Tie your own shoes

TO THIS DAY, I still have middle-schoolers walking around with their shoes untied!  Kids!  This is NOT a fashion statement, this is a HEALTH HAZARD!  You trip, then I have to take care of you!

Remember teaching your little ones to tie their shoes?  Some used the bunny ear technique.  In my house, we used the old-fashioned loop/knot design.  It all takes time and practice, but then, of course, my youngest ended up wearing flip-flops to high school in January, so why bother?

The point is that teaching self-sufficiency is a 

Not the life of the party

Jeremiah was probably not invited to many parties, but his demeanor had more to do with reality than a serotonin imbalance…much more.  God’s people had been repeatedly warned about their idolatrous and otherwise unfaithful choices.  Even as segments of their society were intermittently carried off—warning shots across the bow, if you will—they still hardened their hearts to stubbornly go against what God wanted them to do, and this after God had so

So it doesn’t get lost in translation…

If you’re older than, say, 15, you may have realized that what you mean to communicate is not always the message that is received.  Now, when my dog wants to go outside for some biological necessity, he is fairly clear in his insistence; there’s just not a lot of ambiguity to his request.  And a similar scenario happens in the afternoon when he thinks it’s time for me to put his premium brown crud into his food bowl.

Oh!  That it were so easy with humans!  Alas!  The ability to clearly transfer (I do like that word) what I’m thinking, wanting, needing to someone else is a skill that takes a lifetime to master, if then. 

And if it can be that difficult to communicate what’s really going on inside of me to another human, I can only speculate how my

Your place, or mine?

Which was kind of the question God was asking here—who’s place is this anyway??

“This message was given concerning the Ammonites. This is what the LORD says: ‘Are there no descendants of Israel to inherit the land of Gad? Why are you, who worship Molech, living in its towns?’”

The short version is that the Ammonites were the bad guys, and

Did they really mean “dash”?

I hate running.  Always have, really.  And yet I did the whole high school athletics thing, such as it was for young women back in the 70’s.  I was generally pretty terrible at it, but when you’re a 6-foot female, it’s just something you feel you have to try I suppose.  I was even on the track and field team for a year or two.

Guess what they do in track and field… 

I think at one meet I finished a race in about 94 seconds.  In my case, it was mistakenly labeled the 400-yard-dash.  For me, it was more of a plod, woeful, but at least I finished.

So a big shout out to bloggin’ buddy Marie Griffith at Full Time! Over the past year, she’s started her running adventure and has been working her way up—I anticipate a full marathon is in her future, and maybe one of those crazy tri’s. 

A consideration~~It’s one thing to run a 5K, but quite another to walk 25 miles.  The former has you huffing and puffing at the end; the latter pain creeps up on you slowly, when you feel it the next day, and the next.  We don’t really think of walking as strenuous, but in reality, walking is being extolled for its remarkable health benefits.  Why?  Because over time it’s more strenuous than one may think.  I mean, after all, it’s just walking, right?

Here’s my point.  It’s one thing to weather a crisis in life.  It’s exhausting, but when it’s over, and the dust clears, and you’re still standing, we applaud you as victor.  Yea. 

Unfortunately, we tend not to see the rigor and stamina needed for the monotony of everyday life, and even less do we allow ourselves even a pat on the back for a job well done—changing that diaper, cleaning that frig, getting the whole fam to sit down for a meal, putting in 8-10 hours in the cubicle to put that meal on the table.  Over time, this walking through the daily tasks of responsible living and loving, gets…exhausting.  Only it creeps up on us unawares. 

Like the sore muscles that we didn’t expect from just….walking.

Runners like my friend, Marie, have strategies.  They know how to pace themselves, listen to their bodies, and when to push through it or not.  Brilliant!  She knows how to cooperate with her body to prevent a pulled muscle, or physical exhaustion.

I’m thinking that I need to take a lesson from her for the “walking through daily life” as well.  Over time, without these strategies, my heart and head start to ache, and I’m not even aware of it as it becomes normalcy.

I would love to hear some of your strategies in walking through life to avoid mental and spiritual exhaustion.  And in the comment section, I’ll share some of mine.

And Marie, when you get to the Ironman, I was photos of Hawaii!

“Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised.”

Hebrews 10:36  Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Which side of the boat is your net on?

Intramural, co-ed volleyball.  Now there’s a topic that probably has all kinds of analogies just waiting to be discovered. Some quite humorous, I imagine.  I was never very good at sports, despite my height.  I used to say that my main function on the team was to get off the bus first just to intimidate the opponents.  Beyond that, I’m afraid I didn’t have too much to offer.

Nonetheless, I continued to enjoy volleyball, just for fun and exercise.  In preparation for one church event, someone brought out a net that needed untangling and a bit of repair.  It took quite awhile, and I remember one of the women saying, “don’t give up now; look how far we’ve come!” 

There’s volleyball analogy #1, I suppose. 

But I’m thinking about other nets and the storyline that still

Happy Birthday to me!!!

This is NOT health food.

I’m composing this little post in the beauty of an autumnal morning.  The summer heat is beginning to succumb to the earth’s orbit, the last of the four “blood moons” has passed into history, and despite that occurrence, one of my more immediate concerns has been whether the bag worm epidemic is going to destroy my beloved sycamore tree.  The shallowness of that may be evidence enough of my state of mind, but there it is.

Of course, all that could change in an instant.  You know how life does.

So I’ll write this now and post it later, because I’m writing in celebration of my blog’s one-year birthday in January of 2016.  And maybe I’ll even read it myself.  Because here’s the