I don’t know why, but I love toile (pronounced twall) things. Michael and I had black and white toile wallpaper in the first home we owned together. Then when we moved to a bigger house 25 years later I mourned the loss of the toile, and had the same wallpaper hung in our new bedroom. I know. People either love toile or they hate it, and when our house was for sale last year, I learned from potential buyers’ comments that most did not care for it.

Now we are in a different house that is more modern than our other two homes, and I didn’t think I’d ever have toile anywhere again.

But I succumbed to the pressure of the persistant, whispering Toile Elves, and very soon we will have a bit of toile in our home again. I decided not to go with black and white again.

Here’s what’s going up on the walls of my little office, in just a few days.

I spend a fair amount of time in my office — have I mentioned that there’s a lot of paperwork with foster care? I think I have. So I’ll be toiling under the toile.

And I’m shocked at myself that I’m considering some curtains that don’t really match with the wallpaper. We have a large double sliding glass door in the room and some curtains would provide some privacy.

Pretend right now that you like toile wallpaper. What color curtain panels would you choose to complement this dark red and cream toile wallpaper you see above?

I was thinking cream, I was thinking taupe, I was thinking cardinal red velvet panels, I was thinking brown.

Then all of a sudden I was thinking something completely outside my regularly matchy-matchy box.

Very light aqua, also known sometimes as robin’s egg blue.

No! That wouldn’t go at all!

I’m going to try it anyway.

Yesterday was a low-key day, the kind I like best. No appointments, no place or person desperately needing our presence. I don’t think Michael enjoys these kinds of days as much as I do, and I feel badly for him. He has always been a high-energy man, accustomed to building and remodeling and then planning out his next building and remodeling project. That’s not the way it is anymore, and if you’ve been around my blog for a while you know why. And since he doesn’t drive now, he’s dependent on me to take him places, which I am happy to do 99% of the time.

I cleaned the kitchen yesterday morning and straightened up the house, and then sat down to go through the workbook of the James Bible study I did with a group of dear friends this summer. We all agreed to re-read what we’d completed, to seal in our memories and hearts what we learned. After a while I could tell Michael was slightly restless, and by 1:00 I asked if he wanted to take a drive up the north shore of Lake Superior. He did.

We drove to Two Harbors and had an exceedingly high-fat and delicious lunch at Culver’s. They don’t call them ButterBurgers for no reason at all. A big lunch like that is enough to last me until past dinner time, and then ideally I would eat a piece of fruit before going to bed. But I have to make sure good food is available three times a day, seven days a week, so as soon as we got home I started on something to put in the oven.

As we drove home along the beautiful shore of Lake Superior, we listened to some music that always makes me yearn and causes my eyes to fill with tears I can’t explain. This song, in particular, seems to plunge a knife in my heart each time I hear it. You can click on the link and it should open in a different window, start the video (which is just so you can listen to the music) and then you can read the rest of this post while having a knife plunged through your heart too!

Michael likes it when I sit down at night to watch something on television with him. Netflix has been our answer to the dilemma of “husband likes TV, wife not so much,” and we have watched some fantastic series (mostly British) over the last couple of years. “Monarch of the Glen,” “Bleak House,” “Doc Martin,” “Wives and Daughters,” “Garrow’s Law,” “Foyle’s War,” “Cranford,” and many others have come to our house in little red envelopes.

The night before last we watched a movie I chose, not knowing anything about it except that it was labeled a thriller and was directed by M. Night Shyamalan. I like a good thriller once in a while. They can be a little murderous, a little monsterish, just not too much. I don’t want buckets-of-blood-murderous or demon-like monsters. I just want a little blood and/or a killable monster.

The movie we watched was “The Village.” Have you seen it? It had a couple of actors in it that interested me — I like Bryce Dallas Howard and Joaquin Phoenix — but the longer the movie went on, the more I wanted to start playing Words With Friends on my iPad. (Do you play Words With Friends? Send me your user name and we can set up a game so you can whomp me.)

