childlike faith

Last Monday night, I received a mysterious text from my darling Aunt asking if we had time for a visitor the following day.  Umm, yeah!

She arrived by 9am on Tuesday morning.

In our preparation to welcome her, Brandon asked me, "Mommy, Great Aunt Toby doesn't know Jesus, does she?"
"No, she doesn't, sweetie," I said.
"Well then, we need to tell her."
"Yes, we do.  Knowing Jesus is the most important thing we do in our whole life."

I didn't know if Brandon really had anything planned and so we continued cleaning up the house (it had gotten neglected...nothing like a surprise visitor to whip us/it into shape in light speed!).

She arrived and the boys were so excited that I'm pretty sure they pulled every toy they own out of their room to show to her.  Silas dragged out this gun and that gun.  LOL.  Eventually we sat down at the table for some pancakes and pears.

Brandon: "Great Aunt Toby?  I want to read something to you."  He proceeded to pull out and read from his Bible various memory verses he had collected from church in recent weeks.  "I'll be right back, Great Aunt Toby, there's something I have to get from my room."  He returned a few seconds later with a neon green bracelet with the words "Jesus made me special" stitched onto it.  "Great Aunt Toby, do you know why I am wearing this bracelet?"

After breakfast, she and I collected the dishes, cleaned up, and chatted.  Brandon entered the kitchen and said, "Great Aunt Toby, I want to read my Bible to you."  Me: "Brandon, can you wait a minute until we finish talking?"  So, Brandon with his Bible sat on the bench in the dining room and patiently waited for us to finish.  Finally, I realized (yes, some of us are slower than others) his motive.  He wanted to share God's Word, God's love and Jesus with my Aunt whom we all love so dearly and pray for so often and desperately plea with the Lord for her salvation and that of her entire family.  I asked him to read to Aunt Toby in the living room while I finished cleaning up.  He read the most random passage from 1 Samuel....all I could hear was something about boiled meat. LOL.  And she helped him with all the hard words...and it blessed my heart.  (All the while, Silas was blasting into the living room with this weapon and that.  Bahahaha!)  It was certainly a sight!  So funny and sweet.  But later as I pondered the morning and really let Brandon's actions settle into my core, I realized that it wasn't just sweet or cute, it was all that I desire as a mother: to raise children who understand the most precious thing in life is Jesus and to introduce others to Him.  It is EVERYTHING.  My 7-year-old, more bold than I, did what I should have done many times over.  And he did it without considering rejection, ridicule, embarrassment.  What a sweet gift he desired to give to my Aunt.  And what a blessing he is to my own heart.

My Aunt is so beautiful and dear to me.  I love her life and her attitude about things.  I see in her so much of what I want to be.  Her first grandchild will arrive in another month...and I am a little jealous of this precious one soon to be born because I have coveted and loved her attention and affection imparted to my own boys.  Soon, she will have her own grandson to embrace, snuggle, chase and have fun with.  Really, I am glad.  Everyone should have a grandma like the one she is going to be.

Share Jesus with your children and with all --- in love, in word, in deed, and in truth.  Raise disciples of Him who gave everything for you and for me and do not hinder them to share.

Have childlike faith.

"Whoever receives one of these little children in My name, receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent Me." ~Mark 9:37

don't read this book.

Skip the book: Presidents Who Dared by Edmund Lindop.  

Stated on page 32 about Thomas Jefferson:

"His often-quoted demand for 'a wall of separation between Church and State' later found its way into the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights."

Which made me wonder: what else will the author and publisher lie about?

Yes, these are the types of books with  blatant lies  that your children will learn from.

Pay attention.

There is no "separation of church and state" found anywhere in The Constitution of the United States.  Nor is it found in nay other governing documents.

More on this subject:  http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=123

a Fall morning.

This morning is so beautiful.  The weather has cooled...though it will still climb to 85 degrees today...but now it is about 60 and I bundled up in my robe and slippers (don't laugh!  To us desert dwellers, this is chilly.) and slipped out the back door to sink into my white adirondack chair and spend a little time reading my Father's Word.

The weeks have been so busy and I've been squeezing schoolwork into the cracks as we've been here and there.  But it's all good.  I do however miss the times to just read for fun and not have an agenda.  This is constantly out-of-blalance for me.  I am so driven to avoid "twaddle" that sometimes I think I am not letting my boys be children: enjoying fun and amusing and beautiful and cute children's stories.  I need to balance this and manage my time better.

Thankful for Fall and the feeling it brings.  The anticipation of the greatest of all American holidays: Thanksgiving, and the build up to Christmas.  Made my first Christmas purchases last night and am excited to see the radiant faces of their recipients when the time comes.

Bless you as you embrace this season in your own way.

Happy Fall!

today God healed my dog

Today was Borrego Days and the first in 6 years that I wasn't organizing and staging the parade.  So, the boys and I readied our bikes for a ride to the parade route.  I asked them to go into the car and grab umbrellas to keep the sun off of them.  Lily (our dog) had been out with the boys and Jamie.  I was inside gathering things together for our day out in Borrego enjoying the Festival.
We loaded our bikes and were about to leave when Jamie said that the dog was missing.

We looked through the house and called for her but to no avail.

She likes to roam the neighborhood so we figured she was out and about and would make her way home soon.   So, the boys and I set off and were gone until about 4pm while Jamie periodically stopped by the house to check to see if Lily had returned.  She hadn't.  We were getting very concerned...especially as the day was nearing dusk.

We had planned a barbecue at our house tonight.  I decided to pull the bounce house out of the garage for my boys to play on.  I went back and forth between the front yard and the garage a few times and was on my way back for one final time to retrieve an extension cord when I heard a noise from inside of my car.  I ran to the back driver's side door and opened it, and there on the floor was Lily!  She had been in the car for 10 hours...and our high temp here in Borrego today was 98.  Needless to say she was incredibly disoriented and weak. I couldn't believe she was alive.

