So Who's Thinking Hard About the Moon?!

Did you hear on the news tonight that we're going to spend probably millions if not BILLIONS of dollars in an experiment that will allow NASA scientist to use something that will hurl an object at the moon so that it will cause such an explosion that it will create a crater (well an intentional one) on it, and where it will hit it with such force that it will cause moon debris to fly up from the moon and spread out miles.  Why would they want to do that?  They want to essentially see if the moon could ever possibly sustain...LIFE.

It was said that they are really hoping to find ice in the debris and explosion because it had first been thought that there was just a lot of moon dust.  Then, with some kind of advanced imaging, there minds were changed about what they originally thought.  There might be, they think, more than just the silvery grey moon dust.  Ice could be there!  They said that they wouldn't have to take so many provisions to the moon in subsequent visits because they could melt the ice and it could be used for water to drink and other things.  They could eventually produce oxygen.  Oxygen--water...well, these things could possibly sustain...LIFE.

Now imagine for a moment what's next.  Bring in the soil and artificial sunlight, and we could start growing plants on the moon.  That's food people!  Food is needed for humans and animals.  Oh wait--if we have the plant life and animals can eat it too, we could possibly fly animals to the moon.  Wait!  Someone will have to maintain the plants and the animals, so people will have to eventually live on the moon.  If people live on the moon, we'll have to figure out the housing situation for them.  Plant life, animals, people, housing--those things would very possibly sustain...LIFE on the moon

Oh, by the way, we're set to do this experiment tomorrow, so, the money it cost to do it is already spent, meaning, while we're in a recession and third world countries are even worse off than that, we think it's important enough to blow a hole (experimentally now) in a side of the moon.  Now think of it positively, you skeptics and naysayers.  If this works, it may be taking millions (or billions) away from us now while we need it most, but eventually it could sustain...LIFE-- that is, whoever survives what we're going through now and in the future.

WOW!!  Think of what we could do with that money--appropriate and necessary military missions and soldiers' families back home, easier access to start-up money for small business, Chrisitan missions trips (now who would think of that?!!), money for anything that would make government smaller, better public schools or access to competitive, modern curriculum for those who choose not to send their children to public but can't afford private (poor people love their kids and want what's best for them too), more domestic violence shelters in every state where women and their children who are fleeing for their lives can take immediate occupancy--the list can go on and on.  These things truly sustain what's important to God...LIFE...OURS...NOW...meeting us and our needs where we are.  That's why He entrusts us with His monetary provisions. 

How long will someone's "bright as the sun" ideas, on our behalf continue to be loftier than the moon?!!

A Word to the Wise--Don't Compromise (your health, that is)

For both men and women, it's extremely important to get regular check-ups, have the proper diet, and exercise, but I'd like to talk specifically to the women today.

Since birth, I've been what's considered a sickly baby. Had to stay in an oxygen bubble for a while, had a structural bone disorder that caused my legs and feet to be turned the wrong way and therefore, had to wear braces from the knee down and special shoes, couldn't tolerate milk, had a bad skin condition that required treatment, had terrible bowel habits, bad acne as a teen into adulthood, MVP and an arrhythmia, dry skin, Gestational Trophoblastic Disease (cancer), Ehlers-Danlos disease, arthritis, you name it. Woe is me, right?!  No!  God is good!  Among other positive things, having had all of these "problematic opportunities" has made me keenly aware of what's going on with my body, at early onset of symptoms.  These opportunities have made me realize too, that although I've experienced what seems to be a lot of problems, there is always somebody out there worse off than I am, so, my "problems" cease to be problems.  While that's noble thinking, there could be, if left unchecked, a "problem" with that kind of thinking too.  But back to my awareness--I now listen carefully and closely to my body.

