What state are we in?

        I have a love / hate relationship with the new fangled technology of the GPS. You see, I LOVE maps!! I love to find my own way from here to there. Of course even with a map it isn't all on my own, the map maker has a huge part in my navigational success. Certain people in my life have GPS units. Some insist on using it even if I know how to get where we are going. Some use it merely for back up. For example, when a large city's highway ramps are all under construction then the GPS is very helpful.  The Admiral delights in confusing his GPS - deciding on his route and letting the GPS play catch up. I do like to glance down and see the next landmark on the route. I think it is ok to have the confirmation of my own decision making. But I never want to rely on this technology completely, I want to have some say.
        On a recent trip, driving home from West Virginia, Bright One kept asking "Are we in our state yet?" Followed shortly by her sister saying "Why aren't we there yet?" Our precious children put their trust in us without any idea that we do really know where we are going. I am sure it must seem that we often get in the car and go with very little guidance. Therefore we get LOTS of questions. I love showing them the maps and how they guide us. They remind me how fortunate we are as Christians. Not only do we have the map, the Scriptures, we also have His Holy Spirit within us as a guide. A built in GPS if we choose to listen to it. We can start out on our journey with the confidence of children that HE will guide us unfailingly to our destination. If we decide to detour, He recalculates and sets back on a road that leads to the destination He picked out for us. Learning to rely on the Holy Spirit as our internal GPS is hard. I want to find the way. I want to figure it out and lead everyone else to the destination. I want the pats on the back for getting us there in a timely fashion. Hmmmmm not so trusting as I would desire to be. I want to argue because I don't see the whole picture. My knowledge of the map is incomplete. So I am quite sure I should go right but the Lord says straight ahead.  I think " Lord! There isn't even a road there!" He says gently, "Go there. Oh and Trust me." It is HARD.  When I trust Him I always benefit. But allowing myself to trust, seems to be a lesson I need taught again and again.
       

We need only to trust Him like our children trust us to know what state we are in.       

Home?

It is the 4th of July. We are visiting Grandma & Pap Pap in Pennsylvania. The weather is wonderful, warm, and breezy with little to no humidity. Wonderful things are happening! Pap pap took the girls on tractor rides yesterday after he and the Admiral moved several HUGE rocks for the neighbors' rock garden. The girls have spent the today helping Grandma prep flower beds and then planting them. Bright One pounded in the nails that had worked loose on the front walkway.
Tonight we are making camper's stew over the fire, corn on the cob, and strawberry shortcake, mmm! Lots of adventures to have. Fireworks tonight or tomorrow night... It is so hard to decide! Tomorrow we plan to get some lake time on Pap's boat. It has been busy vacation and yet I am relaxed and enjoying myself immensely.

       This place, Home. I haven't lived here for over 15 years. It is still home. I look out at a vivid landscape of more shades of green than you can count and feel a wistful contentment. We go for a drive and I sigh at the rolling beauty as we crest a ridge and look down the wide valley. So much has changed. So much hasn't. The grape vines are in a different place in the orchard, but there are still grape vines. Now my Dad has added blueberry bushes. Mom's asparagus patch has moved too. Friday I walked around with Dad as he shared his dreams for this place. I found it so enjoyable to listen and dream with him. I am so drawn to this place.
     
Yet when I think of my family's home, the house we have lived in since before the girls were born, that place is also home with sweet memories. I look forward to my return home. Sleeping in my own bed, cooking in my own kitchen where everything is where I think it should be, puttering around our space. I look forward to being back there.
      
      So which is really HOME? I guess they both are. In truth, I think that HOME exists in our minds and hearts more than in a place. Home is a state of thinking and being. My folks' place feels so calm and homey because when I am there I have no responsibility, per se. My own place is home because it is mine. I created it together with the Admiral. I have come to believe that home is the place where you are in God's will and being obedient. Even if the physical location is uncomfortable, the spiritual location is so much more important. I frequently argue with the Lord and tell Him with the way I think things should be. But when I bend to his will and choose to follow His leading, then and only then do I come HOME. The sense I have when I am at my parents' house is only a shadow of the feeling I have when I am walking in obedience to Him.



