Owning What We Own

Ownership is so much more than a name on a title or possession of a thing. I have been thinking about an idea and would love to get it over to you in a way that inspires you to "own" what you should and to shed the rest.
    Owning something as mine to tend,  to repair, to dispose of, or to maintain and use requires honesty and wisdom. It gets me out of dream land and what-if land and wishful thinking and moves me to do something productive with and grateful for what really is.
     Here's an example of one of the ways I had to apply this idea. We bought this old stone house over thirty years ago. The only other house I had lived in during all my growing up years was a farm house. I thought I knew home making in a real house. I thought all houses were the same ... that I only had to step into this one and make it home in the same way. To keep this story short; let me just say that it was not to be.
    We had bought ourselves a cottage/cabin full of issues and in our naivete had became owners of an impossible farm house. What a struggle. I tried to "own" it. It wouldn't. Every thing was wrong about it. No master bedroom on the main level, no carpeted parlor area, kitchen almost non-existent in any farm house sense, and the windows felt like a crying shame to me. I did cry sometimes. Still, I loved the curb appeal and the trees and the unique stone walls.
    I can't tell you exactly when it finally occurred to me that this house is not a farm house with straight painted walls and halls and carpets and properly strung electric fixtures and plug-ins. But when we began to own this place as a cottage or cabin, it began to make sense to us. The new wall coverings and floors could be wood as we liked after-all. And those heartbreaking windows suddenly swung "in" on their old hinges in perfect cottage style. We began to make progress  on this house as a real home: new roof, new floors, and the tiny, almost "non-existent" kitchen was now perfect for my own cottage.

   In this same way I have learned to own other things that I own: our particular culture, our faith, our family traits, and even my faults and strengths. Maybe you have ideas to share with me here. I hope to unpack some exciting and inspiring ways we can improve our gratitude and our serving as we come into the holiday season. We have so much.

Fall Scribblings

 Beautiful autumn is here. There are not words for the color and perfect weather we have been having. It is almost surreal here on our patio.
  Here I am today on a surprise free day on Saturday to rest and read and write. Just me and the dog and these falling leaves and awesome mums.
   The Saturday traffic swishes by as usual, the breezes, and this quiet when I notice that two police cars pull into the neighbors yard. Odd things happen over there a lot including visits from the police like this. And I feel bad for the sin and sorrow that goes on all around us here on the rez.

 So, I feel almost silly writing up a thankful list, yet I am thankful and legitimately so.

~ For Prayer, because this is what we have for our thankful times as well as the sad and questioning times.
~ For Quiet. Just the breezes and the leaves falling.
~ For lovely weather. Amazingly perfect temperatures.
~ For family who love Jesus and each other.
~ For a Saturday to sit here on the patio bench and just rest.

 ~ And for a chronological reading-through-the-Bible program. I found a story in Kings and Chronicles that I hadn't noticed before.

          The King Who Had A Green Thumb

    King Uzziah was made king of Judah when he was sixteen years old. Just for a little timeline knowledge here, he appears after King Joash, the little boy king, and before Hezikiah, with a few others in there, too. He had two names, Ahaziah and Uzziah. For today, we'll stick with the Uzziah name.
    So at sixteen, with a godly dad who was King Amaziah before him and his mom, Jecholiah, he was ready to dig in and make good on this big job. Which he did. He sought God, and built cities, and prevailed against the ever-present, troubling Philistines. And as long as he sought God, he was prospered.
    Some of his adventures included gardening and planting parks and orchards. He loved the soil and so he hired farmers and vinedressers to create farms/parks/vineyards in the mountains and in Carmel.
   He also built towers in Jerusalem at the gates. And then he built a few towers in the desert, for good measure.  And he dug wells in the desert. I am rather inspired by this well digging in the desert. I think you have to be a young, ambitious and visionary person to do it. We older folks get a little lazy along these lines and can think of a million reasons not to dig a well in a desert, don't you think? Not so with Uzziah. The Bible says he became quite famous.
    Besides these things, he was a brilliant military general. He ushered his army into divisions and made sure they each had proper body armor and shields and weapons: bows, spears, and slings to cast stones. They became a rather formidable force, says the Bible. Besides having a top notch army, Uzziah made "devices" invented by skillful men to be placed on his towers and at the corners of the walls to shoot arrows and large stones.
  Evidently though, all this brilliance and power went to his head and he got the notion that he could be his own priest. I'm sad about that, because this happens to us today too, when we get too carried away with our own prowess and supposed brilliance. He became so angry when God's priests stood up to him there that the Bible mentions it specifically.
        It's hard to see any grace in what happened to Uzziah as a result of his big-headedness, but truly, having a few years to live quietly in solitude as a leper provided him time to reflect on how God had blessed him. Hopefully he became humble and gentle there living alone and watching his son, Jotham reign in his stead. Hopefully he had time to go over the things Isaiah the prophet had been trying to preach all those years to find hope for himself and his people. The Bible says that when he died he was buried with his fathers in the family tomb.