Women tend to be too busy to pay attention. I'm guilty, or have been.  We ignore symptoms early on, chalking them up to be a fluke or assuming that in time, it'll go away.  It's no big deal.  Now I'm not saying that we should run to the doctor or stress out at the first nail split or headache.  There are those who assume that a headache must mean they're about to die.  Well, that could be the case, but not usually.  I'm talking about symptoms that may start, stop, perhaps not come back for a while, but then, they return, and the cycle continues.  It could also be symptoms that are just foreign to what you know is usual for your body, or symptoms that are persistent or chronic that you never had in years prior.  You may notice that out of nowhere, your activity level and focus level is different, and it's not just related to being legitimately tired or over-stressed from a busy schedule.  Something else that stands out would be symptoms of diseases or conditions that are not indicative of someone in your age group.  You may not know of family members with whom you share a hereditary or genetic disease or disorder.

Pay attention.  Listen to your body and the Lord's prompting.  Get regular check-ups. Eat right. Exercise according to your ability and doctor's orders, and again, pay attention.  If you start having issues, physical, mental, or emotional problems, pain, symptoms that your intuition tells you just aren't right and they've become persistent, let your doctor know immediately.  You'd rather get a clean bill of health and feel a little paranoid than ignore a problem that you could have caught and treated early and didn't, and suffer the consequences.  You'll get over your paranoia if you were unnecessarily worried about something, but you can't get over things that there could have been an early cure for, that suddenly, because your condition is so far gone, there is no longer a cure.

You know, because I'm not a complainer, have a high pain tolerance level, and always assume that my pain and conditions aren't really that big a deal or there is always someone worse off (so why should I complain--I don't like whining or whiners), I tend/ed to write things off, minimize them, not understand how much pain I was in or should have been in, take Advil or Tylenol for a quick pain relief (and I didn't even take these often enough), etc.  These thoughts and behaviors got me in trouble, although I would usually end up getting things in check fairly early.  I could have caught them earlier though and prevented damage I suffer with now, had I not written them off.  I knew quickly that something was wrong, my body was suddenly changing, I couldn't do things I used to for no apparent reason, I didn't feel good, I was suddenly in pain everyday, etc.  I knew these things and could detect eventually, that these things were not normal for me.  I knew that I had always been, as mentioned earlier, a sickly person, so why didn't I get a jump on my conditions and diseases early?  I think I answered this question above.

Don't be me.  Yes, now I pay more attention, I get my check-ups, I see my specialists, and I try really hard to take care of myself and do all that my body, at this point, will allow me to do, BUT, you can do better earlier, with the right thinking.  Taking care of yourself now is proper prevention, but if you should find yourself  "out of sorts", I can't stress to you enough to see your doctor.  Another thing you should do is insist, if you believe that something is really, really wrong, that your doctor look a little deeper.  I had a good doctor tell me one time, concerning insisting on looking deeper, "Unless you're a hyperchondriac, you're probably on to something.  We know a lot, but we don't have your body nor your intuition.  If you're wrong, so be it.  If you're right, we'll try and fix it quickly, if possible."  I love this doctor.  I feel comfortable with this doctor.  Find a doctor that listens to you and works with you.  I've had doctors who couldn't figure out what was wrong with me so they would discontinue my visits with them or pass me on to the next specialist, even specialist who didn't specialize in any symptom or problem I had.  But finally, God, with much pleading and begging from me, sent me to the right person, and now I'm getting proper treatments.

I needed to get as healthy as possible for me, but not just for me or even mainly for me, but to serve God and my family as best I could.  This was my reason and motivation to get help.  What will be your motivation?  Getting healthy says it's not just about you, but it's putting others before yourself who love you and need you.  It's telling God that you want to be all that He has designed you to be for His glory and your and someone else's good.  No matter what shape we're in, we can and should serve God.  He knows how He can and wants to use us.  It's our job to be prepared, useable, and available.  Ladies, take care of yourselves.  You know what that means.

Be Still Sundays

Will you be still today, and tune out the pressures and stressors in the world, and hear from God?  I know, we should do this everyday, at some point in the day, but will you just start here, today, now?  I understand that there is nothing magical about the name Sunday, except it's the day we've set aside to rest, like God instructed in His Word. Why do you think that He wants us to rest one day?   Do you suppose that He knew how busy our lives would become, and He wanted us to purposely stop, tune in to Him, reflect on the week, meditate on the Word, take our cares and concerns to Him, worship Him intentionally, praise Him for what He has done and will do, among other things.

