policies, policies that include spending ridiculous amounts of money on programs shown to be corrupt and hindering at worst or ineffectual at best, or having us spend government funds for people choosing foolishness and the murder it takes to dispose of the resulting inconvenience. I'm speaking of something far more insidious.

In spite of what he has said in the above paragraph he goes on to say within the same speech:
"And yet while our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not. What is required is the same perseverance and idealism that those first patriots displayed. What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives - from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry - an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels."

Echoing from an October speech where Barak Obama said, “This is not a time for ideology; this is a time for common sense."

Hate to break it to his speech writers and him, that in America, common sense American style is ideology. He addresses it himself in most of his train speech where he waxes poetically about the perseverance and dedication that the first Americans had "for a set of ideals that continue to light the world." That, my Dear Reader, is ideology.

He brings it up in the pejorative and hopes that it can be slipped in because some where in the backs of our minds, ever so subtly, we remember the word "ideologues". And then we too will jump on the band wagon of being free from ideologies, and then he will slowly drop from his speech the "ideals that continue to light the world."

He begins to set up the opportunity to shame the citizenry for their holding onto ideas and aims that build their comprehensive vision, their way of thinking as a nation built on certain principles, that he may then, after all vestiges of American Revolutionary desires are stripped away, embed his ideologies, but they will not be as cohesive, they will be more like not having any ground under us at all. It will be destructive to the very core that we have come to know is America.

This is the same trick that Napoleon Bonaparte contrived when he turned the term ideologies onto those he call ideologues, oddly enough he used it against those in his days that were considered liberal, his opponents. To discredit and shame them into silence. Ideology, ideals are bad, so said Napoleon Bonaparte and so now says Barak Obama.

By calling for "freedom from ideology" in one speech and "declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives - from ideology" in others, he is setting in our brains, should we care to allow him to serve up his kool aid, that we are not to hold fast to concepts that this country was built on. He is laying the road to shredding out of our minds the very things that make us American. He will redefine us in the future as a undefinable androgynous amorphous blob of collective human flesh at his disposal.

And he has already done so. I have no idea what this person's past integrity was like, I just recently added them to my reader list because I was looking for more farm blogs to read. But they are no longer on my list. I do not mind those who are hoping that the future will be made brighter by a new fresh face at the gate. I do not mind those who truly believe that the road to freedom is isolationism and thievery on either side of the isle, what I mind is a person plowing American soil with this thought in his or her head:

"We have waited for this moment in time when we can be so proud of our country. For many, it's our first experience of authentic patriotism. At last we are able to hold up our heads as Americans. We have spoken; democracy is indeed a reality." An unnamed blogger speaking of the inauguration of Barak Obama.

What a display of self-indulgent, short-sited, un-educated understanding of America. Clearly they have been drinking from the Cup-of-Michelle. Can't wait to see how Democracy works without freedom of speech.

I said last spring, perhaps not on this blog but in person, that this man is dangerous and I say he still is. Not for his policies that can easily be changed but for his shaming our country into giving up its profound, distinct and noble ideals that make up its ideology. He will do it not thorough anything we can fight by vote except in our own person, because he will do it through his sleep speech, speeches designed to leave our eyes open and our hands clapping all the while it puts our mighty brain to sleep. And yes, he is free to use speech but I hope that, unlike the blogger quoted above, we are not willing to succumb to his sleep speech.

As a Christian who happens to be American, I know that no one can strip away from me what is the ultimate in importance. That said, I can also see how unfortunate it is that we are willing to shame all the good that this country has meant for the last two-hundred years because we are about to get a cookie. I am ever so thankful that I know my God, because I'm not so sure I will recognize my country in eight years, and I am glad that my salvation does not rest in such a fragile thing as two-hundred years of Democracy

Sayings and Stuff

Beware dear reader my funny side is in a storage locker right now and my grumpy, introspective, foreboding, sack cloth and ashes side, is hung out today for all who wish to see it, endure it more likely. Quick, swing right past here, don't even glance down, if you just want to trollop through today having a gay old time.


Bumper stickers drive me crazy, reader board sayings... My jaw tightens, my teeth clench...

Okay, not all the time but most certainly more often than not, though I get what they are trying to say, I find them short sighted, narrow minded or plain foolish (not in a kicks and giggles sort of way more in a moronic sort of way).

Sometimes quotes are very good. I have a few favorite quotes myself. But sometimes, sometimes quotes can be as frustrating for me as a bumper sticker.

The item, bumper sticker or quote, could be what is true for the majority of folks but ought not to be. Or true in a sense but not the sense it then gets used for, abused for. Not unlike the bumper sticker, "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven," while in a sense it is true I find it to be a load of crap.

Why? First off, forgiven is not a small matter as "just" implies, and secondly, forgiveness doesn't end with being forgiven as "just" indicates.