Basically, the story was about a group of people living in a (supposedly) 19th century village, completely isolated from the rest of the world. The people were very colonial seeming with colonial houses and furnishings, and they were governed by a group of elders. They led happy and quiet lives, except for when the beasts in the woods would start acting up. The beasts were called “those we don’t speak of,” and were attracted by the color red, so red was completely forbidden, and all red flowers had to be plucked up and buried. The beasts were apparently repelled by the color yellow. All around the village were hung lanterns and yellow flags to deter the beasts from coming out of the woods and making horrible sounds and causing all the people to flee for their cellars while the beasts pounded on their doors in a deafening manner and left swathes of red paint across their houses. When the beasts were really upset they would skin small pigs and leave them in various places all over the village, to remind the poor people that they were still being observed, and they needed to watch their Ps and Qs.

It would take too long to go into all the details of course, but at the end of the movie, one of the elders sends his blind daughter through the woods toward “the towns” to seek medicines for a dying young man who has been attacked by the beast (or so some of them think). He believes sending her would be the best choice instead of going for the antibiotics himself. Before she heads out, the elder has to confide in his blind daughter that the beasts are really a farce, thought up by the well-meaning elders to keep the people in the village living innocent, quiet lives. After she gets over her shock, the blind young woman is able to feel with her hands the hidden beast costume which was worn by one of the elders when a Beast Attack was warranted. I’m sure she was stunned to learn that her father and all the other elders had deceived them all for so long, but she was in a hurry to wander blindly through the woods by herself so she could get to “the towns” beyond and get some meds, so she didn’t have time to process all this fully right then.

Here comes a twist in the movie that’s not important enough for me to go into depth on, but while the elder’s blind daughter was feeling her way through the cold and terrifying woods alone, falling into muddy pits and being scraped by branches left and right, a young man from the village who had some mental problems had found the beast costume, put it on, and followed the blind girl.

Up until this point all we had seen of the beast was a skeletal hand that reached ominously from the red sleeve of a robe now and then, and even then it was just a glimpse. These woods scenes were dark and flashed quickly with terrifying loud and sudden sound effects to make the viewer startle and scream.

And finally we got a view of what the beast costume really looked like.

I’m not sure how to do it justice, but to me it looks like a giant porcupine who put on his red bathrobe too carelessly.

This was the beast costume the wise and loving elders of the village created, wore, and intermittently terrorized their people with, to keep them within the boundaries of the village, to keep them obedient and in line. And to keep them from wanting to go out into the world to explore.

At the end of the movie we learn that the village elders were modern men with their wives, who had moved to a modern day wildlife preserve after each of them had suffered trauma and tragedy in real 21st century living. They had decided to go back to a simpler, more peaceful way of life, and thought an enormous porcupine in a red hooded cape would help them achieve their ideals.

If I had known that donning a getup like the one pictured above would have assisted me in raising my children, in motivating them to be scrupulously obedient and to stay within all the parameters I had set for them, and would keep them out of the scary world, I think I might have worn it myself.

Anyway, if you have “The Village” in your Netflix queue, you might want to hit the button at the right of your queue that says, “remove.”  🙂

Tonight Michael and I might watch something else together. We have this and this sitting near the TV in their little red envelopes. I’m thinking about making Chicken Piccata with a fresh romaine and red onion salad for dinner.

Have you ever seen a movie you intensely disliked? Or one that was so silly and unbelievable you just rolled your eyes and wanted to play Words With Friends instead?

Which movie/s fell into this category for you?

I like blessings, especially Irish and Scottish blessings. You have probably read this old Irish blessing:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

I think there is great power in blessing too. Our words are more powerful than we think, and certainly God’s words are alive with such power we have nothing to compare them with. Volcanoes, hurricanes and supernovas are weak and puny things compared with God’s power.

We’ve sort of lost the practice and art of blessing in our culture, don’t you think? When was the last time someone pronounced a very intentional blessing over you? When was the last time we pronounced a very intentional blessing over our children?

I received a blessing not long ago that I love, and will keep in my nightstand always. It starts out like a familiar blessing, then ends with a tiny wry twist of humor, which made me smile hugely.

This is an English blessing, from a very lovely English woman:

May your days be contented and life send you happiness,
treats, security and peace…
As well as all the usual things like personal holiness,
absolute truth, flawless integrity, perfect charity
and a Really Good Bra.

~Penelope Wilcock

*         *         *         *         *         *

She hit the nail on the head for me, she really did. I need all of these things in the worst way.

Rub a dub dub,
Three men in a tub,
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick maker.
Turn them out, knaves all three.   (James Orchard Halliwell)

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I remember wanting to be an astronaut when I was about 10. I think I held onto that aspiration for about a month or so.

