I am very grateful for another year. 50!

Friday night I sat with my youtube and enjoyed the music of Kenny Loggins and Paul Simon and Dan Fogleberg. I remembered the misfit teenager who was listening to such different and countercultural music and wishing to visit the Netherlands to Graceland. What far and distant lands, these writers led me through. Places I may never see with my eyes, but have visited with my heart. I am grateful for the imagination to have seen and travelled with many a prolific American writer, through their music. I am grateful for the hippie generation, before me and the folk writers who taught us to dream of other lands and to dream of peace and better lives.
I give the study of the beauty of American songsters and others to my children and wish them to grow into the fruition of the dreams that the "Innocent Ages" lend to them. Dan Fogleberg especially comforted my aging heart with his lyrics of beauty and true exposing of himself. He was real. This is me, he seemed to say, Not at all perfect, just growing.

On Thanksgiving/Creamed onions,Sauteed Mushrooms, Lima beans and Corn, Mashed Potatoes, Stuffed Shells, String Bean casserole...etcetera, etcetera...

I was stuffed with delights and fond new memories that I could write about for days. The clouds ran out of the way as if to say, we cannot believe that you are going to the mountains. Even we can't interrupt that party. Not a cloud was in the sky, we wouldn't want you to think that we were trying to dampen your party, they said, by their conspicuous absence.
The table was set, divinely. I took my plate and looked at the buffet, where the fixens were set. Oh Wow! My favorite! I could have taken a plate of each of the fixens, separately. I showed decorum and didn't just gobble the mushrooms from the serving bowl. I wanted to drink them straight, but, I acted in the fashion, my momma taught me and saved some for everyone else. I really wanted all of the mushrooms and then, I saw the onions. MY, oh my! Where will I put it all? If I put all the onions on the other side of the plate from the mushrooms, they will think that I am making a statement of something. I must put...Limas, Limas? They have limas? I love it!
I was going to start talking about Grandma Ruth's limas and how I missed them and how wonderful they are, now. How my gram would be so shocked to see me eating anything healthy. I couldn't. There were other memories to make and other things to put on my plate. I couldn't eat it all.
The food was delicious, but the memories that they evoked were more precious and inexplicable.

...And then there was Abby!

We called the first boy "Boy". That was his name to us. There didn't seem a need to call him anything else. There was no one else to answer to that name in our house. After about 18 months there was a need to diversify his name.

If we seemed unimaginative to name the first boy in our house, the opposite was true for the second. He had every name. We called him anything but boy. His name was Abdul. A princely name and serious name. We called him Dully, Dulcy, Dulcimus, Ashy{a rib about his skin texture}, but, mostly Abby. It seemed he was destined to spend only a short time with us. I wish that I had known that from the beginning, though.

I remember every minute that we spent outside Dr. Hewlett's office, waiting for this boy. I was old enough to know that the stork wasn't coming this time. And old enough to be very annoyed at the inconvenience of going to the Dr's office so often after school. He appeared on the scene, two weeks late and knocked my mother out of her wits. We didn't see that mother again. She birthed him and came back a new woman: A tennis player, adventurous, competitive. Abby and I spent hours with the water bottle and the patting on the back at Rochdale Tennis courts. Mom playing and us learning to rough it, a little. I remember his rough skin on my face and his raspy cry, in my ears. Mommy----the baby is crying again. Okay, Jayne, one more ball and you pat his back, maybe he will go back to sleep. He never went back to sleep, he cried and bauled in that growly kind of way that he did. We had no sympathy for him, we just growled back at him. We learned to love that little "truglidite"{ a term my father coined for the lot of us} Park children. We were there from the time school ended, till into the night, daily. Then, he learned to walk.

I'd say the frogs taught him to walk. Seems they were his best friends. He and Jo would go nature hunting together and gather frogs to bring for us to examine. We never were able to figure out how to keep them. We brought them home and they always got away.

Nature boy was another name that we called him. He was always covered in dirt and mud. I think that is why his skin improved somewhat, as he grew.

On long evenings, he and I would sit and I would lotion his ankles, trying to soften his skin from the scalp to the feeties. The funnest thing, when we were left home, was to play airplane with him on our feet.

There was no law about car seats, so we would ride to drop Dad off to the subway, with Abb laying across the whole lot of us. Our funnest trick was to watch his eyes open wide when we drove under the trestle and it got dark. We all would stare at him closely and his eyes would dialate, really really wide. He was somewhat examined closely by us. Not, because he liked it. I loved to put him on my shoulders and help him touch the ceiling. We would walk around the house and he would put hand prints on the ceiling.

