Hand Wringing and Doom and Gloomers

If it is a sin to worry... oh, wait.. you may not know that, let me set my premise to this whole chat then.

Worry:
In Matthew, chapter six, Jesus speaks a good deal of worry, he asks us if it really gets us any where and in a way answers that and then says to not worry because He will take care of us.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Worry and being anxious is in direct opposition to faith, anxiety is the opposite of what Christ calls us to, He calls us to have faith in Him, not in our strength, not in dates and opinion polls, not in our ability to fuss and worry over all things in life, but to have faith in His strength, to rely on Him.

Christ tells us not to worry about earthly things, clothes, food, friends, He even tells us not to worry about what would be terribly important, our testimony when we are arrested because we know Him.

Even modern science tell us that worry, stress, robs from us. It makes us age faster. Like Christ says, today has enough trouble of its own, like the poor, there will always be stresses, ones that we cannot escape, ones that are not a result of faith breaking worry and fear. But we are not to heap on the troubles of today and worry and fear our tomorrows. Worry certainly does not buy us more time and science backs that one up. Not because Christ needs modern science to back Him up, but interesting how the truth of the words of Christ do not need to see the end of this world to be plainly seen as true, right and good.

What is sin really, but to go against God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit? To live in and for the flesh and not reside in the Spirit, all of that, it is all sin. Sorry, if that just broadens the scope of what is sin and what is not, in your world. But to worry, to fret, to fear situations, is to not have faith, to not rest in God and take Him at His word, that He will take care of us.

Check it out, you do not have to become a breatharian ascetic to live a Spirit-led, faith-filled, anxiety-denying life. The Spirit leads us to eat and eat peacefully. True servants of His made cloth for clothing and tents for shelter. He calls us to be in company with one another, to crave to be in fellowship, to travel, to do good deeds of all sorts. But all that for Christ and not our very own flesh.

Might I go on now?

So its a sin to worry and be anxious and sin will always come into the world, we aren't going to stop it at the gate. However, if the one who lets the sin slip by them and causes a child of God to sin there by drawing an eventual remorse so strong that the Path-Paver would then choose to be drown for certain in the sea with a millstone around their neck, then why on earth would you desire to cause or stir up worry in another person?

Just wonderin'.

(Matthew 18:6, Mark 9:42 and Luke 17:2 in case you think I'm nutty about what happens to the path pavers, wide gate openers, uh, what they would rather have happen to them.)

So if you would not wish to cause another worry whether for their soul or for your very own neck, then why would you do business with a person who trades on anxieties and worries to make their buck?

Now I am not talking about not buying a safe ladder, or rubber gloves, or new brakes for your car, or vitamin C.

Remember, weavers, tent makers, moms, dads, travelers, neighbors we're all called to be His.

What I am speaking of, wondering about is, perpetuating the commerce of anxiety by buying into doom and gloom and "whoa is us", and "oh no the world is coming to an end" or at least a whopping good crisis.

I got news for you. The world is going to end. That is with out a doubt.

However, no one knows that day and time, not even Christ, only the Father. And no one is going to escape it no matter how deep their bomb shelter, or secluded their dwelling, or stocked their root cellar is, because it will end at God's hand, not a bomb, not a nuclear winter, not a carbon overloaded-sky-climate change.

I am not saying that you ought not to be prepared for the future, if you are headed for a trip in the mountains, by all means, grab your coat and put the chains in the trunk. But for crying out loud, do not worry and do not borrow trouble that is not there for you.

What business is it that these purveyors of doom and worry are in? You find them every where, selling nearly everything, everything but real peace and contentment. They will even sell you false mind-numbing contentment if you want it. They will convince you you have some crisis. They sell you themselves and their ideas, they sell you products to stave off the end of the world or at least protect you, or numb you, but mostly what they are selling you is anxiety, worry and a fraudulent product.

Y2K bring back any memories for anyone? A contrived crisis, where no one was reminded to rely on God but instead they were sold millions of dollars of "survival goods." The only business that hurt from that one was the sorry fellas that don't know how to be good hucksters: find or contrive a weakness, a fear; strike it; suck it for all its worth; and then move on to the next thing.