By the time I reached my teens I knew I should plan to go to college and get a degree, but deep down inside I really just wanted to be a wife and mother.

(Wait a minute while I go lock my doors before the feminist police hunt me down with their clubs…)

I also remember wanting to be a teacher or a nurse, and after graduating from high school I was enrolled in a local college’s RN program.

When I was in my thirties, aside from being a wife and a homeschooling mother, I sort of wanted to be three other things.

A midwife.

A mortician.

And a window painter.

I’ll talk about my midwife apprenticing another time…it was something I loved but eventually saw that it wasn’t meant to be.

I’ll talk about why I wanted to be a mortician another time too.

When I was in high school I was one of the student sign painters. Every football or basketball game, we always hung long banner-like signs with huge block letters that said inspiring directives like, “Go COLTS!” and “Tromp the Trojans!” and “Hammer the Huskies!” After a couple of years, I could pencil in the 2-foot high letters and have them painted in just a few minutes, and I liked doing it.

When I returned from living in Germany in the early 1980s, I got my first window painting job at a business in Orange County, California, painting a comic-like Christmas scene on their large front windows. I painted a long-nosed and cranky looking Ebenezer Scrooge with a top hat, a scarf wrapped around his neck and blowing in the wind, and he held two bulging bags of money in each hand. Snowflakes fell around him and above his hat in those huge, high-schoolish letters were the words “Merry Christmas.” A word bubble came from his mouth to show he was muttering, “Bah. Humbug.”

After Christmas I washed the paint off the windows as part of the window painting package, and thought about having business cards made up so I could have a little business on the side. I was an office supervisor for a large private investigating company back then. Thirty years ago it was quite common for seasonal themes to be painted on business windows, and some places also painted their sale advertisements on windows too. I don’t see that so much anymore.

Anyway, my window painting days were rather short-lived, because I was swept off my feet by a Minnesota man who asked me to marry him before we ever met. I said yes and moved to American Siberia in 1981, and was thankfully able to be a wife and a mother again for my vocation, having given up private investigating stuff and Southern California altogether.

A few years later when various friends had babies, I picked up my paintbrush again. Sometimes I painted a welcome sign or a birth announcement on their house windows, so something unique and memorable would be waiting for them when they arrived home after giving birth in the hospital.

Here is one example below. My good friend Bob King (who also worked for our local newspaper) took this photo of me as I was standing on a ladder and painting in pink and white, “Howdy Holly! Welcome!” on the front window of friends Sue and Dave’s house. Holly was their third child and first girl, and that was something to celebrate in a big way.

Holly is all grown up now, is married and has a little girl of her own, and I’m too old to climb ladders and paint windows anymore.

I don’t really want to be a midwife or a mortician at this age, either.

I like what I’m doing now, and am so thankful for my job. (Most of you know we are adult foster care providers in our home.)

How about you? When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Awhile back Michael had an all-day appointment at The Struthers Parkinson’s Center in the Minneapolis area. It had been a few years since he’d gone through the many hour-long appointments they schedule at an all-day assessment. Beginning at 9:00 a.m. and lasting until 3:30 p.m., he had appointments with a Speech Therapist, an Occupational Therapist, a Physical Therapist, a Nurse Practitioner, a Social Worker, and at the end of the day, his neurologist. They all specialize in Parkinson’s, so each professional is always compassionate and a fount of helpful information. The sessions can be intense because they fit all they can into the hour slots, but each time we’ve gone (during different stages of Michael’s PD journey), we’ve come back with something helpful to try.

Since Michael is a good-natured man, he’s willing to go to something like this, which is usually quite tiring and often not very heartening for him. He would rather watch the Minnesota Twins play baseball on TV, or pick up Schnauzer poop in the yard than concentrate on all the things Parkinson’s is doing to him.

So when we drive the few hours to Minneapolis for these appointments, we try to stay in a hotel, go out for a nice meal, see a sight or two. It would be too grueling to get up at 4:00 a.m., drive down, go through the many assessment appointments, and drive home in the dark.

This last trip I was feeling like we should stay in a place outside of our regular hotel box. I surfed around online and found a place in downtown Minneapolis called Le Meridien. It’s an artsy, hip, young and edgy sort of place — the very things we are not. That’s just the reason I booked a room (that and the incredible middle-of-the-week deal they had going), and told Michael we’d be trying something different with this trip.

