Marriage

So much to consider about marriage and what it means to God and therefore what it means to followers of Christ. We have been studying marriage seriously over the years, it is a special bent Dirt and I have. Our study has brought about many changes in us, in our own marriage, in how we raised and are raising our girls, in what we don't joke about, in what we tell other followers of Christ about marriage, about dating, about weddings, about relating to others, about raising children.

We just keep going deeper and deeper. My husband loves to talk about how our marriages, Christian marriages, but also marriages in general, is a picture that God uses in his discussion of His relationship with His church, Christ and His Church. He swings it both ways, using Paul's discourse in Ephesians as an example, Phil often uses an ill-conceived idea of marriage as how God does not desire to relate to us; then also using the relationship Christ has with us as how we can freely relate to our spouses with confidence.

It is the example of who God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit is to us that encourages us to find freedom, ease and confidence in our relationship to each other but more than that it is what brings us to get over hurts and betrayal that we think are impassable. God's love and mercy is to be our example of our love, mercy, commitment for our spouse and then after we can accomplish submission to our spouse as unto Christ by His Church then we are able to embrace others perhaps like we have never been able to do, honestly and sustainably.

We have recently come to a profound realization about the marriage covenant, the depths of it, the extent of it, as God prepared us to speak to a young man about his marriage. We have no idea how that situation will play out but the human outcome does not change the truth of our realization, one that goes against current preaching in most churches or discussion in most Christian circles.

A conversation with my second oldest daughter on the subject caused me to look up John Piper's position on divorce and remarriage and I was pleasantly surprised to find a preacher, well known and respected, say very much what Phil and I and our good friends, Mike and Rebecca, have come to on the subject and for very much the same reasons, the same scriptures, the same sense of the Bible and God's set up of who he is to us and how he desires us to be with our spouses.

So instead of me babbling on incoherently, quoting snippets here and there I hope you check out what John Piper has to say in his position paper even if you are not contemplating divorce and/or remarriage, it may just speak to you about the depths God desires you to go in your presently comfortable marriage. http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/1986/1488_Divorce_and_Remarriage_A_Position_Paper/Check out these two video clips be sure to watch both the second one is very very good and answers some questions http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/MediaPlayer/2209/Video/ http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/MediaPlayer/2233/Video/.

I couldn't seem to find the video clip of John Piper's that I first watched, the two I give links to here are good but they are not the one I thought so hunt around his site maybe if you need to see it you will. It is very very good in conveying the heart and commitment of God that we are to witness to in our marriages and the privilege of being a witness to his love.

St Teresa Of Avila

I would entreat you dear reader, to give Interior Castle, by Teresa of Avila a chance to enrich your soul. Her writings on spiritual development certainly have opened up some beautiful pictures and understandings for me.

Her comments and discourse on favors from God greatly helped me to understand many of the beautiful favors Dirt and I recieve from God and has kept me a humbler follower of Christ through the understanding of such thngs. There are many other broadening ideas she had to share but my mind is muddled on them and therefore I would love to revist her picture of the soul.

I am going to reread this work of hers, which she undertook out of sheer obedience, and would welcome and delight over company in my adventure.

Just Lying Around

This is my week at a glance

I have no idea why I bother to schedule or plan or have a to do list. Becasue if someone were to check on my schedule or plan or to do list they would think that I have done what these two cats are doing all week long.

Why I Was Somewhat Glad to Bail Water

A quick aside before I get to today's little story.


We fixed the flag pole this last weekend and got the flag back up. As you can see this afternoon is breezeless. Quite warm, but my house is very cool for not being air conditioned. A great day for a couple of girls to lug a washing machine around. I hope to soon get back to gardening but I'm not sorry for the mess and that brings me to today's story...

So I know I left you hanging yesterday, dear reader, when I dashed out to get a new clothes washer. I left you thinking that I perhaps wished for such a tragedy as the one I had to deal with in my laundry house on Monday and I must admit it very well could be seen as a blessing.

This last winter I changed from trying to hold over fuchsias and geraniums in my well house to holding them over in my laundry house. I also had purchased a heat mat for starting seedlings with some bottom heat. But there was just too much going on in the laundry house. Many times I found that the girls had busted another branch or dumped another pot while trying to take their saddles out.

I also found that while nothing froze or dried out while being held over, I actually had most of my plants growing quite well by mid January, something I didn't really want to have happen. I had done my best to prepare everyone to go through a good dormancy, allowed the seed pods to develop to signal to the fuchsias to stop producing, stopped fertilizing, tapered off the water, let some light frosts push the sap back towards the roots naturally pruning tip growth, pruned branches back to 6 or so inches, then hauled them in. But I noticed that within a few weeks I had good sturdy regrowth starting on the plants directly across the room from the sliding glass door. The sun for most of the winter months reaches all the way to the back wall and up it a couple of feet. The sun in the late spring and summer barely comes in the laundry house a foot or so as you can see in this picture of Dirt checking my installation job this afternoon before he even got out of his leathers.