Some purveyors of panic are very good, very discrete, you can hardly tell what they are up to, it all seems so sweet and well meaning, and "golly, I was wondering about that too." No clear signs of selling fretfulness.

But then there are the others, that because no one calls out the selling of worry and whoa, doom and gloom, they are just plain bold, and the point is right there in their very own words.

Yes, they may be dressed up all cutesy in overalls and a floppy garden hat, or Victorian garb and dainty lace gloves, but their message of looming crisis is strong and unabashedly bold in print. "Buy our product because there is a crisis on the horizon, a big one, a prolonged one. To make it through you need us."

They say their product brings you peace.

With that one Dear Christ-Follower, you ought to hear in your head, your gut, your heart, your spirit, the sound of a needle sliding across a rotating disc of vinyl.

No one brings peace in a crisis or in daily life but Christ. And Christ says not to worry.

Then why are you buying into a product that is wringing its hands on the sideline with a pitifully knit brow and tears in its eyes for the Unprepared?

And low and behold nine times out of ten the product is faulty. Food in tin cans can not last forever, grain once it is ground will loose its nutrition, and many seeds do not last for five years, albeit some last longer, but some last a little over a year.

Live right right now.

Don't by a bucket of stale right living and put it in your freezer to pull out when the crisis hits. Most plants for food take an average of three months to mature, the unprepared ground another month or two to prep, given even that the right crisis hits in the right season, what good is it to bank on a salvation that comes four months after the crisis?

Look, I'm not saying that it isn't a good idea to garden and learn to save seed, in fact that is what I am saying, learn to listen to the Holy Spirit, make your food today, save of your harvest what you know you will need for the next day's planting, be an ant, be wise, be fruitful but do not worry. There is a big difference.

I'm not saying to be indolent and then arrive at my back door or freeway off ramp when your belly is a little empty. Learn to work your soil and your muscles so that you are not found weak and un-knowledgeable. But that takes daily practice, not a bucket in your freezer to be pulled out when the crisis finally hits.

And if you have no soil of your own or your muscles are not what they used to be? Find an honest business that is there to fill your needs, your honest needs, not your pretend or sinful needs. Hire them to do what you cannot, there is nothing wrong with that. The concept of self-reliance is not only quite far fetched it is also not how we are to live.

We are to live in community, relying on each other no matter how painful and irritating that may be. But we are to do so with honesty and forthrightness. Not manipulating each other's base fleshly worries and oiling up our panic buttons.

Being in a line of work or having a fairly decent smattering of skills that could play along with the current "green" crisis business, it is very tempting to join hands and participate in the nonsense that could make cash for my hip pocket.

To part hand-wringers from their hard earned cash in a barely honest manner is very tempting, "everyone is doing it", and good people are participating and buying into it, why shouldn't I?

Why shouldn't I? Because it will make my Father's stomach turn? Because it will grieve the Holy Spirit in whom I ought to be relying on to teach me better ways?

Because it will continue to cause others to sin?

And golly, I really don't like the idea of drowning.

Farm Tours Restart

Welcome back for more tour of Vicktory Farm & Gardens! Didn't mean to let nearly a year go by. Today we will be strolling in the Barn Garden and talking water and weather, hope you wore your boots. Anna could run to the kitchen and get some bread sacks to go over your shoes but those stilettos your friend there has on definitely won't do.

In the scheme of things this garden sits west of the house, I can see parts of it from my new big bedroom window (the lilac hedge blocks a full view). In past posts you have seen the South Pastures that sit just west of the Barn Garden and share a pond, and in Hang Out Spots tour you saw the yard that is just the other side of the east boundary fence for this garden.

Let's get started, come off of the driveway here and come through the gate in Dirt's special fence.

You'll see a lot of plastic 5 gallon buckets around the Farm, they come in super handy. I use them to pick up my weed piles so I can throw the weeds to the chickens, easier than a wheelbarrow I gotta get up more often than a wheelbarrow load or I won't be able to unkink my legs.