We had also received two recent recommendations for a place we’d never tried — Punch Pizza. Punch Pizza happened to be down the street from our hotel, so voila! our evening was planned.

When we reached our hotel I scolded myself for not having read the fine print well enough — it cost $28 to park. Ahem. Oh well, we rolled with it and handed Jason our keys to the Highlander and pretended we did not look like Jed Clampett and Granny rolling their suitcase into the lobby. (I used to say Jethro and Elly May when I’d employ this witticism, but clearly Michael does not look like Jethro and not even a person with double cataracts would mistake me for Elly May).

I’m not sure how to describe our room. What would you say? Spartan? Minimalist? Modern? Plain?

The bed was divinely comfortable, which is all that really matters when you are over 55, which I almost am. In fact, I will be over 55 in 20 days, now that I think about it. Other things matter regarding hotel rooms too, like the absence of cockroaches, quietude, and a non-smoking room.

There was a huge television on a swiveling wall mount that was a bonus for a man who wanted to watch the Minnesota Twins that afternoon, who happened to be playing at the new Target Field, which was about one mile from where we lounged in the divinely comfortable bed.

There was also a television on the wall in the bathroom. This is a man thing. I don’t know any women who take so long in the bathroom that they need a television to help them pass the time. Do you? Do you think it’s a man thing? Are men just constipated because they don’t like their vegetables or what?

I thought the sink was photoworthy.

And the shower too.

We are early to bedders, early risers, and early diners. So we headed to Punch Pizza for an early dinner, ordered our personal pizzas and a salad each, walked over to our table to set our napkins and iced teas down when they man behind the counter shouted, “NUMBER 188! ORDER NUMBER 188!” Well, our number was 188 and it hadn’t been three minutes since we’d ordered it. Sara told us the pizza there is baked at over 1000 degrees in a huge, hive-shaped brick oven, but I had no idea it would be so fast. I suppose in our internet age, people want things now. But having our pizzas ready before we could walk across the room? Hmmm.

The pizza was fantastic, my Walnut-Gorgonzola Salad unique and delicious, and Michael was ready for a nap. He knew he had about a hundred people to see the next day at Struthers, so we returned to our hotel.

I’ve been looking for some art to hang above the new mantel over our new fireplace in our new dining room in our new house. Do you think something like this should be considered? Does this canvas in the hotel lobby vibe Juliejuliejulie or Michaelmichaelmichael to you?

I’m not sure that we’ll stay at the Le Meridien again, but it was a fine experience. I think we might try Punch Pizza again someday, but maybe we’ll sit down in our booth for a while before we order so we can not have a conversation but look into each others’ eyes and smile knowingly, which is what we do a lot across dinner tables these days.

What do you look for in a hotel?

What are some of your favorite places to dine?

…..make it this:

How To Really Live

*       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

Yes!

All summer long we haven’t seen a fruit fly, until this week. I try to be careful about our fruit because I know all it takes is one bunch of bananas with the right hitchhikers on them and in no time those little brown flies will be taking over the kitchen.

I saw the first fruit fly a couple of days ago, and immediately wrapped up all the fruit. Some of it stayed out and some went in the fridge, but all of it was washed and/or wrapped. The fruit bowl was washed and dried before returning the (wrapped) fruit to it.

I was able to swat a fly or two that first day, but yesterday I saw at least five buzzing around. Sara noticed that I had my head down on the counter weeping (well, not quite), and she trotted off to the computer for a few minutes, then returned with a remedy she’d found.

“Put a small glass or bowl of apple cider vinegar out on the counter,” she instructed, “and add a few drops of dishwashing liquid to it. It should attract the flies and kill them.”

I am sorry that I’m admitting to killing flies in such a cruel way, for those of you who ponder such things. I would have preferred their quick demises with a merciful swat, but that wasn’t working for me. I did what Sara suggested, and within two minutes the first fly had succumbed.

Michael and I went grocery shopping and when we returned an hour and a half later, there were at least 10 fruit flies at the bottom of the little bowl with apple cider vinegar and Dawn dishwashing liquid in it.

I put out a fresh batch last night before I went to bed and lo, this morning there are none in the dish. The fruit flies are gone.

