How to Thrive

Just inspected our garden, or what's left of it, and it's a sad sight with this summer's drought. I decided about a week ago it wasn't worth it to keep watering, with voluntary water restrictions being called for in our city. We had been getting a fair crop of tomatoes up until then, but I was watering every day.

Likewise, I can't expect my spiritual garden to thrive when I fail to "water" it with prayer and Bible study every day.

This is how things looked in June, lush and green--

 And here are the same plants now, brown and dried up--

Pool Meltdown

Well, we had our second visit to the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital pool and it almost turned out to be our last. When Dean came out of the dressing room with his suit on, needing help with his pool shoes that they provide, he refused to let me help him put on the brace they also provide to help support his drop foot. I tried to explain that they wouldn't let him in the water without it. But he wasn't listening, just demanding that we go home and not stay to exercise.

The staff recognized our difficulty and his therapist came over and literally "sweet-talked" him into trying the boot on again (he had worn it the last time) and told him to let them know if it hurt too much. She explained the reason why he needed to have it on, and was very calm and courteous the whole time, letting him make the final choice. Not a bit demanding. Which is just the way he has to be handled. I could tell right away that this lady has worked with the brain injured. She was an expert!

Praise the Lord, he relented and let them help put the brace on, along with the shoes. He went from a lion to a lamb in seconds, which is just how it usually happens with him here at home. But today, I really don't think I would have won him over to wear the brace without the intervention. I wish I had a Madonna nurse with me every time we go in public. I might be braver to take him places.

I do have the Lord's assistance though. He's only a prayer away and I know He's listening for my distress signals, even before I get the prayer in the air. Thank you, God, for giving me words to say to prevent the meltdowns. Both mine and Dean's.

Here's the lady who prevented the meltdown.

Ain't she a saint!?

Julia's Lord

I have to share something about my granddaughter, Julia, age 2. She loves to sing, but there's one song that is evidently irritating to her ears. Every time we all start singing "Kum ba yah, my Lord, Kum ba yah", Julia protests vocally with "no, MY Lord". So her mother, my daughter, has wisely learned to accommodate her two-year-old request and correctly sing the next line "Kum ba yah, Julia's Lord, Kum ba yah." Only then will the determined girl join our singing.

If there's one thing that we want our children to remain possessive about, it's their Lord. Only when God is "all ours" can we share Him with others. Whenever I sing that song or any hymn about my Savior, I'm going to think of putting the emphasis on the "my" and then God and I will share a smile, thinking about a cute little girl, insisting on the right words to the song.

I let her pick this tomato from my garden. 

This was several hours later...I don't think it ever made it to the salad bowl. It's hers!!!

Baking From Scratch

In addition to being the Sabbath, it was also my nephew's birthday yesterday. The day started out special, with our electricity being off all through the house for several hours, due to a power line down, causing a wide neighborhood outage.

Knowing I should have made time to ask this earlier, I thought to ask my nephew what his favorite cake was for his birthday as he was going out the door with a friend. Angel food cake, I was told. Well, I had a whole afternoon ahead of me and a trusted recipe an elderly friend gave me long ago (she always brought one to potluck). So I proceeded to collect the ingredients and get started. I had made it once before myself, I think. I remembered how delicious it had been.

I knew instantly what a labor of love it was going to be, after the first step though. Sift the flour four times. Then add half the sugar and sift another four times. Even the counting was a challenge. The next steps weren't any easier. Separate about a dozen eggs, beat them until foamy, then add the sugar 2 Tbl. at a time with the mixer. THEN fold in by hand the flour and sugar mixture 2 Tbl. at a time too. Only the almond and vanilla flavoring scents wafting up gave me the strength and energy to continue mixing and stirring.

The end product was again delicious. But I can certainly understand why cake mixes have become so popular now. Imagine making all your cakes before we had electric mixers. (I thought of our power outage.) You could afford the extra calories from eating them. You burned them off by working so hard. I still say baking from scratch results in tastier treats too. But, they'd also be eaten in moderation. Who's going to let anyone gobble up something that you put so much work into?!