I was ten going on 11 when he was born and entirely too big for my britches. He was my guinea pig in numerous experiments, not just the eye watching one. We rolled him around on the feet, like a baby bear. Grandma Ruth used to say, you girls are going to make his face as bad as his legs are, kissing him, like you do. We did, anyway.

Is it boring to struggle and argue about our faith?

I.Salvation, by Grace Through Faith


I cannot minimize the importance of a spiritual likemindedness, before entering into the marriage vow. If there was not a common spiritual upbringing, there cannot be common expectations.
Marriage, even in the most Christian assumptions of the word, is a merger of great expectations. We speak some of them in our words and we assume some of them in our deepest hopes.
Jesus is the basis for the commonality that we proclaim and exclaim in marriage. We are sinners, who have been purchased by the blood of Jesus. If a person is not aware of their need of the grace of God, it is difficult for him to see the importance of forgiveness in the marriage. You assume, first of all, that his/her hand will not hold you to the fire for small offenses. The assumption of grace is that forgiveness for small offenses will be observed in the light of the Grace that we have freely received in Christ.
It seems obvious that if a person has not accepted the grace of Jesus and is attempting to pay his/her own debt before God, they would expect you to pay for the offenses that you do to them, up to the payment of hell, if necessary. The person doesn’t say this. The unbelieving assumption is, this merger is until you make me uncomfortable.
Marriage, puts your soul in the hand of the other person. Our life and death and care and concerns are lent to the other person, while we are on the earth.
We could have everything in common, but the Grace of God and we really have nothing in common. We could have nothing in common, but the Grace of God and we have everything in common. The common standard, that heaven is our eternal destination is the course of our lives.
“Which way do we go?” is the question at every fork in the road. There will be a sign, toward heaven, or hell and if the common grace is not there, the argument at which way to go will come up, daily.
We get in the boat together and the course is set. If you think that you can reset the course, from hell to heaven easily, you are certainly deceived. A person can go to heaven, personally and live in a boat that is hell-bound. But the course of the boat that you enter into, in the marriage vow, is set by your common agreement.
The course to heaven is never, accidentally set upon. It is marked out and studied and a course that is difficult and charted carefully. When we get off course, we know it. When the clouds roll in and set us off, we are aware of it. When the clouds lift, we both look at eachother and say, which way is heaven. Not, which way do we go?><
The older we get, the more we joke about the lowering of the standard for marriage. We agree that it is a joke. He/she is heavenbound in his soul, or he/she is not for you, my daughter and son.

"Soul and Body, Clarence Day?" Maternal prayers in epithets.

"May your soul not be disconnected from your body, as your clothes are unseeming upon your body."

In the movie Life With Father, I was enamored at the historical example of mothering expertise, delivered to us, through the good acting of Irene Dunne, when she doted on the souls of the boys in her care. That quote was from a scene where the doting and loving Christian mother noticed that her child was wearing clothes where the seams were coming undone.

How sad that generation gaps have taken us far from the interjections that can be the prayers that set the road for the generations before us. Much to replace the natural inclinations of the curses that donn our lips, through the fallenness of our race. The study of motherhood can lend us the words of love that God has preserved in our hidden humble characters around us. Motherhood desires the best for her child. Christian motherhood desires the best spiritual good for her offspring. Keep your soul in mind in the decisions of your life, my son, was the directive of the wise and Christian mother. The son let his pen note that, perhaps, the only reason that the entire household made it to glory, was because their mother was diligent to do battle with the world, the flesh and the devil, in their home. Perhaps the home is the only true sewing machine to seem soul with body. Either way, may God make us able seamstresses of soul and body.

Why do we make love...Stay?{ from 4/20/10}

Students of the love impulse,

Marital love?
Maternal Love,
Parental love,
paternal love,
brotherly love,.

Dan Fogleberg— seems to say, I wish that love were, like my dog, that I could say "Stay!" and she would stay. The only thing that we have dominion over, after the curse, would be the dominion over the regulation of human love. Maternal love is a constant.? We don’t have to say to ourselves love your children. How we love them is the question. Listening? Talking? Instructing? Directing?
Wifing love equals submission and respect, but it also must involve reciprocation of such. "Like a dog", in a sense we say: "Stay right there, love, whatever happens. You stay!" {as though it were outside of ourselves?} It may or may not listen, depending on a lot of factors. ie. Loyalty, is probably the best concept to inject into your children with oneanother— early, before they learn disloyalty.

in the heavenly realms: The angels’ job is to study and defend the holiness of God. A little lower, we study and defend the goodness of God and have dominion over the relationships on earth, in family and government and church. Christ’s defense is for His church: against the gates of hell{forces of antichrist evident in the earthly realms}. Families bound together under a covenant of unity and peace. "I will not wage war against you.", is usually part of the family understanding. I will say to Peace, you stay!