I weathered this miscalculation on my part and worked at keeping everyone at a moderate rate of growth. It really would have been a great boon to an early start if all that growth hadn't got froze off early in May when I was to sick to get up and cover my plants.

But all in all it caused me to have a eureka. I have been needing a hot house. A place that stays good and warm all winter without to much expenditure of energy and a good source of light so that I don't need to supplement with a lot of artificial light and I believe I found it this winter. The only problem is that this other half of the south facing wall needs a window for the laundry house to really serve this purpose. And of course even though everyone can see
the good of the change getting to it is a whole nuther story.
I'm not so sure I was even looking forward to emptying everything out and reorganizing the refrigerators and freezers that until yesterday were on the wrong walls.

BTW washers aren't that heavy and the girls are ready for the crash and the hard work coming down everyone's pike in the next year (yes, I listen to crazy radio at night).

So the freezers and frig are moved, Phil's wine supplies in a different corner, and the lights and heat mat moved to the adjoining wall, the saddles are out and the girl's have been put on notice that they need to build their own tack shed somewhere, of course we'll help cause we could also put lawn furniture in it over the winter.





Phil has already begun scoping out what will need to happen to get a window or another sliding glass door on the west side of the south facing wall. So we are well on our way, yahoo! Some things remain because there really is no better place for them and really I can't use the loft for anything else besides our banquet stuff.

Ah, the best laid plans of wives and moms.

Spent the first part of the morning tackling and finishing a job I had begun Sunday evening. Getting my clematis by the Cook's porch going the right way.

What a job.

I had not paid attention to the clematis until recently, I should have been training it the right way all along, as it grew, that would have been the logical thing to do. But being an economy model gardener I thought it would just follow the grid up and across the window. Instead it decided it would rather wrap around the corner of the house and head off in the wrong direction leaving the grid naked and this clump of bloom waving into the air.

Man those clematis really wrap around themselves in crazy little corkscew knots.

I finally got as far as I needed to regain the look I was going for, some had to be left wrapping around the corner because the vines first went behind the drain pipe. Done with that job, I sat down to lunch and was plotting out my next gardening job when in rushed Bet hollering in panic mode.

She was hollering about the dishwasher dumpin out water everywhere. I panicked until I realized that I was sitting in the room next to the dishawasher and I hadn't heard it going let alone noticed water rushing in from the kitchen. Then I realized that she misspoke and was referring to the washing machine, she had corrected herself immediately but my mind had already begun processing off of the dishwasher information and the concept of yet another floor ruined by my nemesis the dishwasher.

But instead there was two inches of water on the floor of our laundry house.

We have our laundry out in a separate building that was originally built for my office/sewing room as our farm house is very small. Four years ago when our second daughter was getting married here at the farm and our kitchen could not be overlooked any longer (the sub floor was finally falling apart beyond patching due to the exploding dishwasher years earlier), I came up with a great idea. Between the kitchen and the back door was a enclosed porch of sorts that housed the washer and dryer. The "room" was so small however that the dryer door could not be fully opened and a basket of laundry could barely fit on the floor, lets just call it a tight squeeze. So we decided to plumb my "shop" for laundry machines, send the washer and dryer out there and turn the porch into a place to house my cookbooks, wine and fine spirits, etc. And since I was now down two daughters my sewing had moved into one of the upstairs bedrooms and the rest of the shop turned laundry house became my propagation room. Then in moved an upright freezer and spare refrigerator, winter clothes and chest waders, saddles that needed to be stored in here, wine making supplies which consist of ten five-gallon glass carboys, six eight-gallon buckets and zillions of empty wine bottles, not to mention lots of cardboard boxes no one can throw out and up in the loft is all my accumulated banquet supplies.

As I walked out to the laundry house yesterday to the panic of my third daughter I knew any plans that I had wanted to mark off my "to do list" regarding the garden would not be getting marked off today! Yep just as I thought all sorts of things were floating in two inches of perlite-and-peat-moss-filled water. The girls began to quickly unload the contents of the laundry house onto the driveway while I looked at the washing machine in disbelief wondering why I still heard running water.

Well never mind why, just get the running water shut off. So I reached behind the machine and shut off the water going to the machine. But I could still hear water trickling, what the heck, where was the water coming from? Pushing the machine and the basket rack out of the way I examined the hoses. They all appeared to be intact and dry. So where was the stinking water coming from? Well fine I will just shut off the main water line, but where the heck was it? Call Dirt at work and leave a message, and as soon as you hang up you find it, (Murphy's Law).

