My Time at the Inn

I am always irresolute when it comes to New Year’s Resolutions.   I would like to keep the ones I make. I want to improve in many areas of my life, but the very second I make a resolution, it’s doomed to failure. I become a slave to trying to keep something I should never have promised myself to do in the first place, and suddenly all my good intentions become a burden.  Failure, again.  Someone said the other other day, " what compromises most of the resolutions a person makes?"  Humm.. Exercise more?   Eat healthier?   Drink less stuff we shouldn’t be drinking in the first place? Be kinder?   Be wiser?   Make fewer judgments about people?   Save money?   The list goes on, but nearly everything on these lists is something a person should already be doing in the first place! If we obeyed His word, would we not do most of the things on our list already?    Maybe that’s why we fail before we begin.   New Year’s resoluti...

I did not read as many books this year.  I concentrated more on my novel, quilting, and violin playing this year.  However, I thought I would share the ones I read.  The Bible will not appear on the list, because it is a foregone conclusion that I read my Bible daily.  This list is extra reading outside Bible time.  If we are not in the Word of God daily, how can we grow in Christ?  I encourage you, Reader, that if you have not made it a practice to read your Bible day, to do so.  It is my source of strength and encouragement for life. 1. Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier written in 1936. This mystery kept me up at night until I had it finished.  2.  August, Die She Must , I forgot to write down the author's name. I read it, to see if it should placed in the school library.  I did not like it.  One twin commits murder, and you never really know which one. 3. Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix.  I enjoyed this boo...

People have different ways of celebrating the Christmas and New Years holidays.  Traditions vary from family to family, and I find some similarities as well as differences.  With my family growing, I watch with interest at how some of the traditions I have grown up with and lived with all my life change, expand, shrink and grow with the various children and their spouses.  I like traditions, do you?  In a world that is constantly changing from one minute to the next, and so many changes in our world and societies, traditions bring a sense of peace, a sense of continuity that even in this vastly changing universe in which I live, there is something that never changes and will always be there no matter what else happens around me. Perhaps that sounds silly to some of you, my trusted Readers.  Let me explain why I feel this way.  If I had say what one event in my life was a major turning point, I would have to say it was the move my family made from t...

This morning, I got up early thinking I could accomplish a lot before nine.   I needed to clean off the coffee table and the living room.  I picked up some books that needed replacing on the bookshelves, but I read a chapter out of a book that I got for Christmas.  As I put the books away, I saw my husband's Nook, and browsed it before putting it away in this office.  Once in the office, I found a couple of shirts that needed hanging up.  In my bedroom where I hung up the shirts, I noticed the quilt that I am working on.  I had stop that with all the company here, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to thread the sewing machine and it get it ready for quilting later today.  That done, I walked back to living room, but glancing in the laundry room, I noticed the hamper full, so I thought I should start a load of clothes.  I went into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, so I would have energy to finish the living room.  I noticed my laptop...

Aunt Paige and Luna making a new tradition. Well, another Christmas has passed, and another joyful time with family has flown by.  Last evening in the quiet before bedtime, I remembered my own childhood Christmas.  I grew up on a farm in Brock, Nebraska.  When I was child, I never saw Christmas decorations up until two weeks or three weeks before Christmas.  Store windows would have marvelous displays and streets would be decorated with wonderful colored lights..  Santa usually made his appearance into our community around the 18th or so of December.  So the Christmas magic came alive and had not worn off long before Christmas Day.  Always we went to church on Christmas eve, and heard the Christmas story and sang carols. The evening began early with a   chili and oyster stew supper in the church basement. Then the children would perform a play about the birth of Jesus. The little ones would have little rhymes to say. My moth...

During the Christmas season, we see the saying "Jesus is the Reason for the Season," but it has always bothered me and yet I could not figure out why  it bothered me.  That is until today.  Today it was explained to me that Jesus is not the reason for the season, but that we are.  You, me, all of us in the world, we are the reason Jesus came.  If Jesus were the reason for the season, then the reason for his coming would be himself.  Jesus did not come into the world for himself. He came into the world for sinners, and that is all of us.  We all sin and come short of the glory of God. But Jesus came to give us life--eternal life.  We cannot save ourselves. Only Jesus can save us, because he is the God-Man.  Perfect God and perfect Man.  As a man Jesus was in all points tempted like we are, yet He was without sin.  He was the only only who could enter into the Holy of Holies and became the sacrifice for our sins.  Jesus is not ...

