God With Us

If we could condense all the truths of Christmas into only three words, these would be the words: “God with us.” We tend to focus our attention at Christmas on the infancy of Christ. The greater truth of the holiday is His deity. More astonishing than a Baby in the manger is the truth that this promised Baby is the omnipotent Creator of the heavens and the earth!

~ John F. MacArthur, Jr.


If we could condense all the truths of Christmas into only three words, these would be the words: "God with us." I thought that was worth repeating.

Many of us have heard the saying "it's not about religion, it's about relationship" - in fact many of us have said these very words when we are trying to share our faith with others, especially when we hear people say "I believe in God, but I think religions/churches are all messed up".

"God with us" emphasizes the relationship aspect, particularly the part where God initiates a relationship with us, He seeks us, He goes even so far to come to earth as one of us, and not as we would expect - not coming to earth in all his flashing Glory to make us tremble in awe. But He instead He came to earth as a newborn baby, the most helpless state of human being. "The Word became flesh and lived among us." (John 1:14) He wanted to share with us in our human experience, through each stage of growth and experience. So He can relate to us. And we can also relate to Him who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, our temptations, our pains, even our tears - because He experienced them all, too.

I'm not sure if you can have any sort of real relationship with another being if you can't relate to them on some level. We all desire to connect to each other in some way. We want to tell someone our experience and have them say "Oh, yes! I understand! I had something like that happen to me too!"

I believe the closest relationships are the ones where we relate to each other the most. Parents and children, because they spend so much of their lives together. They have so much history, so many shared experiences. Even most rebellious teens, once they mellow with age a little, start to realize they have a lot they can relate to with their parents.

Now husbands and wives, this is a very interesting relationship because it starts later in life, and initially one might find a few things (mainly, hormones!) that you relate to each other on; but you also discover a myriad of things about each other that you don't relate to at all! But you stick with your mate - sometimes only because you made vows and the vows are the only thing keeping you together. But gradually, because you are with each other, more common experiences accumulate that glue you closer together. And one day you wake up and find out that your love for your husband is much, much stronger than it was when you were married. What you thought was love, back then, has deepened into something strong and refined and beautiful, tested by and strengthened by trials.

"God with us" is kind of like the parent/child relationship, and the husband/wife relationship, and the friend/friend relationship, all wrapped up in one, with an additional element that we have no earthly comparison to because God is, after all, God, an infinite and omniscient and glorious being. His ways are above our ways. He is King of Kings, Lord of Lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see (1 Timothy 6:15-16).

On a personal note, I'm so glad I came across this quote and took the time to ponder it, because everything else about December so far has felt rushed and stressed. I am not used to having to work so much this time of year, or having looming deadlines. I'd like to take time to trim my tree, string lights outside, bake cookies with the girls, unearth a few more Christmas CD's to play. But this has made me sit back and concentrate on the MOST important thing. Thank you Lord.

The quote from John McArthur was chosen by the writer of Scraps and Snippets blog. Each Friday a new quote is shared on http://writingcanvas.wordpress.com/, along with the host site for the week. Anyone wanting to participate can ponder on the quote and write about about it on their blog, then link your post to the host blog.

The twins' third birthday

It's B's 39th birthday today (for the next two months we are the same age). The twins just turned three yesterday and they didn't "Get it" at all - not even when Linda gave them a couple presents to open. I kept asking them "How old are you?" and I got various responses, sometimes my question asked back at me, sometimes gibberish. I had to prompt them to say "Three!" But tonight we had cake with candles at Grandma and Grandpa H's, and they certainly "got" the candle part - they were so excited they started blowing out the candles before Mom had got all six of them lighted (they each got three candles, but one cake). And they sure had a good grasp that the giant toy horse that Mom dragged out for them belonged to them, too! These pictures don't do the size of this horse justice - it's truly the size of a real live Shetland pony. The twins and Dreamer  can't even climb up on it without help!