Perhaps all of you already know this information. I might be decades behind in the household hints department and 8 out of 10 homes in America (and England and Australia and Canada and Switzerland and Ireland) have already been employing this method for battling fruit flies for years now.

But just in case you have a fruit fly or two and you hadn’t heard of this strategy, I thought I would pass it on. There’s a teeny part of me that feels bad for the kind of end the flies are meeting in my home, but oh well.

The Georgia peaches, Pink Lady apples, Anjou pears and the Hawaiian bananas and pineapples take priority.

How do you deal with fruit flies?

A few nights ago Michael and I apparently had a short conversation while I was sleeping. He told me the next morning what had happened and I couldn’t remember one bit of it, not even the shadow of a dream I might have had. 

Michael said that in the middle of the night he woke up to me next to him saying whispery and plaintively (he didn’t use those adjectives, but he did an impression of me and they apply), “Jesus…. Jeeesus…. Jeeesus…. Jesus.” He saw that I was sound asleep as I was quietly pleading the Savior’s name over and over.

Instead of waking me up and asking me to turn over because I was having a dream (which is what I would probably have done to him), he listened for a while. Then, when I paused, Michael said to me slowly and soothingly (and he demonstrated how he spoke), “Just call upon His name.”

“I said the name of Jesus over and over in a wispy, earnest voice?” I asked, a bit incredulous.

“Yes,” he replied.

“And you listened for a while and then answered me?”

“Yes.”

“Then what happened?” I asked him.

“Nothing. You stopped and I think I went back to sleep.”

Being married to a Parkinson’s patient with profound speech difficulties isn’t always easy. But evidently the Lord is helping us to have short but very meaningful conversations in the middle of the night.

Blessings on you all today,

“He is the happiest, be king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.”

~~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

For the last eleven years, save one, I’ve held a summer Bible study in my home. This year we’re studying the book of James, and we’re also learning about the man who wrote the epistle that bears his name, James, the half-brother of Jesus.

Every week has been a blessing. Every day of study a welcome challenge. My life needs confronting, and I would rather be confronted by the velvet hammer of scripture than by the wreckage of a rebellious or selfish life gone unchecked.

A few weeks ago, part of the day’s assignment in our workbooks was to presently consider “What are you going to do with all you’re going through?” 

The passage in James we were studying that week was at the very beginning of the book, where he commands,

Count it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.  (James 1:2-4)

And here’s how The Message Bible gives us the words of James 1:2-4:

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

We were to honestly record something difficult we’re going through in our lives right now. (Guess what? Every woman in my living room could think of something; I don’t know anyone who isn’t going through a hard situation, do you?) Then, we were asked to write down three ways we could respond to that difficulty. One of the responses we were encouraged to seriously consider is James’ admonition above, to count it all joy when we face our trials, knowing that this kind of attitude would always bring good fruit in our lives even in the midst of our struggles.

I have more than a few difficulties in my life. They may not be World Class Difficulties, like paralysis, bankruptcy, drug addiction — heart breakers like that. But they are still my own troubles, and some days they seem a tad much. I know you can relate. You may be wondering how you’re going to pay your mortgage in September, what is going to happen with your health, or if your husband is being completely faithful. Your mind might wander into the quicksand of thoughts like this: is this all I have to look forward to for the rest of my life?…how in the world are we going to pay for this?…will my heart ever heal from that horrible betrayal?…and just fill in your own toxic blank in your mind. If we play these words in our head over and over and over, these kinds of thoughts never help. Never.

The challenge in my life I chose to ponder is my husband Michael’s Parkinson’s disease, and the way it increasingly affects our everyday lives. The way it has slowly robbed him of pieces of his personality, his physical strength, his ability to do things automatically, to figure out simple things like the TV remote or a cell phone, or to make decisions. The way it has stolen his clear speech and our ability to communicate well as a couple.

“So, what are you going to do with all you’re going through?” 

We were asked to consider three possible responses, even if they’re choices we know we’d never make.  I wrote:

1. Walk away.

2. Stay, and be selfish and crabby.

3. Consider it all joy as I walk out this life, knowing God is developing perseverance in me, and eventually, maturity.

Next, we were asked to consider the fruit of these three choices, what we believed would be the five-year ramifications for each of these courses of action.