Saturday Evening Musings

Our world is in color now. The weather turned amazing this week and we're reveling in it. We are especially appreciating the days of no rain and Indian summer. I want to somehow capture this perfection against a somber, snow-less, frozen November day.
    The continuing story on Ruger is that he seems to have learned his lesson about running off making the shock collar seemingly unnecessary. He is happy and comfortable at home now that he has had a large dose of attention and combing. Besides the last time he tried sneaking off after he supposed we were all off to bed, received a severe reminder from his collar. I'm sure it was worse than usual. So for those of you who wanted to see him; here he is devotedly lying at my feet. I am forgiven for my administrations to his painful sore. Must be a lesson in here somewhere. Just kidding.
    Monday I worked on short notice. Amy might tell you why, but I'll just say here that she had a happy first weekend of time spent with her boyfriend, Tim Troyer. They found excuse to spend parts of two days together and their smiles were rather wide.

Elv and I found a minute to sit on shore of Lake Superior this week. We made Elv's machine maintenance day count in our favor by running up to the cabin to fetch a needed tractor. We stayed the night. Coffee by the fire in the morning and Elv's bacon and eggs for our breakfast. Perfection in catching our breath in our crazy week.

Thursday morning we got word from Dru's that their flight plan was changed last minute.  So after work we drove down to Eau Clair to get their van from a friend who drove it up that far. Elv drove the van, I drove the car and we sped through the night across I94 one behind the other to the MSP airport to leave the van in the short term parking. We got home at one in the morning. Dru's dropped out of the sky at midnight, packed into their waiting van and got home around 3:30 AM. There's some managed or controlled chaos for you. It worked just fine. Elv lost a minimal amount of much needed rest and after Lisl was unpacked and had her children down for naps on Friday; I stopped in to see her all cool and collected, safely home.
    So this moment we had by the cabin stove Wednesday morning was not wasted. Even the memory of a blue mug of hot coffee, quiet time, and visits with Elv keep me going later in the week.
    It's been an amazing summer and now fall of happy times for Elv and I. I won't bore you with the details, but we have our reasons to feel richly blest. I thank God upon every remembrance of you! to the best husband in the world.

Interruptions

 I have a nifty, little tablet for groceries, to-do lists and on-the-spot scribblings. Every page is entitled "Brilliant Ideas". I have used it all summer and I like it a lot. I made a nice long list on it Sunday night of the things I wanted to at least get started on for Monday. Now it's Tuesday, late afternoon. Never did get started on that list; besides, I can't even find the notebook just now. It's hiding under the couch or in one of my handy baskets, or somewhere laughing at me.
   For one thing, I discovered the dog sitting around trying to lick something off his ruff under his chin. Looked really odd. I took off his shock collar to discover that it was irritating his neck to the point of some kind of drainage. (TMI there for you, sorry.) Everything else went out the window for my evening accomplishments. He got a much hated bath and brushing. Not that it did a lick of good. We locked him in Brad's shop where he got so dirty by this morning I couldn't believe my eyes. Still draining, still dirty.
    All I've gotten done so far today on this @HomeDAy is to work on this dog problem. Ruger isn't nearly as impressed with the results of two hours of combing and cleaning and sprays and salve and a bandage as I am. He's feeling and looking quite respectably better now, though quite humiliated and distrustful. Each time I step out the door, he gives me this, now-what-you-gonna-do-to-me look and if looks were killing; I'd be dead. 
     I actually enjoyed this interruption to my grand plans to conquer that list. It doesn't even matter anyway.

