One of the most precious moments of being a
mother is when a little person comes running
inside with a handful of flowers and presents
them-"For YOU, Mommy. I picked them for YOU."

But, it gets better still. When that little
person is nine, or seventeen, or twenty or
twenty-three and they bring flowers in and
find vases and carefully arrange them for you-
that is beyond precious. It is the very fabric
of life.

Not only is my little heart warmed to its very
cockles, my faith is strengthened. I look at
my pretty little bouquets and am reminded of
Matthew 6:28-30--So why do you worry about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:
they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you
that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass
of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown
into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O
you of little faith?

If you will insist on fishing when the weather is a
tich cold, you might just look like this.





























But then again, any day spent on the Sparkling Jewell
is worth it in my guys estimation.

Why doesn't anyone in Mayberry ever live up the gravel?

I wanna know.

Last night I found this gem.

"How foolish we are to think we are in control.
As parents we are far better off preparing our
children for eternity than for life. That, I
think, is ultimately the point of classical
education. We are not preparing our children
for careers since we hardly know what career
or careers they will have but rather we are
preparing them to live as servants of God in
this world and beyond."

You can find the rest of the post at Dominion
Family.

Last night Joel called from work. He is thrilled
and so are we. He just found out that he gets to
move to days. And on top of that, he gets to move
to the line he was wanting to be on. Life for him
is often difficult, so these blessings are huge to
him and to us.

I think a party is in order. I told him to be
thinking about what he wants me to cook.

He giggled.

Speaking of food. Last night I make chicken and
dumplings. I wanna know why I can't make c & d
without spinach as a side dish? They go together
in my mind like peanut butter and jelly. I also
love pickled beets with c & d, but am out of them
at the moment. I need G'ma Opal's garden to get
in gear!

This is not the post I intended to write. That will
have to wait because, when I stepped out on my front
porch to say, "Good Morning" to the morning, I was
enveloped in a cloak of a deep, drippy, dark, delightful
fog. I wanted to take a picture, but I knew it would
not turn out.

As I stood there, I was listening to the morning wake-
up sounds and they were blending with the end of night
sounds. The peepers were there but slowly fading away.
The occasional bull frog was still making his presence
known. Across the way a rooster was letting his consorts
know it was time to get their sleepy heads to open their
eyes and begin looking around for breakfast. The birds
were beginning to trill and cheep and sing.

The Lord is good to us. These kinds of gifts are beyond
measure.

I know I am in a rut with these peepers, but I thought that
you might enjoy listening to them. This site has a lovely
peeper sound. Just click on the words "Listen to its call."
And then, just be jealous of me and mine. For the full effect
set your computer by your bed and let it play the peeper noise
all night long. Nice.

For a good picture of a peeper go here.

See? I told you!

Oh, we are thankful for each and every sign of Spring.

The fields turning green. I wish I could truly show
you how green the fields are becoming.

The daffy-dills in bloom.

The trees that look a little furry with the tiny flowers
popping open.

The peepers (we must never forget the peepers).

The thunderstorms.

The rush of life that is trying to burst through
the cracks of winter.

Stand back a safe distance because here it comes.

Order from chaos. That is my usual Monday routine.
The house, Hattie's schoolwork, my brain and my life
in general need some straightening out come Monday
morning. There is a lot zipping around in the grey
matter this morning and perhaps to pin some of it
down would help to bring a little order. That would
be nice.

1. I was just reading in the Missouri Conservationist
a little article about introducing kids to the "Outdoors".
It had oodles of suggestions and then emphasized that,
of course, you want to protect your kids from snakes and
black widows etc. That reminded me of the time that
Joel caught a black widow and put it in a jar. Then he
said, "Now if I can get a brown recluse I'll have a
collection of all the poisonous spiders in Missouri."
And there is no end of times he has picked up snakes in
order to either move them to another spot or protect
his precious chickens. My dad once came home from school
with a snake wrapped around his pants as a belt. Snakes
aren't always so bad!

2. My brother and sister-in-law popped into Mayberry for
a surprise visit this weekend. We've had a lovely time
with them. (Hi, Debby! you lurker!) When we stopped in
last evening to say, "Howdy!" and to enjoy some of Tandy's
delish popcorn, I heard a new springtime sound. Bullfrogs.
They were just getting cranked up. They are not loud yet,
but they will be soon. Sometimes, in my yard, the bullfrogs
are so loud a person has to almost yell to be heard.