There is a little strip of garden that separates the driveway from the main Barn Garden. We'll come back to that at the end.

For now we are going to go on through this second gate, gate way actually, because the gate is old and needs fixing. This walk way is rather muddy because the rain off of the big barn roof comes through here and out into Barn Pond. This issue is in the process of being solved, unfortunately it isn't at the top of the list.

I do a lot of ditching around here, no the "d" is correct, I dig a lot of water ways. I'm a hydrologist. The biggest issue about keeping someone out of the garden early in the year in the PNW (Pacific North West) is water and soggy soils.

This is what the soil looks like this time of the year when it gets walked on. Not a good look for garden soil.

That is the reason nearly every gardening area here at VF&Gs is a raised bed that has hidden electrodes around it so that you get blown to the next county if you step on the bed. Well, not really but a girl can fantasize about things, can't she?

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A raised bed is one of the basic season extenders here at VF&G, one I wouldn't do without. We make them simple. No treated boards, no plastic "lumber", no concrete blocks (the poison they all leach has a way of undoing that home grown goodness plus they harbor slugs, bugs and fungus) just a three to four foot wide bed not much longer than twenty feet (otherwise you find yourself cheating and jumping the bed to get to the other side). They are sometimes straight and other times they go with the contour of the landscape. We employ them not only in the "vegetable" gardens but also in the ornamental gardens as well.

The soil in these beds is nice and fluffy and can actually pass the soil lump test just fine right now, if you took a similar sample of some other areas like the lawn or the market garden strip in the pasture rotation, it would not pass the test for a couple of months. It is also warmer than soil that is all soggy and wet because it can't drain.

Being able to get into the garden at this time of the year is a real bonus, and in spite of my being slightly jealous of those areas that get real snow and ice for winter, it is why I love living here in the PNW. With a few season extenders PNW gardeners can produce food for most of the year. So yes, our tomatoes are a challenge and fresh corn is barely a month long treat but if well attended to, a PNW garden can provide very well.

It also allows for gardeners to stay ahead of weeds. I suppose that ice and snow has a damper on weed growth but being able to weed during the slower growth months of winter really helps this procrastinator stay ahead, okay, a few steps behind the weeds.

Winter weeding is an art all to itself. I should tell you all about it soon. I hope you noticed a specific pattern to the little garlic plants coming up, it is called equidistance planting.

But for now lets look at another season extender, my cold frame. It sits just to the left and forward as we came through the last gate (the gate way). The area around it is trying to find itself, the beds just in front of the glazing side is becoming Bet's herb garden area but this funny spot back here is having some serious identity issues.

Here is the front glazing side of the cold frame, it is oriented exactly to the south. Not necessarily always the best choice, sometimes it is better to catch the sun a little earlier and orient it slightly to the east, but when you only have one and you can't make decisions well, you go with normal and average sometimes just to get the job done.

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There are some things inside, lets lift the lid and see.

A few flats of last year's left over onion seed, onion seed like just a couple other vegetable seeds is only really viable for a year, but I hate throwing things out so I went ahead and dumped the packets into flats just to see what I could come up with. And I think the showing was worth my trouble. This week I will be seeding flats with this year's main crop of onions and in a couple more days these guys in here will be ready to come out and head to a garden bed. Most likely in the North Garden.

So this is the view looking west from the cold frame area. We rather went crazy with the garlic this year. It will be interesting to see just how much we really need to be planting. Even though Dirt eats lots of garlic, with the varieties we end up growing he doesn't eat as much of it as when we get it from the market. So it will be interesting to see how sales of garlic go this year and how much we really need to plant. Yippee I am so excited about our new adventure. But we'll talk more about that later.

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For now let's go over and look at Bet's two new peach trees.

The names escape me at the moment, I'll get back to you on that in the morning here, They are semi dwarf and won't get much over fifteen feet or so. Bet says she is looking forward to coming out here with a good book and a saddle pad and taking her breaks from work under her peach tree, she has a few years yet before that vision actually fleshes out but I love her patience and I admire her faith. I now understand what it means to have the gift of faith, Bet has it. In spades. About absolutely everything.