Dominion over Love, dominion over peace and dominion over unity, You STAY.—why do we run so from the concept of having dominion.

Don't Sleep in the Subway, Darling.

Upon planting my "Dusty Miller" and "Violas" at my mailbox. I remember Dusty Springfield and Sister Loyola a dear old Sister from my early fond remembrances. It has been sometime that I have said to myself, I will plant something nice and choice around my mailbox. Life happens and here we are 5 years later and no closer to civilizing this "vast wilderness" LOL than we were when we got here. I had grandiose dreams of "Sweet William" and Clover wafting over my "viranda". Each early attempt was met with design critiques and major marital distemper, and so I gave up, for a time. Here I am, unemployed and longing for flowers and fauna, to the tune of deacon Wests yard and I gird myself for the battle, when the master of the house sees the creative genius that reminds me of subways and Dusty Springfield and Sister Viola, I mean Loyola. Maybe it is a Rock and Roll garden, he is opposed to, whatever. "Nothing beats a failure, but a try."

A Piney Day!

Brentwood in the Pines, Is mighty fine

A group of Highschool prayer group girls singing the joys of reaching out to God, by travelling to the piney woods of Brentwood, in the early 1970's are the echoing memories that are playing this morning. The sunny faces of the optimistic PG, that our prayers could closer reach the throne of God, should we travel to the wooded convent of Long Island. Everyone knew that you had to yell to reach God's ears from Brooklyn, or the other boros. So, we travelled. Our delighted faces to see real and skinny, tall pine trees, made us giddy and we sang. I am grateful to know that God knew our hearts. Our giddy, sophomoric songs of reaching out to God and seeing His glory in the pines was infantile, but happy. They are good memories of growing in grace and in the knowledge of God and using outstretched arms and hands to learn of Him.
Thank you, God, for those good memories.
God bless the archives of PG.

Scarf day, minus the tickles...

The joys of having gone to an all girl's highschool, is the lesson on how to talk to your daughters about why they are wearing a scarf. Of course, I wasn't one of the popular girls who had a scarf or reason to wear one. What is the big deal that you must wear a scarf on a school day? In our school, it would have been considered out of uniform, so Sister "So and So" would have asked an explanation of such a flagrant disregard for uniformity. "Moy Fawda toll me oy kuuud?" would have been one of the excuses to Sista.
This morning, I was "Sista So and So"---
"ZZZup wit da tassles, homegirl?" I asked, ever so cautiously. One must be careful not to disturb the ego of the budding pubescence. "NOT!"
Mother, need you ask me what my choices of style change are, was the paraphrase of the answer. {I haven't learned to write in cyberenglish, yet} They really don't use words, they just look at you. I can't smack her everytime she looks at me, so, I attempted again to ellicit some sort of explanation for the fluff, in tow.
My stories of odd Catholic School girls, who covered hickeys with those fluff items, didn't dissuade, her. So she won the debate, this time.

Don't let Euphoria die!

Oh me, Oh my, don't let my euphoria die. I bought her. My thumbs are not green, yet, but, I don't want to see her die. I put her in pots and I imagined a beautiful sight out of my front door, with a mix of euphoria and heather. The watering process eroded the soil from the pots and her roots are exposed. I did some little bit to heal her root system. I must do more, if I would see her live again. I have a hands off method of gardening, which certainly hasn't gotten me much in the way of returns. I imagine sitting with my aunt Lorraine and making mud pies in the earth and it is hard for me to concentrate on the love of the plants that I imagine growing and blooming under my care. I love them when I see them in the store and I imagine that I will care. Laundry always seems to get the better hand, and even that is a mess today. I do hope euphoria survives.

At what cost, light?

The light of truth, versus the light of beauty; keep the candle burning? Which shall I light? The light of beauty, calls and attracts moths and other insects...The light of truth attracts souls and live beings. Open unto us, we pray to the bridegroom of our souls. Let us know more of our Savior. Which light have you oiled, it is dark in your soul, if the only light is the light of beauty, spent upon our own attractions. Help us Lord to be the wise women and adorn our souls with the light of truth and not just the light of beauty.

