I must admit when the rubber hits the road it is easier to write about our Christian journey than to live it.
When we write about it, we can make it shine, we can imagine that we are almost there. Then the rubber hits the road.
It seems almost as soon as we have written about it we are challenged by that same thing.
The rubber hits the road.
When we talk about how God is blessings us with our finances and helping us make ends meet the ends start getting further apart and work starts to drop off and then we struggle to pay all the bills.
The rubber hits the road.
When we write about how God has brought us to a place where we are happy a place where we are content with our lives, discontentment starts to rear it’s ugly head.
The rubber hits the road.
When we write about our vitality for life and how excited we are with our homeschooling studies for our children. The vitality wanes and we find ourselves tired.
The rubber hits the road.
I am not saying that what I have been writing about has been lies or life isn’t as good as what I have said. Our life is good, when you look past the everyday struggles that we all seem to face.
When we are challenged, the rubber hits the road, that is part of a good life because we are then challenged to rely on God more and more and less of ourselves.
So if I need to be challenged to rely on God and loose myself (dare I say it) I am willing to be challenged and molded, because I am nothing and God is everything and I want to rely on Him.
When the rubber hits the road, God comes along and scrapes me up and gives me more things to write about and hopefully it will be new things and new challenges.
Hopefully I will have learnt from the last scraping up and I won’t have to be challenged by that again.
Here’s hoping.
Psalms 145:14 The LORD sustains all who fall And raises up all who are bowed down
You will find me linked up at some of these great blogs.
There is something that never ceases to amaze me each week. As I read through different posts I see a similar thread running through them.
We are all the same, we are all going through things, trials, or we have been through trials that bring us to our knees.
We aren’t all suffering from cancer, we all haven’t lost a child or a baby through still birth. Some of us have spouses that are terminally ill, or children with disabilities. We haven’t all been dealt the same card but we are dealt from the same pack, the pack of life.
We have all felt anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, self-doubt, self-pity. We have probably all asked God the same question “why”.
I remember when our daughter died at 26 weeks gestation and we were at the funeral home and I was holding my daughter for the last time. In my grief I asked God “why”, I wondered if I wasn’t a good enough mother, or I had done something wrong. This was grief real and so very painful.
As the fog of grief gradually lifted, I had no definite answers to my “why” question but I did realise that my thinking was only that, thoughts with no basis.
I am pretty sure that you too have asked the same questions and received no answer.
But as we are all the same when it comes to going through tough times, we have one more thing in common.
The most important thing that we have in common as Christians is our God. He is the same for you and for me. He doesn’t answer all our “why” questions here on earth,
We must remember that He is always going to be there for us when we are going through these tough times.
When family members are ill, He is there. When our children are taken from us, He is there. When we are financially broken, He is there.
So through our grief, He is the one who is there, carrying us, caring for us and never leaving us.
As we cling to Him remember – He is our God, He created us, He knows us, and as for all the “why” questions, when we see Him as our God, we won’t really need to know the answers.
So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross, Till my trophies at last I lay down; I will cling to the old rugged cross, And exchange it someday for a crown.
You will find me linked up at some of these great blogs.
Hey there everyone, welcome to another Good Morning Mondays.
I must admit this past week has been a bit quieter after our excitement from the eisteddfod last week.
I have been feeling really unmotivated and a little bit down. I don’t know why, whether it is the weather, it being winter here or hormones or just me – who knows.
I spoke to an older lady friend at church this morning about it and I said to her in the end, that I will most likely get over it. She agreed.
What !!! no comfort, no words of wisdom, no sympathy?? I guess the best thing was she didn’t tell me to suck it up :-).
(Don’t worry I harbour no hard feelings towards her, I was just having a slight whinge and I will get over it.)
I am glad that my husband doesn’t let me wallow for too long and encourages me to keep on keeping on.
I finished sewing the sleep suit for our friends son and they were really pleased with them and it is wonderful to be able to help out.
I haven’t managed to get the curtains done yet but really need to get a move on as it is quite cold in our sons bedroom.
We didn’t have our sewing afternoon as our youngest son has a cold and just needed to stay put and inside and keep warm. This is hard as he loves being outside.
I haven’t got any grandchildren photos this week but I thought I would post some photos of our No 1 sons puppies. He had 2 bitches who had puppies. One lot are a staghound cross and the puppies are huge at 9 weeks and the others are a jack russell/fox terrier x and they are tiny.
Below is a photo of the stag puppies getting stuck into some cows milk. The cat in the background was in there as well, they seem to get on all right. My husband calls them dish-lickers and he feeds them after he milks the cows in the mornings.
No 2 son is so excited as he gets to keep a staghound bitch for himself and has been testing out various names. The latest being “Reckless” named after the Waltons hound dog.
