Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Little Blessings

On my journey through life, many milestones represent great and wondrous blessings showered upon me by "the Father of Lights''; others commemorate what looked at the time like terrible tragedies.  "Through it All," as the song says, God has been faithful--even when I haven't had faith.

But then, there are the LITTLE things--little "trials and vexations" that cause us to feel hassled and too often to become irritable and unreasonable; BUT ALSO the little blessings that fill us with delight and thankfulness!  One of these came to me tonight; and again I'm reminded that our everyday lives matter to Him from whom comes "every good and perfect gift." 

Our oldest granddaughter, Madai, is to be married on July 16th in Mexico where she grew up and has many friends and relatives who can't come here.  Day after tomorrow, I leave with the first carload going; I'll be gone about two weeks.  Plans for the trip seemed to be going all right until I washed my '''good Dress," the one reserved for special occasions only, and found to my horror that down near the hem was A HOLE!  Not a rip in a seam that could be mended--a hole that defied repair!  Where in the world could I possibly get an appropriate replacement at this late date?  I could probably come up with a barely presentable substitute--told Mada about it , and of course she told me whatever I wore would be fine  What could she say?  (And after all, I thought, I won't be the star of the show, anyway.)

But I was still in a stew; got out needle and thread and started to try a folding maneuver that would probably come to naught.  Our daughter called (about something else) and I told her my predicament.  Carol is a person who's always eager to help; here she came, a short time later, with a GORGEOUS dress of the right color that fit perfectly.  She'd gone over to Ross's and it had "just jumped out" at her!  It's beautiful, LARGE enough, and becoming, too--no small feat (and only $20)!  Carol's a good shopper, but that DIDN'T just happen!  Our great & wonderful God Who runs the universe saw to it that Granny could be respectable for the little girl's wedding.

Someone has said, "The God of the infinite is also God of the infinitesimal."  Not one sparrow falls to the ground that He doesn't know it; we've heard that all our lives.  Well, it's true.  

Saturday, July 2, 2011

ON ANNIVERSARIES

This will be a short one--just don't want to get too far past our anniversary without saying a couple of things about it. So what am I going to say?  Ahem..."Fifty-seven wonderful years have gone by like a song, with never a disagreement; with sweet contentment at every turn in the road, with--" Wait a minute!  I wonder if my nose wouldn't outsrtetch Pinnocchio's!  And it's big enough already.  So start over...

I once heard someone say, "If any two people think identically about everything, one of them is unnecessary!"  However that may be, we soon learned, on our journey together, that we DIDN'T think identically on everything; won't go into detail about it now.  Most of it doesn't matter any more.  But here's what saddens me:  in our culture today, the first few storms are never weathered by so many people.  The ship is abandoned after its first beating by the elements--or in some cases they give it a little longer, but ultimately shipwreck after 15--20 years.  In some cases, this may be inevitable.  But I wll tell you one thing:

I am thankful beyond measure that by God's infinite grace we've come to a place in life where we seem to be
harbored from most of the storms that assail relationships.  When there are difficulties, we've come to a point of facing them together.  Days go by with a mellow feeling; nights are so content in the old double bed whose mattress seems to dip in the middle.  And I can't help thinking that a lot of people could get to this point.  So if anyone's questioning whether it's worth it all, I'll tell you that for us it was and is ABUNDANTLY worth it
ALL!  Talk it over with the Lord before EVER giving up!

Friday, July 1, 2011

Deborah Lapp and the "conspiracy for self-control"

  Today is our 57th wedding anniversary--July 1, 1954 at 8 PM we were married in the First Baptist Church of Aberdeen, Washington .                                                                                                                                                    At the moment, we are watching JUDGE JUDY, which reminds me to comment on my pen name, DEBORAH LAPP.  Deborah in the Old Testament was a judge in Israel.  I have always admired her.  Her husband's name was LAPIDOTH; I believe he did some sort of work in the Temple.  As a freelance writer, I took a course in which I was asked to think about what to use as a pen name if I needed one.  I thought that this rather impressive lady's name was something to live up to; her husband's name furnished the obvious source  for the last name, LAPP. 

Taking a judge's name as a pseudonym, unfortunately, can't be taken to indicate that I think I have good judgement all--or even most--of the time.  Weight management is one of those areas where it's questionable, to say the least!  I've been involved in different programs such as TOPS and been MODERATELY successful--but, since about age 40, not completely so at any time.

Recently, I've been communicating with a couple of good friends from church who've faced the same problem. One of them in particular had some good ideas to offer.  I began thinking:  self-control is a fruit of the Spirit that we'd like to have growing and thriving in our lives.  We're starting to join forces in the endeavor to bring this area (and any other we find needed on the way) under the control of the Holy Spirit.  I'm calling our plan a "conspiracy for self-control."  We'll communicate mainly in cyberspace; probably meet once in awhile--don't know just how it will develop  So this is our plan, nebulous at the moment.  It will probably dominate most (not all) of my blog at this point in tme.  We'll share with you in coming days.