The Miracle Worker!

We did discover the old movie from 1962, The Miracle Worker. Patty Duke did a wonderful job showing us Helen Keller. We were awestruck by the development of this child, from raw and uninstructed, to fully expressive and interactive as a human and an instructor of others.
I have always been curious about Helen Keller, as I guess, everyone who knows the story and certainly anyone who has seen Patty Duke portray her. I have spent some years meditating on the elements of human development that are illucidated in the blow by blow descriptions of her determined teacher Annie Sullivan.
My hypothesis on this, is that God is shining a light on the development of His people in the church, when these spectacles come to fruition. Perhaps I am stretching my imagination to think that God would show us ourselves in something as oblivious as the relationship of teacher and student. Perhaps also, there is more infinite a God as to have lessons in every teacher student relationship for Christ's Church, but I think it observable and mentionable to my children for me to share it.

Especially, in those days of the early 60's was the church blind and deaf and dumb, in its activity. So much of what was going on in church was blinded and deafened by racial division.

When Annie met Helen, it was acted out that Helen sat and mimicked, taking Annies glasses and rocking with her dolly. I think that we did that as the church in the 60's. We took on the name of Christ and acted out the motions, but were blind to our own condition. God will certainly not leave us in our condition of deliberate blindness to corporate sin. He will and has shaken us out of our fatal ease. We fight, personally and corporately against the change that God has for us, to bring us into conformity to Christ. The test is, when we see our sin, will we repent and turn.

Christ's miracle working power is still at work with His people. He is making us a beautiful bride, not having spot or wrinkle. He is opening our eyes and minds to see Him and respond in loving obedience to His truth.

In a Wild House, from a Wide House...

In a Wild House, From a Wide House


I do remember being small enough to ride my trike down the pathway to the gate and back again. About a 2 Yard length track was our runway for the trikes and we had the best time riding back and forth up and down the pathway. I remember when my parents had that pathway laid and the back door put into the house at 113.

The sight of a possible wild mimosa tree coming up, in my makeshift garden, today, delighted my heart beyond measure. I remember wanting to climb the branches of our delicate mimosa, growing up. We certainly would have broken it down to nothing, had my mother not protected it, as she did. Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it! I want the feathers to make something. I want to touch the leaves that are so delicate. The apple tree was too tall to get up into the branches, but the mimosa was so luscious to consider and we could easily have made a catapault for one of the little ones to launch them out into outer space somehow. Don’t touch it! Okay! Well, I never got to launch one of my siblings from its branches, but I did see how it closed and opened when I brushed its leaves. I did touch it, ever so gently and see it respond to my every motion. {what a precocious child I was?} Can’t we tie one of the children to the tippy top and see how far they get? No! Okay! We rode the bikes back and forth past it and had races and it heard every word and cry that happened in that house, my mimosa. I always wanted one. And now, it looks like, I might have one coming up, completely, by accident. Wow!
We are so blessed.

And Don't forget to Be Authentic. Bible Entertainment Class 2011---

Why do I love my husband?

I was reared to be prejudiced against 2 groups of people,{excuse my french} "White people" and "Uncle Toms". And then the Lord saved me. I was somewhat young, when God arrested my affections and taught me to love Him, first. He certainly took alot of time and attention to wrestle my affections from stereotyping people, from those 2 categories. An "Uncle Tom" would have been considered anyone with that awe inspiring condescension to white people. Most Black Baptists were seen to be in this category. Their heads would genuflect, as we did as Catholics, at the name of Jesus. They would do this when a White person walked into the room. I saw them do it and I saw the look of glee in the person's eye to be thus exalted. God took years to wrestle these categories from my breast. God taught me to see the importance of loving "white people" and "uncle tom's" and to see that even these sins are cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Maybe, only they will be in heaven. The scriptures state that we must exalt others as better than ourselves. I have learned these things from my precious husband and he has learned not to genuflect in the presence of "White people". My precious husband and I have grown up together, learned to see and appreciate one another's views and value the credibility of Scripture above labels and stereotypes. If a brother or sister is in one of his prejudicial categories and is a Christian, he asks me for assistance in dealing with his own reticence in loving them with the love of the Lord. If he is fearing their faces, because they are White and he grew up to honor that group of people, that is where my gifts come into play. I do love people, and even those whom I have been taught to despise, in Christ, but what I hate is that spirit that has grown up in this country, in covert, that is antagonistic to the spirit of Mordecai. The spirit that would feel comfortable when others bow in their presence and doesn't immediately throw that pride off, scares me. I run like the plague from people who are comfortable with Black people feeling subservient to them. That is why and what I love about my husband. He teaches me where subservience is godly and where it is excessive, from scripture and from experience. He is a tremendously gifted man who has humbled himself and given himself to the tasks at hand and been stepped upon and used by those who have seen his submission as weakness. God knows!