Merry Christmas from Tucson, Arizona!  I am rejoicing in the fact that my children have all been around me this year. We have a wonderful  week with them.  I have so many blessings. I have been blessed with 7 children, 3 of whom are with the Lord, two daughters-in-law, two grandchildren, and more to come I am sure, and my wonderful husband who is always there to support me.  I am truly blessed! I want you to know Dear Reader, that I am thankful for you.  Thank you for taking your time to read this blog and post your comments. I hope something you have read here has encouraged you, blessed you, our made you think.  May God Bless the rest of your Christmas Day and may you always enjoy the peace that only Jesus Christ can give~ Merry Christmas!

A long time ago, my children had a cute storybook they loved called Barnaby Frost.  Barnaby starts out on what he thought be a pleasure, but it turned into a project.  Along the way he learns a valuable lesson; he learns that he has to let go of the things that are for him "hang ups" and let God take control of the situation.  Our family has been having a wonderful time together. While standing in a checkout line today at Cracker Barrel the family behind me was not having such fun.  They grumbled about Grandma getting on their nerves. I have no idea where Grandma was, but I did feel relieved she didn't hear what was said about her. She had a few foibles to live with and they were counting down the days until she left.   Later I saw Grandma picking up a few things for the family, and I wondered how they will feel when Grandma is no longer around. Families are not perfect, even among the best of us, we have little "hang ups"  things that anno...

Christmas brings special memories of special people that touch our lives in deep, meaningful ways.   One person that I remember this Christmas season is Samuel Gaff.   I had known him from the time he was just about four or five years old.   He had beautiful blond wavy hair, and his contagious smile would light up any room.   He l oved to have fun and would always tell a joke or make some laugh; he was a pint-sized comedian.   He loved his brothers and sister immensely, and when his baby brother was born, there was no sign of jealousy, just pure love, and he was always eager to teach him how to do something and to encourage him.   I had the privilege of teaching him how to play the violin.   He was an excellent musician, and God had given him the gift of being able to play by ear, which was also challenging for a teacher, but he worked very hard at his playing.   Always at every lesson, after he had worked hard at what I wanted him to d...

Yesterday we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary and one of our sons and his wife celebrated their first. It rained pretty much all day, but that did not dampen our spirits at all.  We rejoiced to be in church with some of our children and hear the Sunday school message.  Our daughter provided a luscious cake to share with the Sunday school class, and she and another son provided the flowers on the altar. Then we gathered with the rest of our family and a western setting for photos. I will post those when they get in.  Our daughter arranged for the Ann Bradford Photography ( www.annbradforddesign.com )  to take our photos. Then our family along with the photographer and her husband joined us in fine dining at the Pinnacle Peak Restaurant in Tucson.  Our two little grandchildren had a wonderful time.  Later, I shall share more news, but now I must be off to prepare a special dinner for another son's birthday. God is so incredibly good to us. ...

The anticipated day of the children's homecoming has arrived, and now expectancy has turned to pure excitement.  Now in a matter of hours the house will be filled with their laughter and chatter! Brothers and sisters together again catching up on everything new in their lives.  I shall sit back a relish every minute and remember when they were little and how they played some game from their imagination.  I shall remember there little squabbles and how in the end, they always became fast friends again.  Now we add a new daughter to the mix and what joy she brings to our family, and how she joins right in as though she has always been a part of us.  God is indeed so very good to us. My morning devotion was from Luke 1:72,73 "To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; the oath which he sware to our father Abraham." God remembers His holy covenant with Abraham and sent Jesus to be the Savior of the world.  ...