I am thankful for... my family. B kissed me goodbye this morning and said, "I love you so much. Do you know how much I love you?" I visited Blaze and Dreamer for lunch today at school and they both insisted on giving me multiple kisses and hugs. Tonight we had a yummy dinner with my parents. I was hoping to see my father smile, at least once, and the ultimate, to get him to laugh. him. I did hear something that almost resembled a laugh from him at Thanksgiving. We had Nicole and her parents, Stan and Carol, over to join us for Thanksgiving. As I was introducing them to my parents, my father and Stan discovered that they both liked to introduce their wives as "my first wife" (just to confound people... they are both still married to their first wives!) Anyway my father definitely smiled at that and sort of laughed. Well, tonight I not only got multiple smiles out of my Dad (especially when Mom brought out the giant pony and the kids went crazy over it), but I heard a real genuine laugh from him. Mom had got a few birthday noise-maker toys, you know the kind that you blow on them and they roll out and make a funny noise. Well, the twins didn't get out to make things work at first, so B. was demonstrating. As B. took a deep breath and popped the paper out with its noise right in Annie's face, she jumped so far back with such a look of alarm - immediately followed by a grin and a giggle - that got my Dad laughing, too! (In fact, I'd say he was almost back to his old self tonight. He even talked quite a bit, and didn't fall asleep on us once!)

A few other random mentions from the past week:

I am going... to have a wonderful weekend going to Christmas tree auctions with the kids and a Christmas concert with my mom. I am also going to be up very late at night getting ready for a big training session next week in Pinedale. And grading final projects. And working on the Advent Calendar for Karen. 'Tis the season for extreme busyness. Lord, help me to stay close to you even in the midst of everything that needs to get done.

I am reading... I had a small break between the end of November and getting my 50,000 words finished for NaNoWriMo, and the final craziness of the end of the semester, so I just finished reading a fun book called "Girl At Sea" by Maureen Johnson - a young adult book (Stars and I went to the library while she was here over Thanksgiving and I never got past the young adult section to get to the adult section). This book had a nice mix of humor, mystery, beautiful places in Italy, romance, and - a nice surprise - very high quality writing. I hope to write a book like this some day! It's only detraction - it wasn't Christian.

I am hoping and praying... that Stars' granny wins her struggle with cancer. I have several other important prayers too that are too private to share on a blog. But you know what they are Lord. Thank you for the amazing conversation I had with Stars  while she was here!

I am learning... that teaching is a lot harder than I thought. I have lots of teaching experience; but teaching University students it a lot different than teaching short "canned" classes to professionals. There is a lot more ground to cover; a lot more complicated subject material; a lot less direct interaction with the students (I had TA's teaching the labs) and the part that I found most confounding of all - test questions are REALLY hard to write! Getting the wording right is crucial.

On my mind... the reponse I want to write to a couple comments I got on my earlier post Why Tolerance Isn't Enough

Pondering these words... A quote that Nicole sent me, by a J.R. Miller:

"We dread pain! And yet the person who has not experienced pain has notyet touched the deepest and most precious meanings of life. There are things we can never learn except in the school of pain. There are heights of life we can never attain, except in the bitterness of sorrow. There are joys we can never have until we have walked in the dark ways of sorrow. Not to have sorrow, in some form, is to miss on of life's holiest opportunities. We get our best things out of afflication. I have refined you in the furnace of suffering. Isaiah 48:10

about 85% done

I have my third NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) behind me, and my second win. My second novel has reached 100,000 words - roughly 300 pages - that's the good news. The bad news is: it's still not done! I estimate I'm about 85% there. The conclusion is still looming ahead of me... But hold on, that's not all bad news. The main thing is that I am past the Middle (see below for an account of the horrors of the Middle).

Lesson learned from NaNoWriMo this year: writing the second half of a book is actually quite a bit easier than the first half. The characters have already developed minds of their own, and you've created enough sub-plots to keep your creative juices flowing. In fact, in my case, probably TOO MANY subplots, judging by the length. I hate the thought of having to cut anything, but it's a necessary process.

Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ~Colette

So the following is one of the motivational emails that NaNoWriMo sends out from published authors (I just checked out a book from the library by this gal. Now that it's December, I have time to read again!)