I have far more things to do on top of what is on that list anyway. Sewing and cleaning are forever with us. The Jeep is bombed again, mud outside, dirt inside and Elv and I plan to spend tomorrow together running errands with it. At some point this evening I'll have to carve out another hour or two to made the rig date-able.
    This morning while I still nurtured happy dreams in my heart of getting that list going I drove by these cows. Couldn't drag my eyes off this scene so I wisely pulled over and took several pictures. They're just boring old cows, I suppose, but I'm seeing so much more in this. Here we are running around conquering lists and dying for a break in the rat race while the cows get to do exactly what we are only dreaming of doing. It is not fair, nor is it remotely intelligent of us. We can choose, and we haven't the sense of an ordinary cow to find the nearest meadow and sit there for the day enjoying this absolutely, awesome fall weather.
   Now I really do need to find those "Brilliant Ideas". Some of it better happen despite the dog and the cows. Have a good fall. Don't forget to stop the car on one of your crazy errands to breathe in the autumn beauty. God made it just for you. Don't ignore it.

Roots, Home,The Village, The Globe

Thistles In Every Bouquet

Lisl and I have been having discussions about home/roots/parenting and village influence. I hope to derive grace from some of these ideas and observations for both of us. And hope for those we love. Ideas and memories that are my own roots here for you.
I had wonderful parents who gave to me a happy childhood and young adult life, even while the world wrestled with things like The Cold War and inflation and civil rights skirmishes. Yes, we were "sheltered", but Mom and Dad made sure that we were not entirely ignorant of the bigger world outside our own.
    Mom and Dad frowned upon narrow thinking by providing a wide scope of literature and by sharing a keen interest in what scientists and politicians were learning and doing. Current events in our own community and the greater global community mattered and we knew it. We were taught that we were going to be expected to be part of how it all turned out in the end, by prayer and influence, and by participation when it would not take us into the places non-resistant Christians do not go.
    We grew roots, first of all, in having a relationship with Jesus. Dad convinced us that Jesus lived with us right here at home. He loved Mom intensely with romance and hard work and happiness. Dad and Mom had a way of living life like it was their own special party and we kids were expected to get our own as soon as we were grown up enough for it. It was Dad's farm, and Mom's house and gardens and lawn. We kids could definitely join in and help make it all good, but the whole point was to show us how to do a good job of that when we got our own party going someday. As long as we were part of their party here at home we would be expected to participate in the work and play of everything: family devotions, three sit-down meals a day, milking and hay making, shelling peas, peeling potatoes, cleaning, and, of course, school and church with all of the functions accordingly. Cheerfully and cooperatively. They showed us how to know what was right and wrong in this arena.
    But, we didn't get to keep to ourselves in this "safe" place. That would have been confining and unreal. We children were expected to get jobs, go for adventures, even out-of-state adventures like driving my uncle and his family up to Northern Minnesota to see family when I was sixteen and green as grass. We were expected run new errands, and generally learn to function in the community as young as possible.
    Mom and Dad often said that we children would go further and beyond them and their capabilities in the big world of opportunity. We grew up believing that and then naturally doing that. What a gift they gave to us. And now we get to see our children going beyond us, too. From the little, unknown Rusk County kids we were with only high school educations come our children with varied skill sets, passports and a few with degrees and global adventures.
    Mom and Dad were never so proud and independent to not allow us to be influenced and taught by others. Instead they shoved us toward people who could fill in where they were lacking. This a gift we parents must give to our children. The best parents admit they don't know when they don't. 

    Dad wasn't born Mennonite so he taught us that we were part of the greater church, the bride of Jesus Christ, primarily, and that we were richly privileged to be a functional part of a local body of believers. He taught by action that we were the church and not just going to a church. So we learned the importance of loyalty to others, grace for their foibles and to expect the same in return for our own. We were taught that to be honest we had to expect human nature to be apparent and to live humbly with it, not against it. Some of our farmer folks fought sleep in church, but that didn't strike them out. Those same folks cared about our church community and the turn out of their children. They showed it their best way by turning their pockets out for the church and the school. Money is a part too, of real church life, and not to be sniffed at.
     Mom taught us to not be gullible and defenseless in our little church community.  When they taught us shaped notes in music class at school and Bible school she tartly let us know that shaped notes are a crutch and that we would be deprived of being able to read "real" music if we didn't watch it. She was right, of course, I still have to work on reading "real" music notation.
 