When my husband and I woke up this morning, we said, "The children are coming home tomorrow!" What excitement filled our hearts.  I am so excited today,because tomorrow our children who live away from Arizona are arriving home. Some from Texas and some from Wisconsin.  I have made their favorite Christmas cookies and have the house clean and mostly decorated.  I have a few things yet to do today, but the anticipation is great. I am like children who anticipate the arrival of Christmas morning and all that waits for them under the tree. I thought about my excitement this morning as I awoke and began my day.  I read my morning devotion, and wondered does Jesus want me to be this excited at the anticipation of His second coming?   It is advent season when we prepare our hearts for Christ.  Am I ready?  Do I long for His coming? Whether in death or the last trump of the Lord, I will meet the Lord.  Am I ready?  Do I love Him as I should or...

Last night my daughter watched the saddest Christmas movie I have ever seen.  All Mine to Give tells the true story of Robert Eunson, who honors his mother's deathbed request to make sure that he and his five siblings find good homes with families who love children.  This all took place in Wisconsin in the late 1870's.  Robert's parents, Mamie and Robert,  came to the United Sates in 1856.  They built a good life for themselves and their six children.  They inculcated in them the value of hard work and faith.  Robert's father died from diphtheria. His mother worked hard to keep the family together, but then she too fell ill to disease, and on her deathbed, asked Robert to find good homes for the children.  So, on Christmas eve Robert takes each child in turn to a neighbor's home and asks each family if they will please take in the child.  It must have been the most difficult thing for Robert to do, but he did it,  and he kept in to...

The Christmas lights twinkle as I wrap Christmas presents.  The sky is dark and overcast and wintry even for our Arizona desert.  My thoughts drift in different directions: anticipation of the arrival of our children  from Wisconsin and Texas, and the memory of their childhood days.  One memory stands out that of a Christmas when my daughter was born. It as a few days before Christmas and my husband,  a firefighter in Gila Bend, Arizona, had to work his usual 24 hour shift.  My mother came over to visit for the day and hold that new granddaughter of hers.  She decided to spend the night, and we watch a Christmas movie with the Father Knows Best cast and we drank hot chocolate and had an enjoyable night.  We said our good nights and went to bed.  I remember waking up thinking that the baby should be up soon, but I saw the Christmas lights and thinking I had forgotten to turn them off, I went into the living room, and there in the rocking c...

My Mom and I I am getting older, it's a fact, maybe a fact I don't particularly enjoy, but I cannot hide from it, because the hands show it. When in my late twenties, my mother stopped by the house to rock the babies, and have a cup of coffee with me.  After the children went  off for naps, we visited, and she looked down at her hands, and said, "I'm old, Marsha.  My skin is frail and tears easily. I have bruise marks, and they are old.  I once had pretty hands, my best feature really, and now that is gone."  I can relate, because that is where I am now, but then I remembered my reaction to my Mom's remarks.  She had beautiful hands.  Yes, they had the marks of age, but they were beautiful to me, because they sewed my dresses, held me when I was a baby and changed my diapers. They prepared my food and kneaded dough and gave me cinnamon rolls after school;  they tenderly cradled her grandchildren, but greatest of all  they folded ...

For me, Christmas is more synonymous with love than with gifts. During this special time we remember the great love God the Father had for us in sending us His Son, Jesus to redeem us from our sins.  Jesus is the God-Man, both fully God and fully man, else He would not have  been able to do for us what we could not do for ourselves--save us from our sins.  He lived the perfect life, fulfilling all the law for us without sin, and he died for us, shedding His blood redeeming us from our sins, and then He rose again that He might give us the victory over the grave.  Awesome love. I have thought about that a lot this week.  I have asked myself, do I love others like I should?  If I answer honestly, it is no, I do not.  Have you noticed that sometimes it is much much easier to love those who are not believers?   I suppose we make allowances for them since they do have the power of Christ living in them.  Perhaps we expect too much...

We can show our love for our family by telling them so.  Some people find it difficult to say three simple words, "I love you."  Before my husband and I got married our pastor counseled us.  One thing he said has always stood out to me. He said, "Everyday, say I love you, whether you feel it or not, because love is not a feeling."  So, I have tried to make that a habit.  I tell my husband I love him and I tell my children I love them. I am sure I have embarrassed them on more than one occasion by even telling them in front of friends, but that is who I am. Sometimes we tell our family we love them by doing things for them, whether we feel like it or not, to quote Pastor Carstarphen.  LOL.  In today's society everyone is so busy that they often find it difficult to do the little things to serve.  How did we get so busy when we have all this technology to make life simpler for us?  I'll think on that, because that sounds like another blog pos...