3. I've been reading several books lately on "Finding the
Will of God." There is certainly a lot of garbage written
in this department, but when you come across a statement
like the following you sit up and take notice.

" Is it not Biblical to suggest that peace in taking the
next step arises out of knowing God rather than in finding
the right set of rules for guidance? Do we not in
retrospect see that some of life's greatest doors swung
open or shut on hinges too small for us to perceive at
the time--hinges that were set by the Sovereign God?

God, the Sovereign. The Great Initiator.
The Awful Interrupter. The Shepherd who leads
His flock. The Predestinator. The One who
opens and no man can shut, who shuts and no
man can open.

'This God is our God for ever and ever; He will
be our Guide even unto death.(Ps. 48:14)'"
This is from the preface of Essays on Guidance.

Oops, I forgot a few things in that last post, but,
then really, it was quite long enough already.

1. I knew I was home when I got out of the truck
and heard the blessed music of the peepers. They
were peepering with all their might and it was
be-yew-ti-ful!

2. Dad says I get preachy sometimes on this blog.
Sorry. I won't promise to quit, but I do apologize
ahead of time for doing it. I don't really want
to be said of me what Churchill said of Sir Stafford
Cripps, "There but for the grace of God goes God."

Kent, Hattie and I left Mayberry for a few days to
go be with my parents for my mother's third chemo
treatment. Her white blood count was fine and she
was able to take the treatment and we were glad for
it.

I had been looking forward to seeing her in her
Chatty Cathy mode. We met them at 7:00am and went
to the hospital together. Her schedule was a full
one because she first had an internal radiation,
then a doctor visit and then the chemo.

Of course, since she had a bad reaction during the first
session of chemo, she now must start her steroids the
night before. So, she was pretty pumped by the time we
met her at 7:00am. She already had 10 decadron pills
inside her.

Mom moves pretty fast anyway, especially when she is
walking, and I noticed that she led the way wherever we
went, and Dad, Kent and I were strung out behind, trying
to keep up.

She was especially thrilled (and so were we) by the news
that Dr. Thaker gave her. Her CA-125 level was down to the
normal range. It was a 23 and normal is 0-30. CA-125 is
a blood test that checks for ovarian cancer. And, on top
of that, because she is responding so well, Dr. Thaker said
that if things continue so she will move Mom's fifth
treatment back a week so she can go to her oldest grand-
daughter's wedding in Florida.

Friday we met my sister's family over at Hope Lodge, which
is place my folks stay while they are in The Big City. Becky
brought lunch and I brought a barrel of pretzels. It
was fun. Derrill (Becky's husband) is still jet lagged from
their trip to the Philippines and he sacked out on one of
the couches. But then, come to think of it, so did Kent and
Billy. Dad may not have been sacked, but he was very
comfortable. What was Mom doing? What else...playing
High Five with her three granddaughters.

There you have it, a Shirley Update. She probably feels
rather rotten today, and probably will tomorrow too, but
that will pass and she'll just keep being the hoot she
always is. Oh, I didn't mention that as the afternoon
wore away during her chemo treatment she actually turned
rather mellow, at least mellow for her. She did talk,
but even the nurse said it was nothing like the first
time she was there. She didn't sleep any, but she was
pretty much just MaMa.

The chemo room is not very big and really Dad, Kent
and I couldn't all stay in there all the time. So Kent
and Dad went out for lunch and they toured the Cathedral
de Basilica while they were out. I was jealous because
that is a place I really want to see. It is just a few
blocks from where my folks are staying at Hope Lodge.
Kent loved it. It is rather breath taking I gather. If
you are ever at The Big City and looking for something to
go, head to Lindell and take in the Cathedral.

The whole purpose of the previous post was to write a
book review or two. It certainly goes to show you how
far astray one can wander if one is not disciplined in
their writing.

My original intention was to zoom through the book
In the Steps of Moses by Louis Golding. A friend
found it at a used book sale, read it, and wanted to
have me read it. My pile of books is huge and really
it just didn't look too appetizing. I let it sit on
the pile for probably a year before I actually picked
it up and attempted it.