We were given roots by owning our humanity within the realm of our community and heritage. We weren't allowed to think we were different or better or worse. We were where God wanted us to be, who God had planned us to be, and free to plan our own destiny both earthly and for eternity depending on what we did with Him.
     The "identity crises" we were expected to deal with was that we were sinners saved by Jesus' shed blood, and our primary citizenship was in Heaven. And that we kept our home and farm tidy and to not be like the messy neighbors, who didn't. We were proud in our own way, I admit, and could have been less critical. We weren't perfect ourselves, you see. Even in this we were given roots.
    Finally, roots are now possibly not so geographical as they are cultural, because our world has gotten so much smaller. Things have changed a lot from that safe, small world where I grew up. But I maintain that we can learn the art of growing roots for our young families with the same God and saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. And many of the same rules apply about loyalty and love right where we live. Until He Comes.
     I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. -Jesus John 17:15

  

Blogging Logging

This is the second evening in a row I'm spending with Elv in the woods. He's working late tonight to beat the rain because then it will be too muddy. A lot of too muddy already in our year.
   Last night I brought the Jeep and canoe and supper out so that we could fish the little lake here in this woods. It is a deep, dark pool of water with no grasses or lily pads in it. At dusk the quiet surface is broken again and again all around our silent canoe by fish. We see the silvery flash of their tails many times.  They're feeding but not on worms on a hook.
   We were entranced by the lovely quiet, the two of us in our canoe suspended in the middle, hung in glass between two worlds: the sky and trees mirrored perfectly all around, the tangible up, the reflection down. I always think I should be able to describe this place in words. Stepping into a mirror sort of says it. But this is real.
    We heard a deer coming down to the water toward us. It must have sensed us last minute. We didn't get to see it, but it snorted noisily and left silently.
   After we proved that the fish in our lake were of a species impervious to worm and hook we spent a couple of hours logging and then smoothing the muddy logging road. Home by eleven.

   Tonight we are just logging. I'm sitting on the  dash watching him load logs. Its "blow-down" stumpage, the logs huge, both eight footers and "randoms" red pine and white pine, their sap bleeding from the raw cut ends of them.

He has a computerized machine. AC and glass all around keeps my logger comfortable and safe.
   On this job he has seventeen sorts: bass wood pulp, bass wood logs, maple pulp, maple logs, white birch pulp, white birch logs, ash pulp, ash logs, oak pulp, bolts, and logs, red pine random logs, bolts, and pulp, white pine logs, bolts, and pulp. He knows them all by their bark, woodcolor, saw dust color, how the shredded bark acts and looks, every species distinctive to his experienced eye.
   Its dark now with the late hour and the heavily overcast sky, the storm moving in. The bright lights of the machine create a big golden pool of light around us. We are safe and big and invincible here in our ponderous tracking over stumps and knolls and brush, the golden pool ever over us showing the way. Dust and bugs roil just on the other side of the glass, but the air we breathe here is clean and cool.
    At the edges of our light the trees stand tall, inky darkness just behind them. We'll go home as soon as the rain starts.

 

Living Intentionally

 Having always secretly smiled at the "live intentionally" saying; it must be time to "eat crow". I must have missed my quiet time several days last week. There are not enough days in a week now to get done everything I want to do. Oh, they're all good things and mostly happy things, too. There just isn't time for all of them.
    "You'll just have to prioritize", is the sagacious and not unkindly wisdom offered to me from my husby and friends and children. Prioritizing is another one of those nice, glibly offered solutions. What if my whole list is precisely ordered and alphabetized and prioritized already so that if even one interruption occurs the whole thing falls into a completely different order like tetras blocks? Then what?
    Actually, I don't want to hear tried and true methods of having more time or less stuff or fewer obligations or even about learning how to say "no" more often. I am good at all of those tricks. Ask any of my friends or children; they'll vouch for my heartless ability to pull in the latch string.
     I just need to feel okay with the level of crazy for which I did, in fact, sign up.  It is my own fault that I leapt at the chance to sing in a new choir this fall. I knew full well that I would have to sit me down for a designated amount of time, daily, to listen and learn sixty-seven pages of music when I signed up. But, I have always wanted to do something like this. This is a dream fulfilled. I've changed my mind back and forth about the wisdom of doing it. Yet I can't not stay in.
  