Christmas time brings out the child in me.  I saw a commercial for Dr. Seuss's The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and I thought I would try my own hand at Seussism: Could you blog on a log? Could you blog on a bog?  Would it be fun to blog in the fog? Could you blog in a sink or while petting a mink? Could you blog with letters all  frilly pink? Could you blog in a box or while eating lox? Could you blog in your socks while combing a fox? Could you or would you blog about life,  or things that are troubling and causing such strife? Oh, I blog on my wall, and I blog at the mall, I even blog while wearing my shawl! The weather being so very chilly, has made this Oma act very silly. I will blog for my friend, and  I will blog  while I mend, but this little blog has now reached it's end! Every once and a while it is good to be silly!

Today's parents need a little training in how to be parents, even among Christian families, we see the parents who are ruled, "trained" by children. Today at church, a sixth grader wore flip-flops, and her grandfather said, "Aren't your feet cold?" (We live in Arizona, but this morning it was a cold 34 degrees) Before the little girl could answer her mother chimed in and said, "She won't buy shoes!" I was dumbfounded.  When I was sixth grade, my mother didn't ask us if we wanted to buy shoes, we bought shoes, and usually the ones she thought best for our feet. As a homeschooling mom who home schooled all of my children from kindergarten through high school, I often get calls from parents needing information about how to go about the process, where to purchase curriculum, and other types of information.  A few months ago, I received one such call from a mom who didn't know when to start her child reading.  I said about the time they go...

I am starting to have trouble with all the rise in sensitivity awareness in speech.  We have lost not only our sanity, but ourselves as a nation with the need to be politically correct, and frankly, it's grating on my nerves.  Today my family went Christmas shopping, not holiday shopping or winter solstice shopping.  We were shopping for Christmas presents to put under the Christmas tree where on Christmas morning, we will ponder on the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ and what His atoning sacrifice has given to us.  We won't be thinking about a generic holiday, or any winter solstice.  If I heard it once today, I heard it a dozen times, "Happy Holiday!"  At one point, I said to the polite young man who wished me a happy holiday, "What holiday is it?" "Er, uh," he bowed his head and whispered, "Christmas."  "So," says I, Merry Christmas then!"  Apparently his store had told all the employees not use the dreaded word, Chri...

My  mother told me that when she was a little girl, she walked into her mother's kitchen and said, "Nothing sad or disappointing should happen during Christmas."  I agree, and yet disappointing things happen and somehow they seem worse during the Christmas season, don't they?  So today when I received some disappointing news, my first reaction was not godly. I pouted, until the Lord got hold of me and I saw things in clearer perspective. His plans are perfect, and it is hard for me to always see that, but they are, because His word says so, and God cannot lie.  Comforting, isn't it?  I had to flee to his Word for comfort, and Hebrews 12:1 became my comfort."Wherefore seeing we also are compassed  about with so great a cloud of witnesses let us lay aside every weight ,and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us."  The Bible tells me that anything not of faith is sin, and I wonder if lack ...

Today is like Pooh's Blustery Day.  The wind howls outside, and the temperature dropped about 25 degrees from yesterday.  It can get quite cold in the desert.  I know those of you who live where snow is measured in feet instead of inches laugh at my definition of cold, but when you live in the desert, cold days seem colder than usual.  I have my library cleaned in the house. I have dusted each of the nearly 3,000 books I own.  It has taken me four days. Of course I kept finding books I forgotten I had, and they are now waiting for me to read them. Books are like old friends, you always enjoy spending an afternoon with them.  My friends laugh at how many books I get into that room considering we live in a mobile home!  It feels good to have them in order.  It feels good to get things cleaned up, doesn't it?  I think it's like that in our spiritual lives too.  Clutter can set in.  I can get so caught up in the daily routin...