Because it is on a bumper sticker or some one's chest, it clearly announces straight away that the person sporting it does not care to be reminded that they may have offended a stranger, neighbor, sister, brother or God himself. Because after all, Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven. Way to hold out that light in a corrupt and depraved generation. Woo-hoo! you go girl! Sista


Some quotes are like verses from Scripture, full of wisdom and guiding insight.

Some quotes may be insightful but they sure as heck should not guide us, these are often quotes of humorists. I read such a quote today. "Getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with friends. You order what you want, then when you see what the other fellow has, you wish you had ordered that".--Unknown.

I'm sorry for the unfortunate reality for some people in that. I'm sorry that people see that as truth but do not see the scorn. The kicks and giggles we get at our inability to live like God desires us to. Our severe lack of accepting of His good gift and being content with what has been given, not resignation, but truly content.

I know dear reader, you're shaking your head right now. You are saying to yourself, "Oh Lanny, lighten up. No body lives by these clever, humorous sayings. They are just funny little light things."

I know, I'm a down right wet blanket kill joy aren't I?

But if something was not true would it be funny? Aren't things funny, make us chuckle because they could be true, usually for some unfortunate schmuck true most of the time?

Should we really find humor and a quiet little chuckle in something that is a sin? Yes, I said sin. Our discontentment is sinful and no less so in this very quote. The man or woman who was so indecisive as to covet his neighbor's plate is coveting his neighbor's spouse, that would make it, what, sin number 10?.

There oft is, unfortunately, truth in a quote such as this and we should be able to look at these and see the truth and the shame and be humbled into change, whether it be personally or be charged to make an impact that would change it in some one's life. They, poignant quotes, should spur us on to love and good deeds, not guffaws.

The restaurant quote is unfortunately an acceptable reality in a society where even though everyone signs up for the wedding vows that speak of "'til death do us part" they have a back up plan. But I dare say our response ought not to be kicks and giggles and a "good for the goose good for the gander" approach. But it ought to pull us up short and ask us, "Do you feel that way?"

If you do you better get it straight in your head, you better begin praying that the Holy Spirit imbue you with contentedness, godly contentedness. You better start praying and saying that while that used to be you it is not anymore and you are so glad you did not order what your neighbor ordered because you know that what you did order really is just what you needed and wanted. And maybe while you are at it you ought to confess and repent to your chicken Marsala that you really wanted it and not the veal parmigiana.

And if that isn't you in that quote, be bold, make it the cool thing to do to stand up and say; you never wanted anything but what you agreed to, the Chef prepared for you and the waiter brought you!


Okay, I'm done, you can take your hand off your bumper sticker now.

Have a great day! No really, I mean that!.

Apologies

"'I apologize' is the same as saying 'I'm sorry', unless you're at a funeral" Demeti Martin.

But I am not at a funeral so I will just say, "I apologize"." First to Mrs. Palin for spelling her name wrong in oooh Wait, Did You Just Reveal... . Spelling like a frog on acid, again.

Second, for any offense or confusion my last post Did God Say? may have caused. . I was attempting to point out that God's hate for divorce is from the very moment of the joining of the man and wife in what ever ceremony that causes them and others to acknowledge that they are man and wife (I really cannot hear that phrase any more without having Princess Bride flash in my head).

Yes, when children are involved it increases the saddness, making it even more evident that you are ripping flesh apart and that the violence effects more than just the couple. However, this morning, prior to my leaving for the hospital I was confronted with the crazy notion that a young married couple's parents wished that they had not gotten pregnant early in their marriage, four years, because now divorce would really be off the table until the children were grown, and that was most unforutunate for their son whom they had hoped would come to his senses. These are Christians, I speak of and to, who believe in the Word of God. If they did not believe in the God that hates divorce I would have no beef with them on this.

Yes, I like children. I like them so much I have a few. But everything good we do in this world is not for the sake of the children. And everything bad is not bad because it happens to children or children are effected. God is grieved when we sin, even if there are no kids in sight.

It is this kind of muddled thinking, 'it is bad only if the kids see', that is causing this nation some real problems.

Cheating on taxes, or whatever fraud you do, isn't bad as long as the kids don't find out or is acceptable if you don't have any kids yet.

Calling your wife a four letter word isn't bad as long as the kids don't hear.

Calling your husband an idiot is okay as long as the kids don't hear.

Watching a movie about illicit love affairs isn't bad as long as we rate it R and leave the kids at home.

These are the muddled thoughts of our culture and the list could go on and on and on. And we all contribute to it, I will be the first to raise my hand on that. But what I need, what my God says I need, what he has provided for me in the form of Christian companionship, which includes my husband and children, is someone or someones who will gently tap me on the shoulder and ask if my thinking hasn't gotten muddled. I need someone to love me enough to pull my head out of the fire. (Jude 23) And what I need is the humility to take the correction without wanting to point out their muddled thinking. Because the truth is the truth even if it is spoken by a donkey, or a jack ass, as the case may be.