Now onto our link up. Thank you everyone for taking the time to link up. I managed to get at least one of everyone’s posts read this week and I am really enjoying reading and stopping by everyone’s blogs. I was so impressed with all that you have to say.
Well done to everyone who linked up and I am looking forward to seeing what is on the link up this week.
I am going to try The Farmer’s Wife way of schooling for the next couple of weeks and try afternoon classes instead of the morning ones. Hopefully the children may be more settled and all our chores done before we start.
This week coming starts slow but will be busy by the end of the week. That cow that we have hanging up will be dealt with along with about 12 pigs.
Our son-in-law, daughter and their girls are coming down later in the week to help us process all the meat and make sausages. Hopefully by Saturday afternoon the majority of it will be bagged up in the freezer.
I am going to get some meals made early in the week so that I don’t have to worry about what to cook while we are working. The last thing I feel like doing when we are packing meat is cooking.
I will make a couple of soups and a couple of casseroles to feed the hungry mouths.
It will be wonderful to see our son-in-law, daughter and their family again and I will hopefully have more photos to share next week.
Also a prayer request: If you could remember Glenys Hicks in your prayers. Glenys has a couple of blogs and is having some health struggles.
I look forward to hearing from you all and would love to know how you are all going. I hope and pray that you are all well.
Have a great week and may God bless you all.
Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you;The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”
Hi there all and welcome back to another Good Morning Mondays.
What a week it has been and I hope and pray that you all experienced God’s blessings in your life.
We had a quiet start to the week which was good. We had our Revelation Study on Tuesday night and that continues to be so very interesting.
Thursday our children attended another Eisteddfod, this time in Warrnambool. We had such a great time and were able to catch up with some of our friends there.
The children played really well and No 2 daughter got 2 first placings and a Honourable Mention, No 2 son got 1 first and 1 third placing. Their sister and her husband and their children managed to come this time which was wonderful and quite an effort considering the 3 hour drive for them.
Our children also received an Encouragement Award each which goes towards their music tuition. This was such a blessing as we were behind with their fees this year.
Here they are at the piano they performed on.
After the Eisteddfod we went and visited with friends of ours who homeschool as well, some of their children also competed in the Eisteddfod, so we saw them there as well.
We have known this family for a long time and it is wonderful to see how the older children have grown and all the little ones as well. They have 10 children so with ours and our daughters family it sure was a house full at tea time.
Of course we stayed late because we were having such a good time and I only got to bed at 3 am because I kept talking to our daughter and son-in-law once we got home.
Our daughters family stayed on Friday as well and the men went cutting fire wood and our daughter and I took the children to their music lessons (their teacher was really pleased with them) and then tried to stay awake all day 🙂
Saturday was a catch up day and we slept in and did some jobs around the place and some of our other friends stopped in around afternoon tea time for a cuppa, which was lovely, they even brought afternoon tea.
It is such a blessing to have like minded Christian friends and we are blessed to call both of these families good friends.
We sold another 4 piglets which is wonderful and now we only have 4 little ones left
And now because we had our grandchildren here I have to share some photos. There was lots of kissing and cuddling with them.
Our youngest granddaughter just loves giving her mum kissesAunty with her niecesUncle and nieceMore kisses
These couple of days were pretty full on but wonderful and will live as memories for quite a while.
Now onto our link up. Thank you to everyone who took the time to link up this past week. I have decided that if I am behind the eight ball with reading I will read at least one post that you have linked up, so that is why I haven’t commented on them all, and I did have some issues with the computer as well which meant that some comments I left didn’t actually work.
Please keep linking up as I enjoy reading the posts that you all share and feel so blessed with the community of friends I have here. You are all such a blessing.
This post has wonderful news that Jakob Cooper is at home now. Also in this post is a prayer request for baby Daxton. Please if you haven’t read this pop over and join us in praying for Jakobs’ continuing healing and baby Daxton and his family.
Wow what a link up, full of wisdom and good ideas. Thanks to you all.
This coming week is a bit quieter here (yay) not that I don’t love having family around, that is always great.
We are home most of the week, and are having a sewing afternoon on Thursday. We haven’t had one for a couple of weeks due to other activities, so it will be wonderful to spend the afternoon together.
That same night my husband has a church meeting so I might go in and visit with Mrs H and see how she is going and coping with all that is happening with her family.
Friday the children have music lessons (changed due to school holidays) so we get to stay home on Saturday and have 3 weeks before their next lesson and then only 2 weeks after that until their exams.
I still have one more sleep suit to make for our friends and I am definitely hoping to finish that early this week.
School of course is a priority and I am starting on a new schedule that I made up, so hopefully that will keep me on line.
We bought some strawberry plants so I want to plant them in the aquaponics along with some carrot seeds and I need to start pruning our roses.
