Guess where I found it?

I was complaining that I couldn't remember this delightful scripture song that I had heard. Guess where I found it? On my blog!

Please remember to tell me that when I start crying about not remembering. "Mom, you probably put it on your blog!" Just remind me, will you. Aging is so uncomfortable, when you are used to having a memory to lean on. :)

Ezra's concert! thank you for coming!

This is a morning that I feel missing you! It is Grandma Monica's birthday

My whole life, until marriage, I celebrated my birthday as being my grandma's birthday. I think she was born in 1912. She would have been 49 when I was born and she would be 104, this year. I cried for years, after she passed. She seemed the only one to have understood me, somehow. There were many reasons why.

When we moved down here to NC. I felt like she came to visit me with 10 or 12 other grandmothers. I felt like I found her and was looking for her, at the same time. I was very sick with a fever and I will always blame this on the envisioning of her. It wasn't a vision exactly, as much as it was a sense of her. I felt so very far from her, when she died and I never could reconcile that in my mind, in my questions to God, who I love above all others. She was as close to loving God as a person could have been in my heart, and I took that love for granted many days.

It is clear to me that there is a relationship formed with the spiritual life, when you seek God early in your life. There was a relationship between this party that I felt like Grandma had planned and the closing of my womanly way. I was ending an era in my life and I felt sick, perhaps related to it. It felt like the angels in heaven have some part in squeezing the last part of womanhood and tying it up in a bow. I do expect to see my motherhood bow in heaven when I get there. That is one of the early parts of your body that dies and goes to Heaven. We danced around my living room. We twirled and giggled and celebrated a victory for Jesus. Not perfect mothering, by any means, but a motherhood devoted to God and filled with prayerful dependence on His Grace. Many times the devil whispers that a good God can't understand my pains. Each labor pain, each morning sickness, each submission to His providence, for Christ's sake is seen by a faithful redeemer. Each stumbling and fall into anger and wrongdoing is also seen and recorded. God granted a great blessing on my mothering, even above the beauty and joy of the great children that I have on earth, this memory of the grandmothers coming for the celebration of the closing of my womb is a private encouragement that I pass on to you, as something to look forward to and be encouraged to reach for greater wonder in your relationship with God. If I am not in Heaven, when you go through "the change", I will plan a party to parallel my experience. If I am in Heaven, look out!

Arise my soul to meet the day...

I am praying for you and for me to rise to the challenge, today! Somedays this is easy. Somedays we are limping through, with little vigor and expectation. I pray that God will give great joy in His presence today. This is hard to find, if one is not in the presence of God on a regular basis.

We have seasons of life where this is the most important thing to us. Then, we have deceptions that whisper of its lack of importance. I needn't prioritize worship so highly, these deceptions whisper and if heeded, they yell. Help us Lord to shake off the guilty fears. Help us to see the importance of worship as our most important love interest.

If we put this in our pocket then when we pull out our priorities they will fall out in tact. If not it cuts the connector of our priorities and they fall out all over the place. Scattered priorities aren't pretty and sometimes we can't get them back together for a long while!

God grant us the presence of mind to know how important the worship of God is and give us the determination to keep it the highest of all in our hearts and mind. In Jesus' Name, Amen.

Home for Thanksgiving

More than half of your college life is over and coming home for Thanksgiving is a great part of what we look forward to. We took the drive on Tuesday and now we have eaten and laughed and giggled and fought and grown more fond and now we look forward to the drive back to school.

Smooches and hugs to know that we will see you in another 2 weeks for winter break.

Preparations for your effectiveness!

Education can be tedious and intricate sometimes. Our minds search the sky and the ground for the reason that this preparation is necessary. It is necessary. It is like trying to run or crawl through a dark tunnel. Although there may be some light in the tunnel, we long to reach the outside. Perhaps we run, when we should be stopping and looking at our surroundings. You are going to need these tools one day. Don't leave them in the tunnel. Take every tool. Find a place for them in your life. Put them in a strategic place and then run on.

Where did you get all those tools from, someone will ask you. I put them away for today. And you will be very glad that you did.

The effective woman doesn't minimize any of her experiences or acquaintances on the way to effectiveness. You are alive for "such a time as this"

I told you how hard it is to get a story from a crane...