Dear writer,
I have a very good friend who is Australian. I've never been to Australia, so she is constantly selling me on the merits of her homeland and setting me straight on things. For example, I have always wanted hold a koala. She informs me that koalas smell and spread disease. What I want instead, she informs me, are flying foxes, sugar bananas, rainbow lorikeets, mangosteens, and Sydney sunrises. One thing that always impresses me in her descriptions is just how large Australia is—and how empty in the middle. Australia is comparable in size to the continental United States, but almost everyone lives on the coast. So it would be like having Los Angles, and then New York, with almost nothing in between. Nothing except for monsters, that is. Because almost everything that lives out there in the middle of nowhere can kill you. 97% of the snakes in Australia are poisonous. The spiders are the size of washing machines, but it's the tiny ones you have to watch for. It's all teeth and venom out there. So just put a huge "here be dragons" in the middle of your mental map and you'll have a pretty good picture of Australia. The cities are said to be wonderful—paradises of culture and wine and song. It's just that middle 2,000 miles that you have to watch out for.

Perhaps this rings a bell right about now, smack in the middle of NaNoWriMo?Those first few days with your idea... oh, how wonderful they are! How sweetly it goes! And you wander on, past the city limits, into the bush. The signposts disappear, and the creatures come out. You have wandered into The Middle. Thing is, writers spend something like 97% of their time in The Middle. Once you leave those first pages, those first days... you wander into strange land and you stay there for a long, long time. It took me a little while, probably a few years of full-time writing, to fully accept that that middle bit was where I was going to be spending pretty much all of my time. This is the thing they don't tell you. When you see portrayals of writers on television or in movies, what are they normally doing? They're sipping coffee or cocktails, or jetting around to signings, or solving murders for fun. Lies! I mean, these things do happen, but those are the coastal bits. Most of the time we are deep inland—sitting at home, or at the office, or some shed or underground bunker. We eat what we find and slurp coffee from anything that is sturdier than coffee. Often, we are inappropriately dressed for any human interaction. This is because we are in the middle. And in the middle, things are rough. You make bargains with yourself like, "If I finish this chapter, I can have a shower!" Or, "If I just get this paragraph right, I can eat those stale Oreos!"Now, I realize in saying this that perhaps I am not selling you on the writing experience. I'm supposed to be cheering you on! You already know that the middle is a hard place to be. Perhaps right about now you are asking yourself, "What, precisely, is wrong with me? Why did I decide that the best way to spend the month of November would be indoors, strapped to a chair, writing thousands of words a day, alone, friendless, and insane? Why didn't I just agree to come to my desk every day, bang my head on it for a solid ten minutes, and be done with it? That would have been so much faster."

Here’s the thing, though...if you're doing NaNoWriMo, you are a reader, because all writers are readers. Which means that you must admire many authors. Your shelves are lined with the works of your heroes and sheroes. Every single one of them has crossed the wild country where you are now. Every single one of them has been a resident of The Middle. The ground you're treading is full of the remains of their old campsites. And somewhere around you, just out of sight, current authors you admire are making their own way across The Middle. What's nice about NaNoWriMo is that you are traveling with a posse of thousands, all of you making your way over the mountains, through the valleys, across the creeks. You are fighting off the beasties.
And once you've crossed The Middle once or twice and you're lounging on the other side, you'll find you miss it. You'll realize you long to be out there again, under the sky and the stars. The weather changes a lot in the middle. Some days, the skies are dark and it's hard to find your way forward. Those days are long and little progress is made. Some days, it's strangely bright and clear, and suddenly you can see the horizon ahead, and dozens of possible paths present themselves to you. But every day is different, and every day there is a new way to go and a new thing to see. You will be hooked.
-Maureen Johnson

NaNoWriMo 2009

I wasn't planning on posting anything in November, since I usually cut out all non-essential activities in order to make sure I reach the minumum daily word count for NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org/). But things went really well today, over 3000 words - I have reached the half-way mark (25,000 words) a day early. Cruising along through the second half of the novel I got started with last year. The plot is starting to come together, I think that's why I've been able to make such good progress.