Here is the other peach tree, the two trees line up with a spot she has picked out for some other trees. They are semi dwarf and of course deciduous, so the fact that they sit in the center of the garden isn't a real problem. The sun will climb up in the sky before they have their leaves and there will only be a lovely dappled shade underneath them, just perfect for somethings that can't take the heat of our dogs days of summer, five days in August.

This is our hoop house made from livestock panels. It has been a lot of things, a gourd arbor mostly, a cold greenhouse in the late winter/early spring and a great spot for the mums to get their early boost if it is a super cold winter.

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Most recently it served as a chicken coop so that Bet could separate out some of her breeds. It may be that again soon. There is supposed to be a chicken coop built along the west wall of the barn, it will serve to keep the water from the base of the logs of the barn and house Bet's breeding stock but the Hot House/Market Shed complex comes first and then we might collapse for a month before we tackle this project.

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If stock panels weren't so stinkin' expensive at the moment I'd have more of these, I'd anchor them a little differently, but this one was hard to do because there is a concrete slab we were spanning with the hoop.

Standing up here at the hoop house and peach trees looking south we can see Bet's duck house. It finally got its front doors on and so the ducks got kicked out of the big barn and now Bet comes out and locks them up out there at night and lets them out in the morning.

They were being pretty good at staying on their side of the fence until the last couple of days. Something will need to be done to keep them from coming in here and pulling up the garlic and onions. They seem to be attracted to the green, go to pull it out, taste it as they are pulling it out of the ground and decide they don't like it. Unfortunately Bet hasn't successfully trained them to replant it!

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They really like their pond and they can wander all over on the other shore and up around the turkey pens but they seem to like to dabble in my garden this time of the year. I think its the green shoots of the garlic, I haven't seen much signs of slugs and other treats, besides if they are in here the slug and bugs are also out there.

Bet and I have been doing a bit of research about dealing with grey water, specifically the water from processing poultry, for when we apply for our license to process. We have come across some interesting info about cleaning water by running it through bogs planted with cat tails and some other specific water plants.

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The heavy stalks in the water in the center left of the above picture is a little colony of cattails. I am really drawn to cattails and would love an excuse to have a larger planting of them up around the Barn Garden.

The boggish place just to the right of this fence line has been filtering and dealing with the grey water from the farm house every since there was inside plumbing here. It is a great system and rarely puts off an odor, some compost piles smell more than our little un-designed bog.

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The pond just beyond the bog supports bull frogs, cat fish, occasional escapee trout, and the ducks of course appear to thrive here. Not to mention the resident river otters and beaver clan along with clearly healthy pond side flora.

Here's a view from the far southwest corner of the Barn Garden. The fact that the majority of our grey water has its own system and doesn't go through the septic makes our septic all that much more healthy. Besides in a septic system the grey water would pretty much end up doing what it is doing right now. Go through a soil/plant root filter before eventually ending up in the pond.

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It is all so freakishly green I can hardly speak of it. Funny, things on farms were green long before now and old farmers knew how to protect the water and soil supply. They didn't really need the Birkenstock, or black nail polish crowds to tell them how to take care of the earth that they depended on.

Here is a big view of the south west side of the barn and the hoop house. In the foreground is one of the gazillion weed piles. Lots of my weed piles, stuff the chickens would rather not eat or just the stuff that is more than they can handle, are cold compost piles.

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They eventually rot down and no, the weed seeds aren't burned up, but man that takes a heck of a hot pile and I'm just not that into doing that at the moment. The hot compost will come when we have to start dealing with poultry offal from the processing. But as for the weeds, I'm beginning to think they aren't so stinking bad, I really feel strongly, come 'round July or August especially, that we actually ought not to weed any more. But that's a discussion for another day. Right now I love weeding.

And I love tossing the weeds to the chickens so that Bet doesn't have to put alfalfa in the hay rack that you see the hens sticking their little head in (the bluish green square on the right half of the coop. This is the winter housing and where the breeding stock hang out. In the summer the eggers and the meat birds head out to the pasture and will become an integral part of the pasture rotation that we will be incorporating this year. MiG. Managed intensive grazing. Making the most of less land. And something Dirt and I are very excited about. But... you guessed it, we'll talk about that another day.