So,

Only you can appreciate the difficulty of getting this story out of my recent best bird friend, the crane.{shhhhhhhh, don't tell the geese, you know how jealous they are}

I am not like you, with a wonderful pond that is just a stone's throw away from my door. I have to hoof it a ways to get to the crane sanctuary, if you can call it that.

When life gives you mandarin oranges...

Make jello!

I was so distracted by the huge can of mandarin oranges that has sat in our pantry for, at least a year. I love mandarin oranges and I could have eaten the entire can myself, but I didn't want to waste it. I have a great recipe for an ambrosia, but I couldn't afford to get all of the ingredients and I wasn't sure that anyone else would've wanted some of the ambrosia or if it could be frozen. This was a simple recipe of jello and craisins and the whole can fit into the 3 cup recipe. I am so pleased and I will let you know if it is a month or so before we are rid of this messy delish! Mommy

I miss you, terribly!

Lets go get her, today! No, we'll wait. Well, I will wait and just be missing you.

Can you cook, cutiepie?

Can she bake a cherrypie, Billy boy, Billy boy?

It is wonderful that you finally took it upon yourself to cook the fake Mac n Cheese for your father.  It really is more important, those relationships than the papers that you finish in school.

You will learn as you grow older that the lessons at home have precedence over the lessons in school.  I was watching and hoping that you would make the right decision about your father's request.  It means so much to him to see you answer his request and to eat something that you made.

I promise that the next time uncle Johnny asks if you can cook, I will have a bunch of stories for him, instead of a blank stare.

I love your hairdo!

5:50 you were on the road again!

Packed and ready to take a trip to NY. Big city women are venturing off into the deep of vacation life. Enjoy yourselves, I say! Don't forget to write? That means little, in this interconnected world. Momentary movements are documented by these young people. I don't mind a little distance for a week. Just make sure you come back safe! A loving mommy has her heart with you on your travels. Bye, Girls!

"My One Vice!" I caught myself saying

We were at the tennis courts and it was perfectly right for you to break out in huge laughter at that statement. I said, "Don't bring the tennis balls out in the "ReStore" bag, I don't like it". My ragtag tennis paraphernalia is a sore-spot for me.

When racquets were wood, it was my lot to play with a warped, old one. I played with Amy's college, throwaways and other odd racquets, as long as they could fit my hand and had strings, for the most part. I have never gotten to choose a new racquet for my delightful play times. I know my hand fits certain grips and doesn't fit others. I fantasize of hitting with different string weights, but to carry the practice balls in a scrappy bag is my "one vice", to have a hissy fit about.

Indeed, you know that I have a good many vices that I abhor but suffice it to say that the pride of my tennis paraphernalia is the one I wanted you to know about that day. Happy Tennis adventures for yourself. thanks for playing with me.

Brother graduates

Home again, Home again, jiggly jig!

I tried to FaceTime you this week.

Where were you?

Well, the election coverage had our conversation, this week. It is just awesome to get any conversation from these young men, you left me home with. It seems that they believe in either dominating the conversation or not having one. I am left to listen, until I get the gumption to jump in and argue my point for as long as they have ears to listen. I think that Walker men are loners at heart. Enoch and Ethan are becoming polarized in their perspectives and poor Ezra is becoming a henpecked fellow on every side.

In spite of this, we drew together on the election coverage and what we don't want. There are some new history books published about Abe Lincoln and Jimmy Stewart and we found a way to talk about how men are written about and will be depicted in the future. We decided that there is very little encouragement for men to be men. Everything they say is attacked as being sexist. We pray that they will find a voice of strength and direction, in spite of the special interest groups attacking them and crushing their every hero. Keep, at least one eye on the strengthening of the younger male siblings that God has given you!

I love you and miss you!

On Losing Nancy Reagan and finding the Reagan mystique!