I hope you all have a wonderful week and I am looking forward to hearing how you are all going and what is happening in your lives.
Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you;The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”
We were watching a DVD of the Waltons the other day and it was the one when the gypsies were around and spent time camping at the Walton’s house.
John Walton was talking to the gypsy father and they were discussing the fact that the gypsy family would travel all over the place and never had a place to settle down and to call home.
The gypsy father said that home to them wasn’t about a building or a place, but it was about family, about the people around them.
This definitely got me thinking, home isn’t about the building we live in. Home isn’t the size of our house or how many bedrooms we have.
Home isn’t about how many acres we live on or how many bathrooms we have.
Home is about the people around us, the people we love.
A house is built of brick and stone a home is built of love alone.
So don’t put the value of your home on the building but on the people around you that you love, that is family.
Blessings xxx
You will find me linked up at some of these great blogs.
Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
there is no shadow of turning with thee;
thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not;
as thou hast been thou forever will be. Refrain:
Great is thy faithfulness! Great is thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
all I have needed thy hand hath provided;
great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!
Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, moon and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love. Refrain
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide; strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside! Refrain
This hymn has been going around in my head for a couple of days now.
I just think that God’s faithfulness is great, that he cares for us in all seasons of our lives, that He is watching over us at all times.
God blessed our children this past week with Encouragement Awards at the Eisteddfod we attended. These awards are funds to help with their music tuition. This was such a blessings as we have been behind with their music fees this year.
We couldn’t believe it, and we were so excited and thankful. I was sitting there as they were getting ready to announce the awards thinking “Oh Lord it would be wonderful it one of the children won one”, but I didn’t think it would happen. Not because I didn’t think God could do it but because there were so many other children who played so well and were deserving of an award.
So when they both won one, it was wonderful.
As our oldest daughter said God blessed the children for their diligence in practicing and in turn that blessed us as a family.
When everyone had settled down, I had time to think about how blessed we are and how God is faithful to supply all our needs.
Great is His faithfulness
You will find me linked up at some of these great blogs.
This is the cake I made for our daughters 10th birthday. I saw something like this on a blog link up but for the life of me I couldn’t find it again, so I am sorry that I can’t link you back there.
I used my basic chocolate cake recipe with added raspberries.
You might notice by now that I like musicals and especially western based ones. Annie Get Your Gun was one I saw when I was just a youngster and then I found it again when I was older and we had our own children.
This story is about Frank Butler, Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
Annie is a sharp shooting, poor tomboy who with her younger siblings travel around shooting birds and selling them to boarding houses.
It is at one of these boarding houses that she gets offered a shooting match with Frank Butler who believes himself to be the best shot in the whole world. Annie is enamoured with Frank from the moment she sets eyes on him. Frank is rather big headed and can’t believe a girl can beat him.
Annie wins the contest and they invite her into the show to be the girl who hands Frank his guns and she does do a few shooting tricks as well.
Eventually her and Frank become closer and the management at the show get her to do a really big trick to help boost attendances which shows how good she is and of course Frank is upset and he leaves and joins up with Pawnee Bills Wild West Show – the opposition.
Eventually after a European tour Annie and the crew come back to New York and are invited to a big banquet with Pawnee Bill’s group. Both shows are broke and are relying on each other having enough money to pay all the bills and join the two shows together – to merge.
If you’ve seen the show this is where Frank and Annie see each other after months apart and declare their love for each other. This of course leads to another big argument about who is a better shot and leads into the song I Can Do Anything Better Than You.
If you don’t know the song it is a tit for tat about who can sing sweeter, who can bake better, basically if Frank says he can do it Annie says she can do it better.
NOW this is where we start to learn something.
Annie thinks she is better and probably she is a better shot, but she hasn’t worked out her role, her God given role.
They have a big bust up and then Annie challenges Frank to a shoot out to finally settle who is the best. She gives her $100,000 worth of medals as a bet and it is on.
They meet to have their shoot out and her adopted Indian Father mucks up the sights on Annie’s guns so that they don’t shoot right and of course she misses.
He knows that to win Frank Butler, Annie can’t win the match. Annie finally realises what is going on and concedes defeat and her and Frank float off into the sunset, happily together.
Sometimes we women are better at doing things than our husbands and that is okay, that isn’t the problem. It is how we handle these situations that are the issue.
We are not second best but God has created us especially to be helpmeets for our husbands, to use the giftings that only He has given us to honour our husbands and to be their support.
Marriage relationships aren’t about competing, they are about merging two people together in love and being there for each other, supporting each other within the order that God has placed us.
Genesis 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
Ephesians 5:22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
1 Peter 3:1 Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives.
You may find me linked up with some of these amazing blogs.