If we turn around and look east we come across my aronia berry bush. I have some more up at the nursery beds that will be coming down here this month during transplanting days.

I have no idea yet if this moon signs planting business is really effecting the plants and bugs and weeds (there are days for dealing with everything!) But it sure is doing a good thing for making me get stuff done and not get sidetracked with a bazillion jobs all at once. I need a way to keep me focused or I end up not getting anything finished because I am doing too many things.

A better view of Bet's herb beds in front of the cold frame, the bright green little tufts off to the left of the picture are her chives, a lavender and a sage is just beyond that.

The bed between that one and the cold frame is filled with lavender starts from a plant that I rooted in place by heaping soil up around it and in the middle of it. Each branch then became a rooted plant. It is a great way to multiply several different types of shrubs and herbs especially when they have been neglected of seasonal pruning and get all out of shape. A "do over" of sorts.

These are a examples of raised beds that are not straight. I would like to do more large gardens with not-straight beds but that will come later in my life I think. Right now I just like to get it done and get them planted. Soon I will have more time to shape and have fun with different geometrics in the garden.

These big lumps here on the far left are not more weed piles, they are my enormous comfrey plants that if I have time will be busted up this year and dispersed through out more areas of the farm. Comfrey is an amazing plant in the apothecary and out in the garden. Its huge leaves are great in the compost and add some really good extra nutrition, because of deep roots it can pull up lots of minerals from the sub soils.

I can't think of a plant that doesn't like to be near comfrey or have its big leaves as a mulch during those five hot days in August. It is another great bog and pond edge plant and has tremendous water filtering abilities. It is just simply a must have plant.


This for me is a dreamy view. I like to look far across the pond to the other bank and the white barked aspen. To me they are like the paper birch in the painting by Carl Larsson of his family picnicking or the one where they are fishing. Sometimes I like to think I live in Carl's world.

This is the little gate way and walk that Bet takes to let her ducks out. This spot is also in need of an identity and restructuring, something I hope Bet and I can get to and get into process later this spring or at least by early summer.

We turn around and head back for the gate by the barn. Our raspberries here on the right on the fence line await their annual trimming and tying up session, hopefully this year I will get to it before the leaves are out, that makes a tough job tougher. I'm utilizing a bit more of my wonderful black weed mat, Water goes down through but weeds are really discouraged from growing and it is even impervious to armor piercing quack grass.

On the right side of the weed mat walk way you can see a couple of step in black plastic posts. Those mark where I think I want some climbing roses to go up over some hoops toward the raspberries, forming a arbor-ed walkway here. I like secret little walk ways and such so we'll see. The fence post in the fence line are old creosote and I keep the raspberries back from them for the most part but I would like to move the raspberry operation some place slightly less toxic entirely.

As we head back out the gate you can see the walkway, between the barn wall and the chickens, becomes a holding place for my mums in pots and the fruit trees awaiting their new home spots.

Sometimes I get a little crazy with the old and makeshift things we've got going on here but then most of the time I just embrace the character of it all. And then, I am thankful that God has placed me here and not in a modern home on an uninteresting, history-less plot of land.

Like the stories this little garden by the driveway holds for us.

Some where in that center bed lies the first casualty here on VF&Gs. A murdered sheep was buried by yours truly about our second or third year here. Back in '88. Dale's flock of sheep had come out here to live but not before the pet lamb of the wife of one of his worker fellas had been mistaken for a locker lamb. So after the flock had been here a while Dale dropped off a sweet little Cheviot to hang with the group, replacing the mistaken identity lamb.

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Well, sheep are flockish, and they did not accept her, She spent most of her time many yards from the flock, she ate separately from them or after they were done and had moved on she would come and clean up the leftover. She was excluded from coming in the barn to get out of the rain or the heat.

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Then one day it was particularly rainy I was glad to see that she had obviously gotten to go in out of the rain because she wasn't in the barnyard. But when I looked over the door I didn't see her. Well this is turning into a long story and has nothing really to do with gardening so I finish it up later.