So my apologies if I was too strident with God's word earlier and my apologies again if I only made things worse here and not helped one bit and you are still offended. Sometimes Dirt would like to ban me from reading certain books of the Bible or at least many chapters, I read them and then it is "look out for the wailing, gnashing of teeth, sack cloth, ashes and greiving for men's souls". My close friends are nodding yes indeed, aren't you?. I feel bad mostly because I would not wish that my strident behavior ever malign the word of God. Titus 2:5

Did God Say?

Was God quoted in Malici as saying "I hate divorce when children are involved," "and I hate a man's covering himself with violence as well as with his garment when children are involved," ?

Or did Matthew and Mark quote Jesus as saying, "and the two will become one flesh after the baby arrives,"?

Ahhh I didn't think so. The correct verses are:

"I hate divorce," says the LORD God of Israel, "and I hate a man's covering himself with violence as well as with his garment," says the LORD Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith. Malichi 2:16

Matthew 19:3-9 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"
"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"
Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."

Mark 10:3-12 And He answered and said to them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to dismiss her.” And Jesus answered and said to them, “Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” In the house His disciples also asked Him again about the same matter. So He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

If we are not allowed to change the written Word to fit our circumstance or culture, why do we change it with abandon in our hearts?

People get all worked up over verb tenses and proper translations when it is hardly recognizable that there is any difference from the original intent yet in our hearts we completely rewrite the word of God until it is hardly recognizable as the word of God and that's okay, we support one another's complete foolishness?!?!?!.

Attend to the Word of God and lean not on our own understanding and if a good friend is subverting the word of God love them enough to step in and show them their error, but be careful lest the doo hit you.

oooh Wait, Did You Just Reveal...

Personal hypocrisy? Well maybe, but did I say I was perfect or Dirt?

So in case you didn't smell the toast burning I will point out what may have gone undetected. I will even try to explain it without coming to my defense, I will let God do that, or discipline me, which ever.

I mentioned in my last post My Old Fair Job that I had a, gasp, job.

"But what? You're a stay at home mom. You said Mrs. Palin would not be a role model for your girls."

"Yep. And if we peer into my recent past you will see that I worked two days a week at the local hardware store just before my second daughter's wedding."

"How do you justify that?"

"Well I don't, but let me try to explain how Dirt and I came to be at peace with it."

The two different jobs, one only lasting two weeks each year, got my family a little extra spending money for two celebrations.

Neither job was necessary because Dirt and I were living beyond our means, we have credit cards for that, *joke*. The reality that it was not necessary is a big one, Dirt and I knew that we would not feel we were in the position to fudge on principles because of a job that our family had to have. I would not "have" to stay late with the boss alone because my job depended on it, I would not "have" to work if my family started to get out of whack and children became disobedient because I was at work.

Neither job put me in an authoritative position over a man or men. Not that Dirt and I feel that it is wrong intrinsically, Deborah in Judges was not condemned for taking a authoritative position, not like Onan got a "sin" named after him for his actions. It goes more to the point that Dirt and I recognize one of the footholds Satan has in my life from past sin is a twinge of feminism. If I, Lanny Person, had a position of authority over a man I might have to put way to much spiritual energy into not coming home wearing pants. *figuratively - I do wear them literally* I absolutely do not boss my husband around, nor should I. I put my two cents in frequently and it even causes him to change his mind but Dirt assures me it isn't because I am being bossy, just more capable of seeing the bigger picture or the detail in that instance, for which he is thankful because I have occasionally saved time or money or both. I am after all his helpmate and that isn't just to hand him wrenches although that is one of my favorite things to do for him, really. But this is a line that couples, with the help of close godly friends, need to figure out for themselves.

Neither job was a career that I had invested a great deal of time or money into developing. We feel that it is very dangerous for women to enter into a field of interest that would cause them to feel that they had to continue in it even when circumstances pointed to their need to stay home and unplug from the work world. This can easily be seen when a young woman has racked up big debt for a college education so that she "has something to fall back on" (as if God wasn't enough to fall back on). Not only does the young woman have the debt to cover but then, even after it is finally paid off, she and others around her may wonder why you would spend so much time and energy on something you don't really use. Because really even though motherhood is a tough, hard, thankless (by some), brain draining job, you can do it without a college degree, my grandmother and many, many, many (generations of many) like her would agree.

Remember here folks this is all to explain Dirt's and my seemingly inconsistent positions, or hypocrisy. Not to tell you you are wrong if you don't believe like we do. If the Holy Spirit chooses to work on you like he did Dirt and I years ago then I would of course recommend that you listen to Him instead of putting him off for years like Dirt and I did. If you are not seeing it and think we are whacko nut jobs, that's okay too, really, I won't bug you, I won't even say "I told you so" when one of you has an affair, physically or emotionally or your children are a mess, not that moms working causes that or anything.

But for now I gotta go visit a young friend in the hospital who is only at twenty-seven weeks gestation.

I'll pick this up later but I might want to post about fun frivolous things first, like the backhoe digging out the ponds at this very minute - What a great sound! But if it was a neighbor's sound, now that might be a different story.

Dirt on dirt.