My thinking was, I'll just read the first sentence of
every paragraph, then I'll have a good idea of the book
and be able to give it back. Oh, how wrong I was. I
did that for a few pages, and then, I absolutely could
not help myself, I found I couldn't just skip over all
those sentences. Here was a man who could made every
word count. It is brilliantly written. I loved it;
every sentence shines.

It doesn't matter a whit if you are interested in tracing
the footsteps of Moses or not. For that matter, it doesn't
matter whether you are interested in Lawrence of Arabia or
not (he fills nearly as many pages as Moses does.) Golding
will draw the reader in, and you will understand what traveling
through Arabia was like in the early part of the last
century.

Perhaps if you are stuck in the Christian love dribble book
world this would not appeal to you, but for everyone else I
highly recommend looking high and low for a copy of this book.

As a teenager I remember wanting to make my mark on the
world. Somewhere in my diary I have written the following
excerpt, but this is paraphrased because I really don't want
to take hours to find the exact wording.

"I know I'm supposed to do something big. I must be either
a dancer, writer, artist, musician, or singer. I have so
much inside of me that needs to be expressed to the world."

Now that is funny. I've been noticing posts by several people
where they write a letter to themselves at the age of 17 or
so. I think rather than a letter I should hit my 17 year
old self over the head with a baseball bat and say, "Wake up
honey! You've got it all wrong."

Of course the first problem is that I am not at all graceful,
just ask Philippine Sister who tried to help me in this regard,
therefore nix the dancing. I can't carry a tune, ask Kent on
that one, so nix the singing. I am really rather lazy AND I
am a little tone deaf so nix the music playing. I have really
a hard time drawing much besides stick figures (though my niece
Carolyn Fleetwood is a very accomplished artist) so nix the
artwork. Okay, that brings us to the writing.

The problem is I see a little too clearly my own faults. Once
in a while I can turn out a sentence that is nice. But mainly
they are very run-of-the-mill productions. I can very easily
see that with my 46 year old eyes; the 17 year old was slightly
blinded by immaturity and inexperience.

In fact, I judge writing by whether they do a better job than I
do. The Baroness Orczy did that too. If I correctly remember
the story, she was listening to a story one day that had won
a contest and she thought, "Why I could do better than that."
And so we have The Scarlet Pimpernel, which just happens to
be one of the greatest books ever written.

I take rather the opposite approach though. I am not driven to
write a novel because of some drivel I read. But I do toss it
aside and say, "They can't write any better than I can. They are
not worth my few moments of leisure." This applies to a lot
of books, Christian and secular. It applies to novels and to
serious works. If a person can't turn a sentence to make a
work of art out of it, I refuse to waste my time.

Basically I avoid a lot of book conversations with people
because of this. I don't want to offend by saying, "Well really,
I thought that was a horrid bit of writing." Better to just
not go there.

This was all supposed to be an introduction to a book review,
actually two book reviews. But I do believe I have exhausted
my reader as well as myself. So I will save the reviews for
another day.

Happy reading!

Pretty completely this past weekend was devoted to a
volleyball tournament our Mexico Mission Team was hosting
to raise funds for the materials we'll need when we
travel to Mexico this summer.

Friday was filled with details in preparation.
Saturday was the tournament which began at 8:00am
and lasted until about 7:00.
Sunday was the achy and jammed finger part.

But, Jackie and Laura eat your hearts out, my Red-Headed
Snippets and Gang took second place. See what you
missed out on Ruth, you could have been in this lovely
picture.















If you've ever read my profile you ought to be able to pick
me out.

G'ma Opal's mouse take for the month of February is 6.
She really gets a kick out of this ongoing rodent war.

My good friend, Jackie, gave me her own mousey update the
other day. Eight. And she had a mole to boot. She walked
out her door and her cat had left eight mice and one mole
on her carport. Beat that if you can.

Signs of the Times

March came in like a lion yesterday. At least it did
10 miles from here. There was a good, strong storm
that blew through Mayberry yesterday morning. They had
wind; they had dark skies; they had hail.

All we had was a tich of rain and a blowsy wind.

So does that mean March will go out like a lamb ten miles
away in Mayberry, but not here?

The weather, warmth wise, has been creeping towards
spring. It has rushed towards spring in another way.
The Japanese beetles are out in full force. I will
elaborate.

A few years ago the Japanese beetle migration reached
Mayberry. They look like ladybugs but aren't. They
smell bad when smushed and they sting too, if you let
them. They leave an ugly spot on the wall at times.