Along with buried sheep and my second oldest's pet goose being buried in here, down by the lilacs there, was where the out house stood for the former resident and now neighbor and old work buddy of Dirt's. All another long story about just how small the world is and confirmation on God wanting us here.

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But as for the outhouse part, Dave says that when he left home for the Korean war the out house stood right about where the lilacs are or maybe a little over to the right where the path goes out onto the lawn. But when he came back there was a new addition on the house and indoor plumbing.

Well that's the end of the tour, long one for such a small space, you can come in and take advantage of the indoor plumin' if ya need to and you can stay for a cup a tea ifn' you'd like. I gotta get on with the hallway project but you can pull up a chair and keep me company while I paint.

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.

Up In The Middle of the Night

This use to be typical of me but not for a long while now. So I don't really know what to do with myself. I could do all my Ol' Befana baking but since my girls aren't little any more no need to do that in the middle of the night. It would require me putting my contacts back in and committing to staying up. Not sure I want to do either. I'm really hoping that not unlike reading my Horticulture magazine at ten-thirty and then eleven-thirty that I will just get tired again and go back to sleep, but as you can see I'm not doing so hot on staying asleep.

Tomorrow the girls and I tackle the upstairs, my sewing room/office and contemplative perch and their room. It is crazy messy up there. Because I no longer use the dinosaur computer up there and haven't had a huge urge to sew it has become the dump and run room. Come on, you know what I am talking about, either you personally or because you know someone like me intimately you know we have rooms or some folks contain it to a closet where things that you do not desire to deal with at the moment they find themselves in your hand go until you are ready to deal with them. In this case stuff has been being exiled up there since July when I did a grand cleaning, sort of, and before that we could date some stash I hadn't gotten to in July back to oh just shy of a year ago. I am positive there are no lost children, dead pets or rotting fruit up there but beyond that don't push it.

But the whole Farm and Garden by the moon phases and the zodiac thing has today, oops that'd be yesterday(Monday) , and the real today (Tuesday) and Wednesday as great days for weeding, barren signs in the sky, and so I extrapolate to the household, a great few days to weed indoors too. Which I think is a good use of a weeding day as today, oops, Monday, it was impossible to go outside even in rain gear I fear. One of those visibility zero because of the precip streaming down your face and in your eyes sort of day. Can't imagine that tomorrow is going to prove any better.

My cheery, isn't the whole world wonderful and dreamy, daughter, stood at the window several times today saying how she just loved the rain like this. Her sister and I would have contemplated the dismemberment of her body if we were those type of people, which give us a few more days of this and we might be. The down spouts, every single one of them, look like someone is up at the top of them with a hose on full blast. The barn roof, no gutters on it, was delivering a solid sheet of water for the majority of the day. Consequently what doesn't know how to swim on the Farm right now is getting a quick lesson and even the ducks have gotten out their umbrellas and hip waders.

I toyed with the idea of weeding a few beds, this being the first day of the best days for that sort of thing according to the zodiac and moon, but I decided the signs pouring out of the sky this morning, as we all looked out my huge new window, certainly held other prospects as being more profitable. But I really wasn't up for much so nothing but a lot of general tidying got done. Which considering that my toss and go room has become a teetering wall of what-not it is a good thing that I dealt with all those random things on the main level of the house that found their way into my hand today. But man, that takes a long time.

By the way, I'm not feeling very tired yet. I take that back tired yes, very, sleepy on the other hand, not so much and not the type that I am certain will keep me asleep for more than an hour before my eyes fly open and I find myself twiddling my thumbs, at least I think they are my thumbs in the dark.

I'd like to swear. But I won't, it doesn't look pretty on the screen, not that my regular words do, it is just that random or purposeful even, swearing doesn't look very pretty, sures heck isn't very uplifting, okay again, not that this is but lets not have the Lanny P. in the gutter completely shall we. But I do feel a swearing hanging just below the surface, a big one, a flippant one followed by a truly cranky one. Unfortunately I have no idea who I would aim it at.