 I am the one who also signed up to be part of a writers group. I've said all of this before about writing.
  It's my own fault that I  started this job that I love working in a gift and furniture store. It is extra income, of course, but just as important, it is full of interest and charm for me and my love of home decor. So I've prioritized, yes.
   And keeping our own home beautiful is a given. It can hardly be named as chores. I enjoy it so much. Keeping our house clean and the laundry done is all part of the dance of life that just is. And it's good.
   The garden is not about saving money, because I don't really can vegetables for our winter supply. The green beans are adding up and it appears that we will harvest a few tomatoes and squash, but you can hardly consider zinnia and mallow a "crop" in any sense of the word.
    What I didn't know I signed up for was being a mom to seven children who have, to date, made us grandparents fourteen times over already. It nearly takes my breath away some days to think of all the time I could spend just enjoying them had I the freedom and money and time to do that all I wanted for them and with them. Speaking of being overwhelmingly blessed abundantly above!

 So I conclude that if I wait until a quieter time of life to have a calm brain and deep sleep and an orderly mind, I'll never get there. It ain't gonna happen. Life is full and rich. Maybe I'll just go read that book Mom Graber gave to me last week when I was there.
   Elv told me to throw away the worms and leeches that have been living in the refrigerator for a week because there won't be any fishing this week. But so far, I haven't done it. I really want to paddle across Windigo and nestle in under the lee of the island and fetch up another bass or two. The phone is quiet out there. The only sounds are the vehicles far away on the highway, the train whistling through the woods toward Stone Lake even farther away, the loons calling, the grumping of bullfrogs, and the laughter of swimmers on the shorelines. 
   On the other hand, I'm looking forward to the married family showing up this evening for supper outside under the lights strung between trees. I'm planning to make an oven supper but we'll eat it gathered outside around the fire.  I'm looking forward to visiting with the girls while the men work on car and boat repairs.
   I'll admit it right here. I'm getting my cake and eating it, too. So richly blessed am I!

Jube and Benny

Sawyer eating constantly and growing like a weed.

Morning Coffee with Amy

Summer Scenes

 The garden is finally producing a few flowers at this late date in August for our table bouquets. Wet, cool spring results. But I've learned a thing or two about this garden.
  A thing or two about using regular feedings of Miracle Gro and plenty of mulch and now even some sprays. It's a funny thing. I forgot about dusting for black spots and bugs and rust until out of desperation, watching the rust take over the hollyhocks, again, I bought and applied spray accordingly.
While I was spraying the affected foliage I caught a whiff of it and remembered what Mom used to do for this. That white powder and the spray can that worked on a pumps system all came flooding back from some corner of my memory, triggered by a certain odor. Interesting.
   And a thing or two about the importance of compost and mulch and the miracle of dead, organic materials. Even oak leaves become dark, moist soil with the help of a few worms, years of rotting, and turnings. We have a large pile of this gold at our disposal with which the squash and tomatoes are growing richly green and fruitful.
   We're even figuring out that a twenty dollar bottle of animal repellent granules can go a long way toward getting a crop of green beans. It's most amazing how many green beans come from unmolested plants.

Rian, Our Redheaded JoyBoy

Grace Bible Church

 Not everyone is here. Another time next summer we'll do this again, and the next, and over time we'll all be on one or the other of these photos.
This little congregation knows how to cooperate and make a photo shoot work. We might have had ten minutes into this shot. Yes, we had a couple people doing some brain work on arranging us, and planning ahead work on the right camera. We kept it to one camera on a tripod and Clark is huffing on this picture from running to his place and getting grins for his drama on the way. He's a fun photographer. Everybody gets the files emailed to them and as many copies as they wish.

Pictures and Scribblings

 We had a church gathering (farewell) for one of our young ladies who is leaving home for the first time on her first big adventure (teaching first and second graders in an out-of-state school). As is the custom we got together to play and pray and share food and a few gifts. It was a lovely time of fellowship.
We're good at this sort of party and everyone has his contribution to make it a happy one: pretty table, nice finger food, wild flower bouquets, a gift basket for the cards, new games, guitars for singing around the campfire, firewood, camp chairs, and mosquito dope.