It didn't start out very well, though. Last year I was really mentally prepared for starting NaNo. I was eager to start my second novel, and really eager to win, after falling short the previous year.

This year, I did absolutely no preparation. My attitude was completely different. I already had a win under my belt; I was feeling completely overwhelmed with teaching; I hadn't touched this story at all in the past year, except just to share excerpts of it at writer's group. I figured that I would participate in NaNoWriMo this year just for the extra motivation it would give to start working on the story again. I didn't really expect to do a lot with it.

The first night I managed to crank out 1200 words, but it was slow going (especially since I had to prepare Monday's lecture first, which took until midnight. Didn't get started writing until after midnight, by 1:30 am too sleepy to get any more words out. The next night I was even sleepier - because of course not getting sleep the night before. After I got the kids to bed, I sat in the recliner with my laptop on my lap - and promptly dozed off. I didn't get a single word written. Already 2000 words behind. Not a very good beginning. The third night wasn't much better. I got a few hundred words down, but it was painful. One of those nights when you write a single paragraph and you feel mentally exhausted.

However, the fourth night was a "write-in" - a gathering of at least 7 or 8 other local Laramie writers participating in NaNoWriMo. At my favorite writing place, too, Coal Creek Coffee House. I couldn't resist that. So I showed up and met each of the ladies (no men). I was encouraged by their enthusiasm (not to mention that delicious quiche and caramel steamers are a wonderful addition to the overall writing atmosphere and mental attitude). Managed to get as far as 4000 words, still a long way behind, but at least the words were starting flow easier. I was starting to get back into the book. The characters were becoming familiar again, and new ideas started to generate themselves.

I got caught up with the word count by the weekend, and I've really enjoyed writing this week, everything is still coming really easily. However, I know from two years of experience now that the last two weeks are harder than the first two weeks. The "rush" you get from taking off wears off. There is still the very real potential that I could get sick, like I did in the last week of NaNo 2007, and gave up at that point (H1N1 flu is running rampant in Laramie. B has already had and three of the girls. I'm amazed I haven't got it yet).

I still have hope though. For one thing, the class is getting a lot easier - I only have four lectures left to prepare for and I can put off the major part of grading, the final project, until December. Then again, Stars is coming for a week (Nov 21-28), and we are also hosting a missionary family at our house for five days.

One problem with the past week or so, as the writing has been coming really easily, is that I'm not taking the time to pray before I write like I did last year. I am keeping up with my Bible read-through, but my prayer life is scanty. I am making a resolution as of today not to let that continue. I want every word written in this book to be blessed by God. Besides, I doubt I have any chance of winning - getting through the next two busy weeks on track - if I don't have the strength of prayer behind me.

I discovered a new tool that may help me get through the challenges of the last week. "Write Or Die" (http://writeordie.drwicked.com/) - a web site where you set a goal: either a word count or a time goal. You then select the most effective punishment mode for you. The modes are Gentle, Normal and Kamikaze. Until you reach your goal, you will be punished when you stop writing. When you click the Write! button you are presented with a blank text box on a white screen (simplicity is key to the banishment of distraction). Start typing away. When you stop, the consequences kick in. In Gentle mode, a text box pops up and gives you a mom-like reminder to keep writing. If you get distracted in Normal mode, you will be played a Most Unpleasant Sound, in a loop, until you start writing again. If you stop writing in Kamikaze mode, my mode of choice, your screen will fade to red and then your work will start To Unwrite Itself. It will delete one word per second until you start writing again. Once you've reached your goal, you copy and paste your text into your main document.

I tried it, and I wasn't imressed with Gentle or Normal mode. But once I switched to Kamikaze mode, and I saw my words start to disappear if I didn't keep typing, it switched me into a whole new motivational level.

I also discovered this interesting post from the blog by the inventor of "Write Or Die" (who calls himself Dr Wicked). I am including the entire post here, because over time links can get broken, and this is interesting enough that I want to keep it.