Well sort of I don't know who and sort of I do. Dumb pusillanimous people in this world who don't ascribe to my way of thinking, that would be a starting target. Then mean people, stupid mean people, next target. Then careless people, ridiculously careless, "do you know you have feet even" people, I could have a good go at them I suppose. And then the foolish people, destroy their own lives and souls while destroying and hurting others in the process, foolish, foolish people.

But if I start swearing at them, I think that wouldn't be good enough, I would have to start throwing things at them. And I don't have a lot of nice breakable things that I could just run out and replace tomorrow.

So they (all those crummy people I mentioned) would win this battle, they would have control of my mouth and they would have destroyed my few little pretties in my house and they would not really have suffered a whit. Most of them are in bed and wouldn't even hear it all. And those that aren't in bed and are still out at the bars wouldn't hear because the music is too loud anyway.

So I won't swear at them. What I ought to do is pray for them. But me and zillions others like me for thousands of years have been praying for those yo-yos and they still just keep a coming, some one still keeps reproducing them. And they still continue to mess with good folks.

Folks that just want to live a decent life and take care of others. Folks that don't need to morn their father at the ripe age of sixteen. Folks that just want to drive the car from work to the store to home, safely and quietly and non-excitedly. Folks that just want to produce something that someone else might need. Folks that want to teach others how to do something useful.

Ya know, a big part of me hopes that the 2012 folks are right, because no amount of any earthy goodies and fun stuff compares with being in the constant up close and personal eternal presence of my God, and sure as shoot it would be nice to be done with the stuff I sorta wanna swear at.

Tomorrow, well Tuesday really and my computer calendar says that that is today, will be a more productive day for Vicktory Farm & Gardens, not necessarily brighter, as this area will be holding another memorial, but hopefully more productive.

Not much more to say Dear Reader, finding it hard to do my usual uplifting God focused adieus, so maybe just a reminder that God is everywhere and holds everything including our bodies together, He is the glue whether we acknowledge Him or not. He is, no matter what we think of Him. But it certainly would behoove us, for our sake, not His or anyone else, if we began to give Him more credence in our lives. In the whole of our lives not just in our desperate panic prayers when things seem to be going terribly a wry, or on Sunday when we get up, get dressed and toddle off to church so we can mark it off our good for you to-do list. He is the glue and the glue is there all the time.

I'm going to take another whack at sleeping. Hope I didn't leave to many errors for you to slog through, but a sleep cycle hit while I started to go through and correct and I am going to take advantage of it. Good night - or really good morning - Dear Reader.

So Where In My Mind Do Start?