Superlatively Impressed! "Crumbs from the Queen's Table"

I am so impressed by the exportation of hope, from America, to the hope ravaged country of South Africa. It is unimaginable, that in so short a time we have grown to a point where we are exporting an impression of respectful and respectable Black womanhood. The carrying of an African American First lady and daughters and mother, to the apartheid shadowed nation, is something that was unimaginable when I was a child. It was only a dream to me. A very longed for dream, but a dream, none the less.




The example of Melba Moore paying homage to the mother and queen of soul, as she did, in the introduction to her most famous and beautiful rendition of "Lean on Me" is the message that I would have carried to South Africa, today, were I given the privilege of speaking to the ladies. Honor your mother, by hitting that note and holding that note and doing "it", as Melba did. She called it crumbs from the queens table. They were crumbs, meaning that this was the b side of the "45" and she made it a single! Let us do what our mothers do. Let us honor what they had to endure and carry it to the next level. Let us take what they endured on the b side of the 45 and take it to a single, Not throwing out their memory, but accepting the "crumbs from the queens' tables".

Confessions of an Antifeminist...

Mon and Del were the first to challenge my father's old fashioned and severe tactics of parenting. Everytime they came over, a challenging, agressive argument ensued. I saw him peruse their introductions to the reasoning method of discipline. Nope, it rarely budged him. He would stew over the new concepts around the house and spouted arguments for a few days.
I really loved that my daddy was transparent to us. He let us see his development of thought. He allowed us to look at his adulthood as a growth process. He wasn't in charge because he was right, but because he was dad. We learned to respect hi. s authority, whether we agreed or not. I respected that he made it clear that he didn't have a father and he was going to give his children something he didn't have. He recited every observation of masculinity to me and how it shaped him.
In terms of his severe discipline, with girls, Monica was the only one to stand up to him. In our family respect didn't always mean agreement. Those two disagreed, most intensely. First cousins they were, Monica was the voice of higher education.
I do remember the first Thanksgiving the happy and adored couple came home for Thanksgiving with their 2 toddlers. They were beautiful. They were educated, emancipated and equals. He was tall and powerful, a runner, a coach, a professor. She, now a mother was making it very clear that she was not about to let motherhood slow her down in her taking life by the horns. I am still in competition and growth in my profession. No talk of diapers and child development, except to challenge the status quo. She was all of our, intellectual superior, we all knew that. We should all be sitting at her feet. She had speed of thought and command of language. It was clear that the happy couple were teammates. This was a completely new concept for us all. No servitude and commander, teammates. She said things to Del that made us all look at eachother and say, who is the boss here?

I remember the glowing look that they both had, in their late 20's and I in my early 10's. They were the special guest star at the family celebration, anytime they came home.

The song, Young Gifted and Black seemed written just about them. Still, I never said that is what I want to be when I grow up. Dad always said it. You will be like, Monica. He admired her greatly. No.
As soon as she opened her mouth, I recoiled. Her words seemed to me to be dissembling our family and the command method that we had learned.

I know now that because of my headship of being an older sister, the thought of each person commanding themselves was a blow to my ego and my totalitarian headship of my younger siblings. I had little mercy, in those days. Commands were to be followed immediately and without question. I walked away from her little disciple group, sadly. I cannot embrace her words, as much as I wanted to. It would mean the end of my regime as well as my father's.

Confessions of an Antifeminist

Believe it or not, I am old enough to remember the early days of the feminist revolution. I remember most women, being married with children. Definitely, on TV, this was the case, even if it wasn't in my life. My mom was an at home mom, but both my grandmas were single mothers and very savvy with themselves; tremendously believers in women's rights.
Because my daddy had been reared in a female dominated family, he felt it his mission, to share the pitfalls of living in such a state. Anything, that hurt my daddy used to hurt me. I understood the look on his face of loss and grief, when he saw others' fathers, interacting with them.
I told you, this morning dear Evvie, about the development of family concensus in our family. The attacks and some of the effects of the philosophies that grew up in the 60s.