Ritual vs Habit
"I am a brain, Watson, the rest of me is a mere appendix"
Those are, as you may have guessed, the words of Sherlock Holmes. To provide some context, in the story The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone, Watson and Holmes's landlady are increasingly concerned about Holmes because he refuses to eat until he solves the case. "What one's digestion gains in the way of blood supply is so much lost to the brain."

I am not advocating an eating disorder in pursuit of your creative craft, but there is truth to what Holmes says. This is the second Monday in my "Monday is creative day" regime and so far it's working splendidly (I know it's only been a week, but optimism is essential). Think about your day, think about when it really starts. For me personally I feel like the day picks up speed as soon as I have breakfast and does not slow down until late at night. This may not be true for everyone, but I would suggest to you that you pinpoint when your day starts and try to get and make your writing time your own.

What we're aiming for is a writing ritual, not necessarily a writing habit. Rituals are a lot easier to start and maintain than habits, which is why they're employed in some form by every religion on earth. Let's take a look at the word habit: the involuntary tendency or aptitude to perform certain actions which is acquired by their frequent repetition.

This would be a very nice thing to have, I would like to get to the point where I write so consistently that it is second nature. I would like this to stop just short of hypergraphia, which would be interesting but also terrifying. On the other hand... the definiton of "ritual" is any customary observance or practice; the prescribed procedure for conduct.

This seems well within our reach. We use rituals to develop behaviours which can turn into habits. We can't aim directly for the habit or we will fail. Only bad habits are easy to acquire.
So when we choose, for example, to abstain from food until we have written, we lend the writing act a significance it might not otherwise have. We also sanctify (literally: to set apart) that period of time, recognizing it, consciously and subconsciously, as important.

I encourage you this week to set apart some time for writing. As always, write whenever you can, on the back of a napkin, in the margins of your newspaper, but also find your own ritual to build walls around your writing time. Perhaps in building your ritual you will acquire the writing habit, but either way, you'll get more writing done.

Why tolerance isn't enough

I send this blog out as a challenge. I contend that promoting secular tolerance to achieve world peace - or even just local peace - will not succeed.

The following is a quote that I'm sure many people would agree with:

"I am heartily sick of the type of religion that insists my soul (and everyone else's) needs saving - whatever that means. I have never felt that I was lost. Nor do I feel that I daily wallow in the mire of sin, although repititive preaching insists that I do. Give me a practical religion that teaches gentleness and tolerance, that acknowledges no barriers of color or creed, that remembers the aged and teaches children of goodness, not sin."

It would seem that what the world wants is ethics, not religious truth. It wants tolerance preached, not salvation.

Okay, here is what (I think) would happen, if you replaced religion with ethics, and salvation with tolerance.

Everyone says tolerance is a good thing; we can't fathom why people in some some extremist religions are intolerant of other races or religions. Here's the problem: tolerance only works as long as no one gets hurt. Most of us Americans, who have never experienced someone else of a different nationality, race or religion suddenly appearing and threatening our lives or our livelihood, can sit in our relative safety and prosperity and scratch our heads and wonder why other people just can't be tolerant. But suppose your neighbor down the street suddenly starts harrassing you, threatening you. Telling you that you have to move out of the neighborhood because, say, you voted for someone in the last election that he doesn't approve of. You stand firm. Then, one of your kids gets beat within an inch of his life by the neighbor's kids. How tolerant are you, at this point? Look at the long-standing enmity between the Israelis and the Palestineans. They both claim the same land as their homeland, and over the years there has been too much bloodshed over "the neighborhood" for them to risk "tolerance" anymore.

Now, consider ethics. Ethics is basically the study of morality, or the study of what makes actions right and wrong. It can be pretty much summed up in the Golden Rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or as its put in the quote above, "gentleness and tolerance." Even people who disdain the Bible and the Christian worldview will usually acknowledge that the Golden Rule (straight out of the Bible) is very wise.