Prayer Circle

Cuteness

 These two-year-olds were being so cute I couldn't resist taking a few pictures. They were not posing and were far to busy with their own games and songs to notice anyway. Is there anything more precious?

Singing

We sang till dark.

                                                        Marriage Scribblings, Again

Elv and I have been married for almost thirty-five years. I guess that's a rather ordinary landmark for couples in our Menno culture. I suppose it is an ordinary place to take stock too, of the health of our relationship. We honestly wouldn't have done this had it all been easy and breezy for us and our friends. More realistically, marriages are being attacked regularly in all settings and at all ages and stages.
So Elv and I, having our own quota of challenges, have learned a few things, I hope. (Setting us up for another blow, no doubt, just by making these remarks.)
Yet, I will say them.
1. We value commitment higher than compatibility. This is because compatibility changes as quickly as health and events.  When I began to have health issues it effected my personality. So Elv had to learn to adjust, too. Some of the known, usual ways of relating comfortably "went missing". We had learned each other's likes and dislikes. Never dreamed of the changes to come. For instance, suddenly, I was NOT okay with getting up at five in the morning to have coffee with him. While I had been the one to push it in the early years. I simply couldn't get awake anymore after a long night of shallow sleep on and off, on and off. Along with my sleep changes, Elv needed far less sleep than he used to need. This seems like a simple problem, but it has taken us a couple of years to accept these changes ... to go back to the commitment  part of our relationship to say, "We are married to each other, we are staying in the marriage, and we are going to let our commitment speak the loudest to help us to reconcile the changes we don't understand." Morning coffee was especially important to me because Elv has always worked long hours and evenings are full of chores, and family time, and with other demands. There was not time to really connect intellectually with our hearts and minds. I loved coffee time in the morning with Elv. I still hate it that I have to sleep till seven to stay good with life. But we determined to figure this out. We are finding other ways to make this loss up to ourselves and our marriage.
2. We value commitment higher than perfection.  Because after 35 years we both know neither of us is. But we HAVE each other. When you choose to let go of "perfection",  it is so much nicer all around. It far more relaxing to accept that he never is going to pick up his socks. Get used to it and learn to enjoy picking them up. They're just socks and though they might stink; thank God you have someone to pick up after. Besides there are ways he picks up my dirty socks, too, so I can stop worrying about them.
3. I value commitment over emotional support. Actually, what I am about to say might mess up our joy if we let it, but here is a bit of truth that women could figure out sooner with less drama than we have to date. Emotional support is not really part of  your husband's sacred marriage vows. Let's say this a different way. Emotional support is a figment of women's imaginations, because it is thought up by our own fantasy and has little to do with what men are capable of doing in the way we have dreamed up. I'll wager that what you believe you desire from your man in the way of emotional support is silly and fantastic, directly proportional to your level of supposed frantic need thereof.  Pick a different, more realistic way of feeling cherished, girls, like BEING content.  There are other more attractive ways to get his attentions.
4. He values commitment over conflict. Lately, Elv initiates returning to a tricky conversation we've just had, to talk it over a little more to reach a better place. Knowing he is staying in the conversation for a result that we both are good with, has given us a field to operate in, successfully. It's all the emotional support I need and it is what he can give. It is not only good enough, it's wonderfully comforting. It is not about bargaining, either. And not about sides. It's the happy conclusion that we really do want the same things after all: mutual respect and trust. It is so much easier to see the angle a man is trying to put over if he is sweet about it and if she is assured that he likes her to have her angle now and then, too.
        Just one more story. There was a prayer request given at prayer meeting lately, for a very old gentleman who was seen sitting at a deli table, alone, eating his lunch. When asked where his wife was, he admitted mournfully that the two of them had been separated for a thirty day stint. His wife had tired of his "abuse" and had called the police on him. Neither of them expected to have to spend the next thirty days separated from the other.
      Ok, Elv and I laughed when we heard this request. I'm sure we could have been misunderstood by our laughter, but seriously? It is about time at almost ninety for a married couple to place a premium on the fact that marriage is not a pain, it's a gift. It's a place! A valuable institution to not be handled with argument and silence and distance. It's home. A sense of belonging to be guarded and valued. After what we've experienced and watched others walk through, we ought to know this and do it! We pray that said, dear, old couple will have finally figured this out and will make their last few days together good ones.