Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Home Things

 Home is the place the family lands at the end of the day. It's our safe place. It's where we rest and rejuvenate. 
Home is where the family belongs without question. We can always come back home or go back home. 
Home is where the family lives. We tell each other about our day at work. We laugh about the things that are funny to us, together. We understand each others' opinions. We help each other to decompress when the day was hard to do. We solve with each other. 
  Happiness at home is a choice just as keeping a clean, orderly home is a choice. None of these things happen by default. Everyone has to work on both to make it happen. 


  Our table just now is sporting this beautiful runner that Lisl made and sent to us from Thailand. She painted the birds and attached the lace to a long piece of lovely linen. I am treasuring this by using it. The birds Salt and Pepper shaker set is from Francis and I am pretty sure it was Francis who made the buttons, too. 
  The pitcher is Amy's find from our favorite used shop in Seward, I think. 
   Home is the best place to create beauty and share it, too.


Lisl, I have been thinking hard about your problem of wondering how to feel at home while you live on two sides of the globe by turns. Here's a messy list of thoughts to ponder.

~ The Stonehouse is home in some way or other to our whole family. You each have invested in this place by belonging and living here and by enjoying our family together here for parts of thirty years. 
~ I would love to be able to say that home will always be here, but that would be false. Home is here only as long as WE are here. It's possible that in one generation, this home will only be a memory. In another, just lore. We have no continuing city.
~ But we seek one to come. And we transfer our home feelings to heaven as we get older. It seems far away and unreal but that will change, I promise.
~ Keep a few treasures to grace each and every house you live in like Laura Ingall's mother did. We all need a china shepherdess, after all. It provides for an on-the-spot piece of the familiar when we need it in a strange land. 
~ With communications as they are, the whole globe is home, in a sense. Besides, where can we flee from His presence? And there is prayer with which to touch each other no matter how far apart we are geographically. 
~ I can't wait to bless you and yours in your Thailand home as you have blessed us in our stateside homes. It's all just preparation for the mansions in the end. This effort to beautify our surroundings is worship and hope of the Home above. Let's give it our best.  

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Comfort One Another With These Words

 How often do you hear someone express doubts or fears or tears? The need for comfort is real. And it is a need that should be met. Especially in others. But I've been noticing that it is far easier to know when I need comfort than to sense when someone else needs a little cosseting.Why?
    It's the most aggravating cycle. When I need a few warm fuzzies is exactly the moment when I have the hardest time providing it for someone else. And when someone in my family is the hardest to love, they're suffering a little Affirmation Deficit Disorder themselves. It's hard to love a sour person.
    This morning at four I received a little comfort from the Comforter Himself. Paul said, "Comfort one another with these words." I haven't even gone over to the verse to see what those words are, yet. But I'm confident that they're good words full of affirmation and hope.
    So today, let me not miss my cues.
~ Let me bless today. Someone's sourness is a cue.
~ Let me learn how to say, "Good job." And mean it.
~ Let me trust today. Let it be the kind of trust that begets trust.
~ Let me learn to pry my mouth open and say the yeses that need to be said that gives others the hope they're needing.
~ Let me LIVE the yeses that turns the lights on and warms the rooms of other hearts, too.
    



Wednesday, August 10, 2016

The Two Worlds of A Logger and His Wife

When I can, I like to go ride with him on his machine. The other day I started to see what is right in Elv's line of vision all day, every day.
     Wouldn't this be boring? Piles of logs. Pile after pile after pile. Seven sorts right now. A flat tire today on this new machine. The second one in as many weeks. Odd. So he isn't bored. But I would be. I can't see the sorts like he can. He keeps a measuring device in the cab and hands himself the end of the log swinging in the bucket right up to where he can reach it through the door. I think it is a bolt question. Is that ten inches?

 Here's the home part of my world. On the days that I work, it isn't that much different: organizing, restocking, decorating, and cleaning. And its all about home and making it pretty. I never tire of that. The orange cosmos were planted with plenty of space this spring and now the orange flowers have lots of air and space to dance freely. And they do. So I brought in only a few to spread out among the row of white pitchers on the windowsill to get about the same effect. This morning they're dropping petals on the burlap runner, too. One of the little awesome joys of making a house a home. Doesn't take much to keep me happy, I guess. Go figure.

And a "new" set of dishes at the used shop.  Well, Amy was with me and thought it was a good idea, too.  We brought it home and raked everything off the bottom two shelves and packed some of that into the same boxes that we brought these home in, to be returned to the used shop. Don't ask what all it was, because I won't tell you. Important thing is, when you buy something pretty and inexpensive to bring home to use and to redecorate with, while you're at it, it is a good idea to take something back, too. The logistics of that should be obvious. Especially when things are only things and life is short and I don't have any closets to store those things in as it is. (Please try to not notice those misplaced prepositions and lost verbs, ok? I vote we make a new grammar rule that says we may write in peace with, and stop having to add in the "in which's" and "with which's" just to be correct.)
 His world and my world seem too far apart and lonely sometimes in the summer. The saving grace is that we share one goal and one set of bills and one bed and one house and one Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. So, whereas he spends many hours a day hauling and sorting those boring logs and I do those same repetitious things of homemaking, the day and the week have endings and beginnings for landing and launching and we share that, too. 
We've had arguments about which is most important: the work part of life or the together part of our lives. He would argue that if you don't work and earn money you can't expect to have a place to spend time together period, or pay those mutual bills, for that matter. That's a good point, but I will still say that if you had nobody to look after and no home to live together in, there would be zero point to life at all. I guess we need both to make the world go round. 
And since we are still earth bound we need the dignity of industry. I have a few thoughts about that hatching in my mind to scribble about sometime.  
 

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Cheney Lake


 We ran off to Cheney Lake the other evening, looking for some "downtime" and rest. Cheney Lake is an hour away, hidden in the old barrens of Douglas county among jackpine and pin oak scrub and plantation pine. A few popple trees. It's a little blue bowl in the sand owned by the county. No residences. A few stray soda cans and the black remains of warming fires give evidence of small, infrequent local gatherings. We happen to know where to find it because Elv logged up there many years ago.

 It's at full pool these days with a lovely sandy beach. Benny was so relieved that there was no aftermath of swimmers itch to contend with after they swam.
Our family has played here for many years in the summer. We missed a few years when the county put a berm up so we couldn't drive to it anymore. But now that obstacle has been nicely overcome ... there's not even a sign there anymore, we can take the grandchildren now. We are richly blessed to have a two generation tradition. God has been so good to us.



 Elv created and gave to me my own personal stash of fishing tackle. I am so pleased. I can't believe I forgot to bring a pole and tackle along. There were fish out there, too, as we could tell both by seeing them and hearing them jump as it was getting dark.





 After the sun slid far enough down the horizon, the boys got out of the water and happily snuggled into dry clothes and their jackets.
I scrounged for fuel and my stashed lighter and we had an immediate warming fire. Elv followed that little ritual up with his own scrounging and we soon had a lovely flame.



We're  glad we stayed for complete sun-down and the song of the whippoorwill. What better way to end a good couple of hours of family play and visiting.
God's in His heaven's all's right with the World. Good night.

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