I sat on my bed as I quietly looked ahead in my mind, five years down the road. In five years I will be almost sixty years old. I know that our lives hold no guarantees and that I might not live another five years, but for the sake of this part of the study, we were asked to look at what kind of fruit would come from the three different kinds of seeds we could potentially sow each day.

And to say that a light bulb came on over my head would be too much of an understatement. It was more like the large window near my bed suddenly flew open and the sun streamed in and a fresh wind blew over me, and I could see.

Here’s what I wrote that the fruit of my possible choices could be, five years down the road:

1. Devastation for my husband, alienation from my family, no peace for me. (If you know me, you know that this choice would never be my choice. I love my husband and made a vow to him and to God. Not in a million years would I choose this kind of destructive path. But I wanted to look at it, because it is a viable choice, and many people make it. If I decided things were just too hard and I wanted to leave to do things I wanted to do, it’s clear to me that many people would be crushed, not to mention what this would do to my own soul.) This choice would bring rotten, maggot-infested fruit that would nourish no one.

2. Wasted years with many regrets. If I choose #2 above, staying where I am and being selfish and crabby, at the end of five years, what do I have? A desert of waste and regret. A barren, squandered life. That’s the kind of landscape I saw ahead of me as I sat and pondered all of this.

If you asked my family, I don’t think they would say that I’m frequently selfish and crabby. But a woman knows her own heart, and there are some days when my clipped responses and my quiet sighs and my stares that silently say seriously? are we going to go through this again today? you’re kidding me, right? are fueled by selfishness and crabbiness. And I’m pretty sure that pride is at the bottom of all of it. Because it would be pride that would make me think I shouldn’t have to do this day in and day out. It would be pride that would help me choose impatient sighs instead of loving affirmations. It would be pride that would even introduce the niggling thought that whispers, this isn’t making me happy.

But so what? So it’s hard, so each day doesn’t find me skipping down a lovely garden path tra-la-la-ing? I still have a choice, and the choices I make each hour end up forming a day. And the days end up forming a lifetime. And at the end of my lifetime, much less at the end of five years, I don’t want to be filled with regret. Do you?

3. Beauty, peace, exhaustion, joy. This is what I saw as I surveyed my life ahead, if I take James seriously and count it all joy. If I remind myself thirty-seven times a day that this all means something, that a good hidden work is being done, and I can trust God in this. If I thank Him for all these things, and write them down in my gratitude journal. If I take it seriously that Jesus wants me to treat everyone kindly and show His love. Counting it all joy doesn’t mean there won’t be exhaustion and really hard and disappointing times. But as clearly as I can see the words on this computer screen, I could see that this choice would bring beauty. Peace. Joy. And possibly some other good fruits. 🙂

So that means that if we know what we should do, we just do it, right? I wish it were that easy. So did the apostle Paul. Some of you very good-natured, easy-going and patient people are already consistently choosing Five Year Plan #3. And the gorgeous fruits are already weighing down the branches of your life. But some of us have been born into families where pride and selfishness seem to be produced in the marrow of our bones. It’s so much a part of us we can’t get free of it. I know of no other solution for people like me than to put my face down before God (the floor is good, but a pillow or even the arm of a chair will do) and tell Him I know. I agree. I need your help. I need your power, your perspective, your mercy, your everything. And then submit myself to Him and walk out the next few minutes trusting that He has answered, whether lightning flashed when I prayed or not.

I think Anne Lamott’s prayer advice applies beautifully here. As I go through my day and cry out to God “Help me help me!” or “Thank you thank you!” somehow He does, and I can be grateful. And how wonderful it is when night falls and I can see that He has kept me on the #3 Five-Year Plan today. I might stumble back onto the #2 plan tomorrow, but God has a way of setting us on the right path again when we humbly ask Him to do this, even several times a day.

I’m off now, to get dressed, to clean the kitchen, and to pick up my sweet granddaughter Mrs. Nisky. She and I have a special day planned, to celebrate her recent 8th birthday. We’re going out to lunch, to a movie, and on The Timber Twister, and I can’t wait to spend time with her.

Thank you for stopping by today, friends. As I close, I hope you don’t mind that I’ll repeat the question our James study asked the twelve women in our group to consider (and perhaps some friends from our James study might want to comment about this too?):

So, what are you going to do with all you’re going through?

May Jesus give us all the grace and strength to choose the most fruitful, beautiful, live-giving paths…