Well I guess the biggest hurdle is that I'm sorta tired of the mishmash I hear, and see. I want to taste the Truth, everywhere I go.
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Oh, I know, I live in a fallen world, the devil hates Jesus and the Father of Lies has been busy, but God has built his Church and the gates of hell shall not, can not, prevail against it. I meet her every where I go, or at least that is what I'm told.
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I want to roll the ganache that is the smooth and lustrous beauty of God around in my mouth and swallow a mouthful a hundred times over from one spoonful. I want to savor every corner of His word. I want my head to explode like it does when the dark richness lets a migraine break through. I want my mind to expand beyond the boundaries of my tiny little skull.
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Lately, my standing muscles have been thoroughly tried. Some of my stand up routines have gone swimmingly well and some, not so hot. When the not so hot ones hit, a little of that thirty-five year habit has flared and I've wished I could ride the fence once again and call a bunch of stuff grey areas, or semantics or some horrible misunderstanding most likely blamable on the shoddy translation that I was using. (I say, always keep those questionable translations handy for just such times.)
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So where do I start Dear Reader? Heck, lets start with a couple of pieces of shoddy thinking from this week and work backwards. This week, not to dissimilar to other stand up instances, the garbage is nothing new and nothing I haven’t spoken against before, things that have caused a further deeper search for the truth and to avoid the deceptive philosophies of this world that the Church has allowed in through her sweet doors.
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This week, I was hit with one more round of "we all have dry periods."
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Explained, not so dissimilarly to other times this concept has been espoused, as a time that God, for whatever reason, removes himself from us.
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Key in the sound of that needle scraping across the vinyl that my mind so often hears.
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What the heck, did that not follow directly on the heels of the reading of scripture: "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Jesus' words in Matthew 28! (emphasis mine)
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I did not read in my suspicious translation, "And ya know, surely I am with you most of the time. But sometimes you might find that I've sort of left you, well as much as an omniscient, omnipresent, indwelling, immanent sort of God can. I'll do it so that you buck up and grow a little and want me more. Consider it sort of like a legal separation in marriages these days, you know how much I love to use marriages to compare our relationship, well you folks have really got that whole absence makes the heart grow fonder crap down pretty stinking good, well except for the times those separations end sorta ugly like Paul will warn you about in one of his more stirring letters I help him write, but hey lets ride with the analogy for now. I will move out, or so it will seem, I might be hiding in the closet, who knows, so that you will miss me and try a little harder when I'm back yakkin' at you full time. Now I'm not talkin' here about the times Paul will tell you to toss some rebellious, blatantly grossly rebellious dad's-wife stealer out of your church so that he will repent, I'm just talkin' takin' a powder from letting you feel my presence."
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I don't give a crap what your experience has been.
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And my experience does not trump your experience.
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But what does tell me to call hooey on your experience or this opinion that “we all experience dry times at the hand of God“, separate from our own choice which is usually from wallowing in sin, is that no where in the Bible, in the New Testament, in the crucifixion and resurrection Reality and Word, does God promise that He will remove His presence from striving Christians to make us stronger. No where.
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In fact the way I read it, and you know what, I'm not going to sit here and cite scripture, it is all through the New Testament, and I am going to paraphrase sumpin' fierce, the way I read it is that we are only, only, made stronger as we abide in Him and He in us. It is through Him and Him alone that I am strong enough to do all things, or everything or anything or what He calls me to do. So where does one read that the removal of God's presence grows someone? Or that He does indeed remove himself?
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Another thing for tonight, and this one is going to be harder for me to explain because it will slightly sound to the half asleep mind that I am contradicting what I have always said, well in the last twenty-eight years, that there is no sin, none what so ever, that God can not forgive. He is just that big. That huge, that powerful and that mighty. None of our sin, even mass murder, is bigger and more powerful, more evil, than He is good.
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That said the other thing that came out this week is that same ol' same ol' crap of "ya, that's the goal sure 'nuff, but we all sin, its just a big circle, down we go into sin, up we come, down we go. It is what it is."
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Holy shoot fire, you're sure God is okay with that freakin' attitude? Oh ya, that's gotta come from that whole misreading of Romans 7. Read it again folks, but this time read it from chapter one on through to the end. Blow on past the end and read a bit in Philippians and some of Paul's other inspired letters and maybe, just maybe you'll get the sense that the helpless guy is the guy under the Law, not indwelt by the Holy Spirit. No, we are not without sin, not saying that, but we sure as heck are not freakin' slaves to the "Circle of Life" that includes dippin down into sin and coming up for a little God-air.
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So this is me, not having learned to be very graceful over summer vacation: Get over yourself. Get over yourself and help me get over myself. Don’t tell me anymore that my sin has an excuse if only the excuse that “we are all sinners.” Ya but, should I be wallowing in it or scheduling it into my cycle?!
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And stop wringing your hands or being complacent even about these imagined dry times. There is no such thing. God is willing to yap your ear off. It is just that He is most likely saying things that make you warm under the collar, make you wiggle in your seat, make you question your conformability, make you consider disrupting your life. Perceived dry time? It is not because He is withholding, it is we that are withholding, we are the ones who are cheating on the relationship, it is we who look for a sweeter lover, not God. He chose us, He wed us, and no matter how horrifyingly skanky whorish we are He is never leaving us even for a trial separation.
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But we oughten to come at God and demand that we have our way, our time of disobedience and then our forgiveness, our endless chats about ourselves.
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Hope you've settled into the easy chair Dear Reader, there are many more chats about ridding ourselves of the mishmash, the deceptive philosophies of this world.

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.