I voted for Ronald Reagan, by faith. Faith that his influence would have some pull on the country away from abortion. That was my only connection. I was a cynic, but a believer in Christ who felt it my moral and civic responsibility to vote against abortion. It wasn't easy, but it seemed clear. I could never stomach the "white bread" movies that he was in. They seemed all against everything that I felt true and right, except on that one issue, abortion, we could touch and I could vote for him. Confession is good for the soul and I was and remain a "Reagan Republican". I still believe that he did what he could to stem the tide in that season.
 As a man,  I wasn't impressed at all, until...Last week I grew to stomach a little more of the Santa Fe Trail.   I knew he played Custer and I never could see him from behind the beauty and hypnotic ability of Errol Flynn.   This time, Errol paled in the background and I actually saw the mystical quality of that Reagan image that they captured in that movie.   How they each handled the enchantment of an Olivia DeHaviland was what interested me.   I loved what Reagan's face and eyes said that words couldn't say.
 The camera captured the beauty of chivalry that is long and lost to the American Way, which is at all costs grab and take what you want and grow to covet more.  Reagan's eyes said, I will keep this privilege of standing this close to you in my heart, as long as I live.   That is more beautiful than flowery words.  When Nancy died and they showed the photos of his real life love, it confirmed that beauty in my spirit. His eyes said that to her, in every photo.  She felt it and the world is a better place for having seen that kind of love, in real life. Don't miss reading about that love story! Barbara Stanwyck said in one of her movies to Fred Macmurray and it bears repeating, "with men like that in the world, there would be no bad girls left!"

5 hours there and 5 hours back, Home again home again jiggety jig!

Where is my baby? we are here on campus and I try to text and the campus has hoops to jump before you can connect. Oh my how long how long? 10 minutes seems an awful lot longer in cyber time than it used to. Ez and I kept trying to hack into an unhackable internet at the college, while dad uses his very able legs to do the same thing. Get to my baby. Finally 10 whole minutes later, I see her. The longest ten minutes in cybertime is waiting for my baby to come down from her room. I guess that I thought she would be at the door. She wasn't and I kissed her until we headed home...

Almost a pre-Spring Break---Going to the CIAA's("I love it!")

I feel better than I did last week.

How about you?

I just finished that little container of vaseline that we bought when we came with you back to school.  Little things make me think of you.  Covering my crispy feet, for some reason, is one of them.
    What makes you think about me?
blowing your nose?  getting in the tub and washing your neck?
I miss you and your quick wit to make a catastrophe seem like a joke.  That is you.

I love and miss you and hope that the math facts aren't kicking your butt too much.  Love and kisses,  mommy

I am sick today!

None of these people have any compassion for mother's poor nerves!  I am in pain.  They are asking me why I need Chobani.  Can you just imagine?  Where are you when I am in pain?  You would probably do the very same thing as they, would't you.  It is days like this that you should be glad you are 5 hours away from my crankiness!
    Why can't they just get me what I want when I am sick?  I still have dishes to do and the floor to get vacuumed.  I didn't get to any of that, but I did my bathroom halfway.
    I am just annoyed and in a lot of pain.  My throat is hurting from my pallet all the way to my mid neck on the left hand side.  Those children gave me their sicknesses.  I hope you never catch this horrible thing.
I think I'll be better tomorrow, but today, I am SICK!

A Woman's place is handling sword and shield!

The Sword of herbs and seasonings of healing and why shield of cleansers and hygiene. Is your hand useful in preventing and healing?

I was so happy to be in the car with my baby girl and dear husband for the recent trip...

Chowan is now a part of our family routine. The 10 hour trip and rental cars and close compartment with dear ones is a delightful time of concentrated celebration and argument and laughter. We usually are bellyaching and complaining after the 99th cotton field, either in bloom or harvested passes us. Thank God for the "amber waves of grain", but I don't have to pass everyone, do I? It is beautiful in the song and the first 50 to pass is fun, after that, I start asking, are we there yet?

This time the sensitive Sophomore is sickly. Daddy is sure that we must get some things to make her more comfortable. I agree. So we take extra steps, once we get there to get her situated. No fever, just aches and pains and so we prescribe Tylenol, cup a soups and rest. We bought vitamins for her. But the smell of so much rain in the marshlands of Murfreesboro is getting to me. I gotta get outa here or I am going to barf.

Bye, bye baby. I love you. feel better. this is really the fun part of parenting. She is fine and she is on her own, somewhat.

Happy New Year!