Lord, Guide me. Give me the bravery to choose you and be obedient to your will every day. 

Berry Update

Last week my sister and her husband visited for a few days. It was great fun to hang out with them and I talked them into berry -picking with me. Actually it wasn't terribly difficult since my sis loves berries as much as I do. Wednesday we dropped Love Bug & Bright One off to VBS and headed north to a pick your own farm I knew of. Their strawberries were finished but we could pick black and red raspberries! Oh Goodness... The berries were not free but they were plentiful and big. Best of all.... NO 'SQUITOS! There was a breeze blowing and while I did get scratched up by the brambles i really didn't get many bites. Thank you Jesus!  My freezer is FULL of red and black raspberries! The pic shows what we picked on Wednesday and we went back on Thursday and picked some more. I am happy camper until the blueberries are ripe! Then we will go and pick some more!

My True Self

My true self....

What does that mean?!?!? I have been wrestling with this phrase. Why? you ask. Because I think I live behind a facade of what I think will impress, please, or generally appear "good" to those around me. I do not intentionally lie about who I am. I think everyone has a marketing imp in their mind who says " no! no! you aren't disorganized - you're creative"  and puts positive spin on life. Does this mean we lie to ourselves? Sometimes I think I do. Sometimes I think I believe the lies the evil one plants in my mind. Lies about my value, my worthiness, my abilities - lies to break down my confidence by zeroing in on my weaknesses and making them seem so much bigger than reality. Whatever the root of the lies they lead to my true self hiding again behind the wall praying that the people around me don't see that I am faking my way through.

But do I really live behind the facade or does the 'true self' stand forward and say "here I am"? I think we all do, to some extent, live in a way that hides what we view as our own imperfections. Looking back over the last months I find that I don't hide as much as I once did. In the past few month I have spent more time focused outward and less worrying about not being perfect or imperfect. Faking it? More like on the job training. News Flash.... I am imperfect!  I can only work to excel at what I am good at and improve where I am weak. A relative said to me a week or so ago" I wish you would stop saying you aren't patient with your kids! I cannot believe how patient you are! " I was shocked. Because I feel like I am frequently impatient and grumpy with my kids. But apparently others see it differently. I set my shoulders and said to myself..." I am going to stop being impatient with me." This is a viewpoint change for me. A moment where my true self stepped out from behind the curtain and stood tall.

The identity of 'my true self' came into question one Sunday in church as we sang a song about it (life - i presume) being all about God. As I sang God whispered "Do you mean it?" I stopped cold for a minute. "Do I mean it? mean what? Oh. The song... " After several seconds passed in which I drew a complete blank, I said " I am trying mean it, Lord."  Service went on and ended and we came home. I was studying later that day thinking on that moment. I keep thinking... Do I mean it? Is my life really all about God? About His will? His directive? His plan?.  Am I willing that my true self to be completely given over to God. That I may not worry about my imperfections because God will use them? Am I willing to tear down the facade, not just stand in front of it? Am I willing to face humiliation to be my true self? Am I willing to accept that my true self is not mine at all, but HIS.  Are you?

Daddy God - I want it to be all about you. I want my focus to be on you. Lord teach me to be me. Just me - not who I think I should be, but me working to grow into what you have planned for me.  Caite Girl

NO! No! No! no! NO! no!

   Bright One is trying to define her role. Love Bug is always calling ALL the shots when they play make up games. Bright One wants to participate in the creation of the game so much. It causes a near constant tension between them. The tension thickens even more when Bright One decides "No, no, no! I'm not doing it your way!" Her sister gets frustrated and whines "I never get my way!" At which point I come unglued and send them to their respective corners with orders to do something NON- interactive.
    The truth is Love Bug usually does get her way, Bright is usually very compliant and they are both in the wrong. I remember being the rotten, selfish, big sister, always conniving to get my own way. I do not like the reflection of myself in my children. I wish I knew how to teach the gift of playing together with out controlling one another. It frustrates  me that I do not know how to instill an innate love of others that spills into play. What joy they could experience if they would loose that need to control every aspect of the game.
    But then again, is this season something that must also be endured? Do they need to go through this to grow them up into empathetic women, conscious of others? I don't know the answer, In the meantime I am praying that they find a way to play on equal footing, jointly designing the games.