The problem is, no one keeps the Golden Rule very well. We may try, yes. Everyone has been hurt by someone else at some point, and has reacted by being hurtful in return. Since human beings aren't very successful at keeping this one over-arching rule, what we devised instead is a whole series of rules and clauses for dealing with different circumstances. For instance, the issue of abortion. If you applied the Golden Rule to this, we wouldn't kill unborn babies because we wouldn't want someone to come along and kill us because we weren't wanted or we happened to show up at the wrong time or too soon or under difficult circumstances in someone else's life. But the Golden Rule is very difficult - especially, say, for a fifteen year old girl that gets pregnant after her boyfriend got her drunk and date-raped her. So we create a new rule for girls in that situation, that it's okay to get an abortion. Well then other people will argue, but what about my circumstances? Shouldn't I be allowed an abortion too, because of this, or that? More rules. Or, a new rule that says that unborn babies aren't really babies with human rights until they are born, or until the third trimester maybe.

So ethics holds up fairly well if you don't mind having to deal with hundreds, or thousands of rules. And if you don't like an exisiting rule because it doesn't benefit your particular sitaution, you can hire a lawyer and fight the rule, or march and protest to hopefully enact change. A lot of religions are also very rule-based, but here's an interesting point: it's the very rule-based religions that are generally called the "organized religions" that so many people are really disgusted with because of rampant hypocrisy not to mention terrible historical events like the Crusades, the Inquistion, and all the bloodshed that occurred following the Reformation.

So if tolerance only works when one one gets hurt, and ethics only works if we burden ourselves with endless rules and laws, why do so many people still hate the thought of the alternative: which is a religion that preaches the need for salvation?

Because it means admitting that we're flawed. That we are lost and in need of a Savior. That we can't operate on our best level or even on a consistently good level without God. The Golden Rule wasn't designed to operate alone: it is the second of two commandments, and the first one is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength". The two rules weren't meant to operate separate from each other. To love your neighbor as yourself (or do unto others as you have them do unto you) you need to first have that deep love relationship with God empowering you to love others, to be able to forgive them even when they hurt you instead of inflicting hurt back at them.

What would it take to bring peace between two nationalities or culture or races or religions that have been at war with each other for decades? Suppose an Palestinean and an Israeli find themselves in a burning building. The Israeli passes out. The Palestinean is almost out of the building, but he goes back and rescues the Israeli, even though it means he gets so badly burnt that he ends up dying. How do you think the Israeli and his family would view Palistineans after this event? The long-standing fear and distrust and hatred would finally be broken. It might just be in one family, but a noble sacrifice has won peace.

The same religion that gave us the Golden Rule, also gave us the only means by which humans can truly live out the Golden rule: Jesus died for us, to rescue us from the burning flames, to set us free, to show us the way to peace.

Here are some other challenges I've made. I love hearing responses and I'm always open to discussion.


Worldviews part 1: the truth is we need help

Worldviews part 2: What about suffering?

Some thoughts on Avatar and why it is so appealing

lemons and lemonade, or, when it's all right to add sugar to your diet

Life has thrown us a real lemon - B.'s truck broke down and he found out that it will cost about $3000 to get it fixed. Ah, just when he finally has some good work for his business, and we were FINALLY going to get caught up on our past-dues, then this has to happen!

Okay, going to try to make lemonade out of this. Praise: at least B. has good work for his business right now, which means we can get the truck fixed, eventually. Praise: in the meantime, a friend of his has let him borrow a truck. Pretty much indefinitely. Praise: a lot less sugar in my diet these days, because I'm using so much of it to make lemonade out of these lemons!

No, the real reason why there is less sugar: a couple weeks ago when it occurred to me that in less than 4 months I was going to turn forty, I decided that turning 40 would be ever so much easier to take if I could shed some weight before the dreaded date. It would be really nice to start my fifth decade in life feeling better about myself phyiscally. So I asked my Mom if she would like to join WeightWatchers with me. Yes, its $40 a month, OUCH! However, the twins are completley potty trained now (another Praise!), which means I'm saving $40 a month in diapers. I was surprised, but Mom agreed.