My poor mother and grandmother are nearly driven to
distraction by these beetles because they will come
in by the hundreds and sometimes thousands. You can
not stop them. They hibernate between the siding and
the outside wall and creep in when the weather begins
to warm up. Mom and G'ma Opal will smush, vacuum, sweep,
knock, just do anything possible to eliminate them, but
they keep coming. I have them in every room right now
myself.

But, if having to deal with Japanese beetles means that
I also get to hear peepers every time I step out the
door at night, I'll deal with them right cheerfully.

I love getting to the ends of the various epistles of
the New Testament because the benedictions that are
given are so apt for nightly blessings for my own
children.

Hebrews has a beautiful benediction (nightly blessing).

Hebrews 13:20-21
Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus
from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through
the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete
in every good work to do His will, working in you what
is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to
whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

I don't say the whole of the two verses when I glide
through the rooms at night. I pick out the kernel and
whisper those words.

I got a funny feeling though when today, as I continued
in James, I read these words.

James 1:2,3
My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various
trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces
patience. But let patience have its perfect work,
that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

Ouch.

I don't want my children to endure trials. But then again,
if it causes them to become "complete in every good work
to do His will," maybe I do.

I get a little irritated when I hear people say,
"I am not sure I want to bring children into this
world the way things are today." Sometimes it may
be older folks and they say, "Things are just so
much worse today than they used to be, I don't
know how young people can make it now."

We think that if we could have lived in some other
time and place things would have been simpler and purer,
and it would have been easier to raise our children.

I always rather thought I should have been a pioneer
Me, who can't stand a cold house, HA! I've loved
the thought of hoop skirts and lots of crinoline, yet
I am somewhat claustrophobic and would probably have
been locked up when they tried to tighten the stays.
Joel always wanted to live in the time of Knight
Errantry. He wanted to fight the dragon and win fair
lady. Hattie thinks the Indians and their way of life
was a better and higher way.

But God is sovereign. He has put me and each of my own
children into this particular time and this particular
country and even his particular community for a very
particular reason. (Okay that was a little repetitious.)
But, the point is made. God is never caught off guard.
He is not surprised by what happens around us. If indeed
history is really what we claim it to be, His Story, then
He has put us exactly where He wants us and it is all for
some very glorious purpose.

Now there is great confidence in that truth.

Finrod in The Lord of the Kingdom says it more eloquently.

"‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’
said Frodo.

‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live
to see such times. But that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that
is given us.’

Throughout my life I periodically have indulged in
wishful-thinking: I have dreamed of having been born a
century earlier, or perhaps several hundreds of years
before, when the world (in my imagination) was much
simpler and more to my liking than these days in which
I find myself. Many of us long, I suspect, for days
that never really were as we want to believe they were.

But God did not fall asleep on his watch, only to waken
and discover that he was late in tossing me into life.
I am where I belong. I do not get to choose the state
of the church of my time, or the cultural battles that
rage, or the theological slide that I perceive.

My - our - only decision is what Gandalf lays out:
“what to do with the time that is given us.” Paul said
as much, too, exhorting us to be always “making the most
of your time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:15-17).
This means I must choose wisely and I must be diligent:
I cannot live either in the past or the future; I can
only live today and do what I may as long as it is called
today.

These days may seem black and dark, but all days are so
to those engaged in spiritual warfare. There is glorious
light to behold one day, but not yet - not while the Enemy
still opposes our King and his purposes. My job is to do
as I’m told and not wish it were otherwise."

As promised to Chrysalis:

And yes, it is rather scrumptiously delicious!

BUTTERFINGER ICE CREAM CAKE

1/2 cup vanilla wafers crushed
1/2 cup saltines crushed
2 Butterfinger candybars crushed
Mix and spread in 11x13 pan and bake 10 minutes in a
350 degree oven and cool.

1 large box French vanilla pudding
2 cups milk

Beat and let thicken in refrigerator.

1/2 gallon of vanilla ice cream

Soften and mix with pudding. Spread this on top of
the cooled crust.

1 medium Cool Whip.

Soften and spread on top of the ice cream mix.

1 Butterfinger candy bar crushed.

Sprinkle on top of the Cool Whip. Freeze. Thaw
30 minutes before serving.