Lord God, Give me wisdom to be a good Momma and the knowledge to guide these girls to grow up compassionate women!

Berries & 'Squitos

  I love berry season! I love the sweet, tangy, tart, bursts of flavor. Strawberries, Raspberries, Blueberries, Black Raspberries, Blackberries - I love preserving the summery goodness to provide hiatus to the winter blahs. Berries in my freezer, like my own private pirate treasure, hidden away in the dark, awaiting the moment I decide to make shakes or smoothies or some other fruited treasure. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmy! I revel in the bags of frozen goodness and containers of freezer jam.
   I do NOT like mosquitoes. One must brave the biting hordes if one desires to add black raspberries to ones treasure stash. Yesterday, I made my way with a friend to a black raspberry patch off the beaten path. After about 5 minutes I realized I had come to the battle unarmed as mosquitoes swarmed over us and made it difficult to even think about berries. We retreated to the van and ran back to the house for bug spray. Rinsing our selves off and quickly spraying down with bad smelling bug stuff. We went back to the berry patch and waded in. We picked doggedly for about 40 minutes, swatting each other as the pesky critters bit even through our clothes. It was better ... sort of. After many bites and several scratches I have approximately 1.5 cups of black raspberries. We conceded the battle but not the war. I am headed back today to see if perhaps I can come out victorious with enough precious tarts to save for winter. If not...I'll make a cobbler and call it good. I will again enter the fray in a week or so when the blueberries are ripe.

      I did a little better with the strawberries. I am thinking that perhaps I will try one more day to get some red goodness. Last week I obtained enough berries to make 14 pints of strawberry and 2 pints of triple berry freezer jam. Its wonderful flavor a bright and cheery note at breakfast or on ice cream. My sister is visiting perhaps I will shanghai her to help me. Of course this whole process is a labor of love... because once you pick the berries you must clean and process them as soon as possible so as to preserve as much as possible from rot. This is a whole day process then - the picking and preserving.  I love the process though it is tiring and I enjoy the products. The work is something so different from my daily life. It makes me stop and think and wonder at all the bounty God has given.

Lord, Thank you for your bounty and for the challenge to take time and enjoy the process. Thank you for a flash of summer in wintertime through the labors of today!  Caite girl

A Success

    ... Defined as meeting ones objective.
Hmm, So often I look at what I've done and question whether this project  or that endeavor was a success. Frequently my objectives (read dreams or visions) are so much more than the final reality. Yet others come and tell me how wonderful, how terrific or whatever the event was. So do their accolades make the event a success? I have started to revise my view a bit. Perhaps my dreams of an event are just that, dreams. Perhaps I need to listen more closely to what the Lord's objectives are for my projects. I strive to pay attention to God for IF I should do a given project. But often I do not listen so well to the HOW it should be done or the goals God has planned for an event or happening. I have suddenly realized this makes me a wide open target for the devil to whisper "You failed" "You never do anything right!" "Boy was that mediocre." I catch myself believing these lies of the evil one because I wasn't sure of where I was supposed to go in the first place.
       This is an example of Lordship and Leadership. As children of the living God we should desire to know Him so closely that His desires are our desires. Psalm 37:4 "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart."  A few years ago I heard a sermon that radically changed my view on this passage. "delight yourself..." This means to be so in love with our God that you are so excited about Him that you desire to work constantly to get closer to Him and His desires for you. "...he will give you the desires of your heart." God will show you what to be passionate about, what to desire. This verse doesn't say God will give what ever whim pops into your head. It tells us that he will teach us what to treasure what to desire. He will lead us.
       Will I follow? I want to. I want to give Him the most honored place in my life. I think I do. Often my actions don't bear this out.  I do it my way. I do not seek him. I want to change this. I want to work to change. He says He will lead me. I can trust Him. I cannot promise I will always have realistic goals. I cannot say every endeavor will be a practice in obedience. But I am working to be more focused on giving God Lordship & Leadership in my life.

Lord - Guide me. Help me to let you lead me. Help me to keep you as Lord of my life.