I haven't really learned anything new at the meetings, and it does feel a little corny clapping everytime someone shares a success, but the bottomline is: it's very motivational. I already know the basic guidelines of eating healthy - lower your fat and sugar intake - five servings a day or fruit or veggies - lean meat and whole grains. However, I am more motivated now to eat a half a cup of berries and nofat yogurt instead of snacking from the vending machine. Also motivated to try some new recipes, and in general spending more time preparing food and cooking, instead of frequently choosing fast (and less healthy) meals.

I was not too sure about writing down everything you eat and calculating points (which can be time-consuming), but I decided to try it for a week, at least. It seems like it would be a lot easier just to go by the principles of hunger and fullness like I always have before. But one advantage to looking up points for everything and writing it down is that it does make me think before I eat instead of just mindlessly grabbing something. The WeightWatchers forms have little checkboxes for everything: did you take a multi-vitamin? Did you get at least 2 dairy servings a day? and how many servings of fruits/veggies? a checkbox for exercise, too (I am exercising more... leaving work a half hour early to go for a quick walk before picking up the girls). Anyway, this week (I'm on my second week now, lost 2.8 pounds my first week), I decided to add a checkbox to the form for "checking in with God" too, because I do still believe firmly in the that the more you involve God in your daily walk, the less food will have a hold on you (food is definitely an "idol" in my life).

Wow, I just read Beth Moore's most recent blog after finishing mine, and it seemed providentially in line with what I have just been writing about: not letting little temptations get the mastery over you: Like slaves in search of little masters.

tearful and beautiful

First, the tearful moment:
A friend posted this picture on Facebook and it yanked at my heart-strings, so-to-speak. The friend's husband is in Iraq; they have three small children. My husband's nephew is away for a five month stint on a Navy boat; he has two little ones. Another dear friend has a husband in Afghanistan for over a year; they have two small children. My heart and prayers go out to them.

I do believe in the necessity of having our troops fighting for the freedom and human rights of people in less fortunate countries than our own, but let us never forget the price we must pay for this blessed freedom. (Nor forget the price Christ paid for our ultimate freedom).


The picture also reminded me of when we were in the Spokane airport (2004, arriving for a visit to Stars' home) when a young woman came hurtling past me and threw herself into an incoming soldier's arms. While they embraced, everyone in the airport clapped. A moment I will never forget.


Less poignant, but no less beautiful: a few times a year God sends a sunset that takes my breath away. You'd think after a while that there just can't be any more variations on sunsets. A beautiful sunset still makes me stop and stare even if I saw one just like it the night before. But I don't think I've ever seen one with quite this mix of colors and textures.



Of course this picture doesn't do it justice - my camera is cheap, and the colors were already starting to fade by the time I got my camera. I was afraid if I tried to find a better "frame" (rather than our round pen and the neighbor's truck in the foregound) I'd lose the colors altogether.

The interesting thing about this view of the susnet is that I took it facing east. (I never knew you could have a 360 degree sunset effect until I moved to Wyoming). It's also hard to see in this picture, but the clouds had "virga" effect - virga is a meteorologic term for precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before reaching the ground, common in desert or dry areas. We occasionally see it here on the Wyoming plains - a curtain of rain that never touches the ground. This is the first time I saw it with sunset colors though, and in particular these very unsual, sort of berry or plum-colored sunset colors. We tend to get very peach and orange-colored sunsets here, which you see in this west-facing photo of the same sunset. You can see how dark the clouds are, almost stormy looking. Besides being dramatic, dark clouds also sometime produce what I call the "golden moment" effect. The sun was blocked by the clouds most of the afternoon, but eventually the sun got low enough that it could "sneak" in under the clouds and get this fantastic mix of dark and rich golden slanting light. I always have to go outside and walk around in wonder in this "golden moment", almost feeling as if I have stepped out of my own mundane world and into a fairytale.
Sometimes you also get this gold piercing the dark effect when you are in a forest and the light slants a partiuclar way through the trees. I came up with a romantic name for this when I was a teenager - the "darklight".