A Prayer for the New Generation of Princesses

God’s evident intention of royalty.

It is such a temptation to devalue traditions of our parents and to regard the traditions of position and respect as being a relic of the Dark Ages. It is certainly covered, as is exemplified in many of the Disney renditions of princess stories, to be covered with ivy and thorns and thistles and even a maddening mysticism. These traditions of royalty are ours by inheritance and they are ours by practice, but are they profitable to us spiritually? Are they blessed? Are they symbols? Are they glorifying to God?
In every station of life, God can be glorified and in every station of humanity God can be denied.
My Grandma had a large picture of Queen Elizabeth. I remember seeing her looking down on us, when we had tea. All of the traditions of the elders were questioned through the hippie generation and this was one of the traditions that was diminished in the wake of that revolution {cultural revolution}. We throw away royalty and we throw away respect.
I remember the stories of how seriously Elizabeth was trained to emulate respect and respectability, in days of want for many people. It was to the benefit of many that there was a family that had everything and yet they were careful to use thought as to how to express themselves in such a state of life.

What is God expecting me to show my children in my exaltation as mother?
What is God expecting me to show my children in my exalted position as wife?
What is God expecting me to show my children in my exalted position as a child of God?
Blessed with the incorruptible riches of the knowledge of God, in a day where the dearth is palpable and the darkness so deep is the most exalted state of human life. We have the light of the promises of God and the heart of His expression of His will on the earth. He is exalted and lifted up, in the lives of His people. Winning the lost is just one way. Living in the light of the glory of God in our condition of life does more to win others than talking.

God is exalted. God is the eternal royalty. Emulation of God in royalty is the emulation of beauty and power and glory, with the absolute utmost humility. None of us can attain to that and we needn’t try. If we are exalted, we must be that and be humble and if we are abased, we must be that and be humble. It is not the exalted or abased part that is difficult, but the humble part.

If I had a daughter {and my daughters are already royal}, but if she were going into the crucible to public attention to her, like Kate Middleton, I would pray for her soul. I would let her watch the Little Princess. I would pray that she would learn to abhor highmindedness and prejudice. I would pray that she would learn to think before she speaks and think before she acts. I would pray that she would learn to put her errors behind her, quickly and learn that those will be more looked at and remembered than her gifts and graces. I would teach her to give the glory to God in her life so that she needn’t be afraid that the accolades that others shower upon her would take from God’s glory, because each day she is at the altar of the Lord, pouring her praise upon Him and begging for all the glory to go to Him. It needn’t be said to people in every sentence, or it becomes trite, but it does need to be said to God in the secret place where all is seen in His presence. Lord, my heart is open and bear before You and I give You all the glory, to Whom all the glory is due. Then, a young woman is prepared to take the hand of the prince and live out her vow to God, for His glory, in whatsoever state that she is. Learning to be content.

Some days she will wake and it will seem like a bad dream. Too much Lord. Too much attention, when will these people back off and mind their business and care for their own needs. They don’t back off, though. Some times it will seem like a good dream, stars and wonders that other humans only wish for. All the time God is there and He always deserves the glory. He always deserves my heart to hold His hand. What do you want me to learn from this, Lord? Where do you want me to go with this, Lord? Prisoner of Zenda would be the second movie that I would show. The picture of the princess who is bound to her kingdom and her God, even before the wants of her own heart. We are all called to that kind of consistency. I want my way, but God has placed the path of duty before me. This is not the kind of consistency that is self wrought, but begged for and God-wrought, so as not to cause others to fall to their eternal destruction and to be true to the calling that God has placed on your life. Help me not to be a cast away Lord. Help me to adorn the cause of Christ in my station and not to upbraid it.

Play your position!

On the Volleyball court, I was never known to be one who played only my position. When men play their position, women can play their position with honor. Wifing and mothering is an honorable job. It feels like nothing in the midst of the days. When God is using the men and they are in his hand, it is tempting to leave the Lord's hip, to want to become a weapon instead of a sheath. You can get hurt doing what you are not intended to do. You cannot be effective as a sword, if you are a sheath. When God is sharpening the swords and doing His bidding He needs His women supportive and effectively keeping the homefires burning brightly{to change the analogy}.

I want to fight in the war with the men. Just because the world has a backward perspective, we don't have to be. We miss the reality of the beauty of the work that God intends for His women.
Jesus, help me support the work in prayer and praise and see You use each piece of Your work for Your own glory.