My Time at the Inn

This is the view from my bedroom window. I love looking out at our barn.  My husband built it.   By the barn sits the lawn mower, and our grandchildren call it their tractor; they love to play on it. It's a pleasant view.  But if you were to look in a different direction,  you would see a pile of lumber  from a chicken coop that we tore down; you would see a lot of junk that has yet to be hauled off to the dump, and that would not be a very pretty picture.  Yet you can scan around further and you would see green pine trees, bird feeders with birds singing sweetly as they feast on their seeds. The Lord reminded me the other day that the we often view our trials and struggles much like the view from a window.  When we look out the window, we only see a small, limited portion.  When we focus on our problem, we only see the problem.  We often don't see beyond the trouble, but God sees...

A three year old was asked by his mom to pick up his toys.  The child replied, "My picker upper don't work." On cleaning her seven year old son's dresser drawer, a mother was shocked to see a pile of chicken bones in a zip bag.  "What on earth are these for?"  Reply, "Oh, yeah, Mama, you know those skeletons you see in a doctor's office, well, I'm gonna put together a skeleton of a chicken just as soon as I can figure out how.  Cool, huh?"  Overheard conversation between a ten year old and her two year brother, "Why are you on top the piano?"  "I dunno."  "Don't you know if Mama catches you up there, you're gonna get a spankin'?"  "Uh huh."  "Then why do you do it?"  "I dunno." "Well, get down."  "I dunno how." A five year old boy gets angry with his Mama, packs his bag with important items: teddy bear, blanket, shirt, toy cars, a star wars fig...

Katherine Luther, Martin Luther's wife, struggled with worry.  She worried about Martin, and one day Luther said, to her, "Kitty, pray and let God worry."  I have thought about that statement for several weeks.  I have struggled with worry over my health.  Nothing major going on, really, but my mind ballooned it all out of proportion.  Silly, I know.  I know it is sin, because everything not of faith is of sin, yet I held on tight to my worry. Oh, I pray, but still I couldn't let go.  A few days ago, I thought, this is silly and so displeasing to the Lord Jesus, whom I love and in whom I believe and trust.  So, my heart bowed in prayer, and gave it to Jesus and told Him that He could take better care of all my concerns than I could.  I felt peace, and told others that I had taken Luther's advice, and was going to "let God worry about it." Good, right?  No, not really, because today I discovered I either had not let it go, or I had take...

I find myself struggling to manage my time.  Either I want to do too many things, or  I do not manage the time God has given me very well.  When my children were all young and I  home-schooled, I seemed to accomplish more than I do now.  Why is that?  My age?  Hmmm, that could be part of it, because as we age, we often find ourselves slowing down, but I don't think that is the answer as much as it as excuse.  For me, I have a lot of interests that I put on hold, because between the house responsibilities, the children, and home-schooling, I put many of my interests on the back burner, waiting for the day when I would have "free time".  Now, the free time has arrived, and I find myself overwhelmed.  I want to practice the violin, read, write, paint, sew and study German.  Just listing it sounds like a full semester load in college!  So what to do?  My first reaction, stressing, doesn't accomplish ...

Are you up to a good challenge?  I am trying to learn German. I want to learn it, because I like the language, I have a German heritage, and because it isn't an easy language to learn. My children challenged me to step outside my safe little box and post something in German.  At first I balked at this challenge, but with a little prodding from my family, I decided to try, so here goes: Ich lerne deutsch. Es ist schwer, aber es macht Spaß. Ich lese die   deutsche Bibel, und ich lese das Gesangbuch. Mir gefällt Paul Gerhardt am besten. Ich hoffe, ich kann meinen Wortschatz erweitern. Gott lehrt mich, geduldig zu sein, während ich lerne. Es ist gut, neue Dinge zu lernen.   Es hält den Geist jung!       To translate:  I am learning German.  It is difficult but it is fun.  I read the German Bible and I read the hymnal.  I like Paul Gerhardt best.  I hope I can learn more vocabulary. God teaches me to be pati...

Last evening, Saturday, we attended a concert at Udall Park in Tucson. We arrived early so we could set up our chairs and get our water.  We wanted a close enough place so that we could see our youngest son play trombone with Laszlo Veres's Symphonic Winds.  Our son will be leaving for grad school in Texas soon, so I relish these times we I can watch him play.  Anyway, as we entered the band shell area, we ran into a family we had not seen in over nine years.  It was good to catch up with their lives.  We each had gone in different directions and they lived on the far east side and we on the far west side.  Not many opportunities to run into each other.  When we last saw them, they had three children, and now they have eight.  When they last saw us, our youngest son was still in high school.  It was good to catch up on each other's lives.   It was rather bittersweet too, because we had taken different paths and what we onc...

I love smiling faces.  Children's faces light up when they smile.  Old people's eyes light up and twinkle when they smile.  People in love have shy smiles when they look at the one they love.  Smiles brighten dull days. Smiles change attitudes.  I once came across a grumpy check-out lady who snarled at customers before me in the line.  When she got to me, I smiled at her.  She didn't do anything.  My children smiled at her, and suddenly, she smiled back.  She packed my groceries nicely, and she said, "Have a good day." Smiles speak love and friendship.  Smiles connect us with others. God uses nature to smile at us, I think.  Rainbows smile.  When I see a rainbow after a summer monsoon rain in the desert, I see God smiling.  "See," it says to me, "the earth is refreshed, the air is cool, and I remembered you."  The other day my daughter took this picture of a quail as it came in the early evening for seed bloc...

This is a cholla cactus that sits in my front yard.  Do you see all the spiny thorns?  When my children were all little, I used to warn them not to get a cactus stuck in them as they ran and played in the yard.  In the winter months, they are not very pretty, but in the spring, they get these beautiful blooms.  These blooms attract the bees and the hummingbirds.  The cactus wren loves to make her nests in them.  There are two in this cholla now.  I am amazed when I see this bird sit on these thorns and sing her heart out.  How does she do it?  I have gotten one of the thorns in my foot and the pain is horrid.  How does this little bird do it? Of course God made the little bird's feet in such a way that can do it without the pain or it wouldn't be there.  To be sure, no cat will climb in and snatch the little nestlings!  They are safe in that nest.  I like to think that is how it is with my trials.  They are rather ...

I don’t know about you dear Reader, but I sometimes struggle in my walk with the Lord. Do you? Do you like things to run smoothly, and have neat, tidy ways to tie things together? I do. I thought it about this as I took my early morning walk. I walk on the roadway, because of its smoothness. When a car comes along, I have to walk on the side of road where there are rocks, gravel, and sand. My legs find walking there labored and difficult. While I trudged along , I thought about the trial I am going through, I felt that my life right now was much like walking on the side of the road where walking is difficult. I wanted God to give me quick answers to my trouble, and I wondered why this happened to me. I know I don’t deserve an easy, paved path, this I know, for I am a sinner, and God always gives me better than I deserve. I know this in my head, but this doesn’t always translate to the heart. Why don’t I trust the Lord more? Perhaps I don’t know Him as I should. How do you get to kno...