With all the water shut off and no more trickling water sound, I can turn my attention to the mess, ugh. Keep hauling it out girls. Dirt calls to tell me where the shut off valve is (thanks got it) and to see what the problem is (uh, how about two inches of water). Keep hauling things out girls and start bailing out the water. Dad arrives home. I leave the scene to protect the innocent - me. But nothing like forewarning and a lovely motorsickle ride between work and the mess to calm a fellow down. Washing machine gets hauled out to the laundry house porch and diagnosis begins, it ends with death pronounced.

Terrific, if loosing today wasn't bad enough, I am elected to be the new washing machine purchaser tomorrow. I do not want to go to town! I did not want to go to town for this whole stinking month! But then again I don't want to hand wash all our clothes either so fine, I'll go.

Tomorrow I tell the rest of the story, it might make you think I did this on purpose!

Fourth of July

Parachute Man coming down








Lawn Bowling






Stretch...good










Liberty Mallet Ball







Sister Sarah, Grandma Grace and Patty Mor Mor

Grandma Grace making ice cream with great grandchildren











Aksel and Aunty Anna








And now with Autra-becca









More ice cream making, it is all about the food you know








Guys smoking - no wait the ribs are smoking

Pyrotechs together
Uncle Mike and Kai

Freedom

I wrote this a while back, now I've edited it a bit and thought it would be an interesting thought for this holiday weekend.

Who among us is truly free? In all times of history, in all chartable lands, who can claim true freedom?

Obvious, the oppressed are not free, subject to the oppressor. But what then, is the oppressor free? Not subject to the tyranny they dispose? Never subject to the cloud of the potential coup? Can they rest for one moment, lifting their heavy hand from the instrument of control?

Tell me of your freedom, you of democracy. Has every verdict in the polls left you well? Never winded? Never breathless with frustration? What do you carry with you throughout your history but the mounting tyranny of taxes, obligation, duty?

You, with your right to own, tell me of your freedom. Where is it that the things you own come from? Does your freedom rest in the financial or political power of the day? And yet when have those ever stayed constant? When have they ever been without risk? When have they ever been without a grand price? Who watches your holdings while you go to rest in a foreign land?What of the threat of jealousy, revenge, rot? What are those bars and blinking lights? Dust rag in your hand.

You, moving freely about, where are you going? Do you move where you want? See the others with you. Don't you feel the movement around you? Like a water droplet in a waterway you move with the flow of the whole, move with the tide. Isn't your art subject to inspiration and consumption, your passion to bodily ability, attraction, interpretation of justice?

Now what? Lie down, cave to the power of time and location, fate? Feel the green weight of freedom heavy in your belly press against your spine? Burning like the pepper swallowed moments ago. Won't it burn hours from now? Lie down with ease when so much of you burns with thoughts of freedom? But where can you go? In all the annals of history, in all the chartable lands, where can you find the freedom, the freedom that relieves the burning? Why does the accursed feeling continue inside, in spite of the verdict, the writing on the wall? The feeling, the desire, eating like a parasite, rumbling in the night, no rest.

Numbed yourself yet? Grown up and out of ideals yet? Reality struck, this is free. The shackles they are but illusion. Whisper yourself the truth, freedom comes from within not without. But your biting, lashing, fearing mind? What of that? Just exercising it like a muscle on your gut, keeping it in shape just for looks. Disappointment, shame, frustration, disillusion, ridicule, argument, distrust, anger, jealousy, they are just illusion, not reality. You do not lack freedom, those illusions, the shackles of emotion, never cost you sleep or rest. Confident you are in your possession of freedom. The pepper, not a lacking, not a hole, not an ulcer. Not true that you are chained to your freedoms, foaming at the mouth to protect, snarling, snapping, lashing sleeping with eye open, nerves open to the new claimant, the over-thrower, the stealer of freedom.

Then who in all the times of history, in all of the chartable lands can find real rest in the midst of the smoulder acrid smoke of defense? Who is able to avoid all fear, never quake to the bone? Where in all of history in all of lands can there be found peace, rest from want, retreat from fear and timidity? Where is a hero to be found who never ducks the slap of the blade of anger, yet never raises the blade of retaliation? You will not find one in the books of man, records of times or of men gone by.

He is. He is free. No simple hero. Though a hero's pattern he has become. He is free, He operates here in freedom, shows us freedom, gives us freedom. He has no regret, he feels no need of revenge though he is unjustly struck. What appears to be a blow was not, He was free of the sting. A hero's reserve He supplies. He brings the sweet spring of freedom for everyone. Not just on one page in the annuals of history, not just on one chart. A gold and red braid woven throughout all. And if we would but only drink deeply from His wellspring, we would know his Freedom. He, his Freedom, certainly is from without, but He lives from within, He comes to us, calls to us, we take Him in, He flows out unendingly, we are never without Him, always free.