Like life, the more challenge it is to achieve something, the more rewarded we are for the effort. God knows that we need trials in our life to make us "good". God started us from dust. I'd say that's creating from scratch too. And He knows we're going to be worth it in the end.

Organized Clutter

Yesterday I cleaned out my clothes closet and drawers. I had a big bag of clothes for the trash, one for donations, and one to try to sell on consignment. And today it was the bookcases in the living room. When I was through, I had one bag of trash, one pile to give away, and another pile of things to relocate.

Now here's the kicker after all that work. My closet looks just as full. And my bookcases don't look any emptier. I thought I was going through them with a fine tooth comb, but evidently it must have been one of those wide tooth shower combs for getting out tangles. All I can say is that my clutter is more attractive now. The librarian in me mandates if you have to have clutter, it must at least be organized.

Something tells me that God doesn't see our lives that way though. Clutter (sin) is clutter with Him, regardless of how it's packaged. I pray that I can clean out my ugly habits and character traits with that fine tooth comb called the Ten Commandments. I'll be glad then when I move into my heavenly mansion. It'll be a nice, clean move. No work involved. Piece of cake.

We know where the clothes disappeared TO, but where did they come FROM?

Dean's Poolside Humor

A few posts ago I mentioned that Dean's "safe environment" is his recliner, but it's not his "healthiest environment", as we learned at his last doctor visit. So he wrote him a prescription for some aquatic therapy. We started it today at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital.

Before he got in the water, the therapist who will work with him gave him quite an interview to help assess his skills and establish his goals. As far as goals, Dean could only come up with one and that was to be able to hand-glide someday. She laughed and said that was beyond what they do there, but good try. After some prodding, he finally settled for being able to walk farther without pain.

At the end of the interview, she asked him if he had any questions. He did--"Are you married?" She chuckled again and told him she didn't mean that kind of question.

When they finally got in the water, I tried to read my book by the poolside, but couldn't keep from watching to see how they would do in the water. Dean had a very creative way of counting how many repetitions he was doing. "That's 5, 8, 10." I don't know if he was trying to make her lose count or what, but it didn't work. Evidently, this gal's worked with the brain-injured before. She was counting in her head, and there were no shortcuts available with her counting.

As with God, we can't get Him off track with the countdown to end-time events. God knows the number and our trying to figure out how much time is left must seem pretty silly to our omniscient God. Likewise our goals and questions must seem pretty off base to Him too. Letting Him guide us in all things, now and in the future, just makes good sense.

I can't wait for our next entertaining therapy session.

"It's Mine"

What a blast I had in the grocery store today! It was a store that had those small-size carts that little ones can push; so each of my granddaughters ended up pushing her own grocery cart. Fortunately it wasn't a very populated store because little Julia (2) was not very adept at steering or maneuvering her cart and her mom and I have some sore ankles to prove it.

But the funniest part was when we pulled our carts up to the checkout and Julia saw us unloading our food onto the counter to get the items scanned. She started putting up such a fuss as we put her items on the belt. She grabbed the veggie hot dogs from her cart and wouldn't let go of them for love or money and was quite vocal with her objections, which included a little "not happy" foot dance. "It's mine. It's mine," she firmly announced.

The only solution seemed to get the dogs scanned quickly, so we could hand them right back to the about-to-lose-it toddler. Fortunately, the clerk was quick about it and handed it right back to her, but we still had to figure out how to extricate the "hot dogs" from her possession and convince her to leave the cart by the door.

Her mom, who seems to be an expert at handling these episodes, had it all figured out. She got out a big, refrigerated water bottle from the grocery bags and handed it to her while we tenderly explained that Grandma was bringing the dogs home for Grandpa's supper. With sister's example of leaving her cart by the door, she seemed to cut her losses and go with the offered substitute water bottle. Besides, the water bottle was so big, she needed both arms and all her strength to hang on to her new possession and lug it to the car.

How many times do I behave like a selfish toddler? I feel like all I have belongs to me, when in actuality, God owns it all, and everything I have is just on loan from our Creator God. Yet God, like a patient parent, shows me the "Substitute" for my selfish ways. I just have to hold onto "It" with both arms and with all my strength and lug "It" all the way to heaven.