Apparently when the boys went to the car to get their umbrellas, Lily had jumped into the car so she wouldn't be left at home.  Jamie and I never knew she was in there and the boys...being children weren't paying much attention.  I had asked Jamie earlier in the day to check the cars in case we had opened any of them up to grab something and didn't realize she was in there.  He checked, but never saw her.  She is black and the interior of my car is black.

I ran to get her some water but she was too disoriented to drink so I carried her into the house and gave her water from my hand.  She slowly regained some of her strength but was incredibly wobbly and seemed confused.  We began to be concerned about neurological damage and severe dehydration, so we beat feet to an animal urgent care hospital in Escondido.
I was so upset and emotional and blamed myself over and over for not looking hard enough for her.  I sat in the backseat with her while Jamie drove.  I texted several friends and asked for prayer.  She was so unsettled and kept moving, adjusting, and being anxious.  I knew I should pray fervently for this dog.  I felt ridiculous doing it for a dog but I placed my hands on her little head and prayed that God would heal her brain wholly.  Soon, she settled into a comfortable position and rested until we arrived at the animal hospital.  Jamie was rushing to get to the hospital and he said, "Every time I think of passing another car, I hear, 'Oh you of little faith.'"  So, I prayed aloud and we calmly proceeded to our destination.

As soon as we got there, she was checked out and everything seemed completely normal.  They ran some blood tests and other than signs of dehydration (duh!) she was perfectly normal.  She even ran out to us and jumped on us and cried to leave and sniffed around the lobby, etc.

It is now 12:39 A.M. and Jamie and I just returned home from the vet (a 3-hour drive roundtrip).  Our Lily is back to normal.  I do not want to be ignorant of God's work here and so I want to record this here and now.  I can not believe the dog I pulled out of that baking hot car is home, eating, chasing a fly around the kitchen, and now sleeping in her bed beside me.  God, thank You so much that You care for our silly doggies.  Thank You.

Evil is good?

below is an article in a recent CWA newsletter.  Have fun!

EVIL GOOD

Isaiah 5:20

by Mario Diaz, Esq., Legal Counsel

I suggest you brace yourself as we enter the theater of the absurd.

Dateline: McIntosh County, Georgia. A seven-year-old girl is causing quite a stir at her public school by demanding she be allowed to use the boys’ restroom.  Why, you ask? Well, according to her father Tommy Theollyn, the now-second grader told him when she was just 18 months old that she was in fact a boy.

So when school officials made his daughter use the girls’ restroom, Mr. Theollyn took her out of school. He wrote in a petition that "Forcing [his "transgender" daughter] to use a bathroom that does not match [her] presentation effectively discloses [her] status as a transgender child and thus endangers [her]."

One small detailed buried in the many reports of the story is that the "father" is, in fact, her mother!  She actually gave birth to this little one before she became transgender herself.

You cannot make this stuff up.  Enter ("stage right") the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia, of course, which is very concerned about this situation and has promptly sent a letter of intimidation to the county.  It reads:

[F]ederal law requires that every public school student have access to a free and appropriate public education.  The McIntosh County School System's recent decision regarding restroom access consistent with a student's gender identity appears to conflict with these expectations.

Unbelievable! There are, of course, no laws that would even hint at requiring a school to accommodate this child’s gender confusion. The ACLU is notorious for intimidating schools into doing what the law never requires when it comes to their leftist agenda. We have seen it for years, for example, with religious liberty.


In fact, there might be another part of the law that could apply here.  There was a time when what this mother has done to this innocent child would be called child abuse or neglect.  Her daughter told her she was transgender at 18 months?  Come on!  Have we lost all common sense!


When I ask my daughter how many apples are on the table and she counts, "one, two, five, ten," it is my duty as a father to correct her and show her how to count to four.  I would be in fact harming her if I let her think there are ten apples on the table.


But the amazing thing is that my daughter is three.  I also have an 18-month-old baby boy, and he can barely speak!  He can't even understand that he is not supposed to throw his food on the floor.  And this parent wants us to believe her daughter knew she was transgender at 18 months.  My son doesn't even know he's a human for crying out loud!


Is it not more probable that this mother, considering herself a transsexual, actually encouraged her daughter to identify herself this way?  Is that too hard to imagine?  My daughter wants to be like her mom.  She puts on her dresses and walks around in her shoes. She wants to be "just as pretty as mommy."


But they tell us there are no consequences to children with all this, remember?  All children need is love and it doesn't matter if they grow up with a mother and a father, or with two mommies, two daddies, or with a mommy that becomes a daddy, or anything else they can come up with.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil;

Who put darkness for light and light for darkness;

Who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

~Isaiah 5:20

We can not stand silent while this type of incident continues.  We must be that light that exposes the darkness.  And we must be willing to pay the price.


May we never lose the will to fight for God's truth.

"Oddly enough, presidents who are children of privilege sometimes feel an obligation to reform society in order to give children of poverty a better break.  And...presidents who are children of poverty sometimes feel that there is no need to reform a society that has enabled them to rise from privation to the summit."

~Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Childhood of the Presidents: Andrew Jackson 

COURAGEOUS

I know I'm being somewhat repetitive (especially if you follow me on facebook), but when something is this important and this good, it bears repeating.  I hope you will schedule right now to go see this movie.  It is not to be missed.  It is the key to freedom, hope, and life for future generations...particularly the one living under your own roof.

http://www.courageousthemovie.com/

Will you courageously influence your family for righteousness?

"I WILL!"