Do you think, like Him, He wants us to rest and observe what we've done and decide whether "it is good?" You know, He looked at His work and decided "it was good."  Did Almighty, all-powerful God really need to rest?  No, of course not.  He is God, but, He chose to, and He can do that.  If He chooses to do that, then don't you think that He has a purpose for rest and intends for us to do it too?  How do you recharge, refocus, and renew for the rest of the week?  We don't know what we're going to face, but we can get with God and ask Him, on our resting day, to meet us every day of the new week coming, and help us through.  We can use the things that we reflected and meditated on, on our rest day, to carry us through.  What do you think?

Tea Tuesdays--Some things will never change!!

I'm so crazy about tea, particularly Japanese green, that I even have to write my tea posts in green, just to keep the feel. Now that's insane!! But there are so many reasons to love tea!! If you want to go back and read from the beginning of my blog posts on tea, want to educate yourself on this incredible beverage, want to see some nice pictures, and just how far I'll go to tell you about tea, go to my other blog, http://www.howdowegettherefromhere.blogspot.com/, and click on To the Tune of Tea Tuesdays. There is a lot to see and read.

Today, I want to give thanks to Lori Overcash and Larry Malone for gifting me with some incredible Assam black tea. Yes, I am primarily a green tea fan, but blended properly, I can really appreciate a great black tea also, and that is exactly what I am going to do with my latest tea gifts. I have enough to enjoy for a long time, and I have enough to share. Hmm...did you hear that? Share!!

I smell a giveaway!!  Yes, you can possibly win some of my pure, black, Assamese type tea and drink it straight or blend it with your favorite dried fruit, spices, or herbs.  What do you have to do?  Just leave a comment, I will take them all and draw a name at random. That person will be the winner. Pretty simple, huh?

The other reason for this post is to tell you my ideas of what I'm thinking of doing with the remainder of my black tea. I really, really have been wanting to make chai. Chai, as you may already know, incorporates, black tea, spices, herbs, milk, and sugar. Oh my goodness!!  It is one of my favorite winter beverages. It is so soothing, smooth, tasty, spicy, and delicious. I drink it as long as the weather is cool or cold, and I won't stop until well into spring. If I don't make chai with all of it, I'd like to blend the remainder with bergamot to try my own Earl Grey or blend some with dried fruit. For the spring and summer, I would blend it with dried, edible flower petals. Do you have any blending ideas? Help me decide. Maybe between us, I can divide it up and make samplings of many things.

I'll end this post by giving you one of many chai recipes you can try on your own. Have a great tea-drinking moment today!

Try This:

Boil 5 minutes, then steep 10 minutes:

1 Tbsp fennel or anise seed

6 green cardamom pods

12 cloves

1 cinnamon stick

1/4 in. ginger root, sliced thin

1/4 tsp black pepper corns

2 bay leaves

7 cups of water (spring or filtered)

Add, bring to a boil, and simmer 5 minutes:

2 Tbsp Darjeeling or Assam black tea

Add:

6 Tbs. honey or brown sugar

1 cup of milk

Parenting Is a Forever Trust and Treasure

You know, I've written an article similar but not totally like this before, but it's worth revisiting. For those of you who have grown children, especially ones who may have made mistakes, this may be especially worth reading. You never stop parenting some kind of way.

I have a semi-grown son (he's 19, married, and has our first grandson). Before he and his wife moved in with us to get their "footing" before he joins the Air Force, he called me one day and said, "Mom, I've decided I'm not a grown up after all. I still need your help and advice, and I've got so much on my plate, I wish I was a kid again."  What?!!  What parent didn't know this already, and upon hearing it, just wants to jump up and down--except you jump inside while you look calm and nonjudgemental on the outside. Well, I didn't have to have the calm look because my conversation was over the phone. That means I got to smile...knowingly.

In a perfect world, my son would be in college right now, on a full academic scholarship (he is such an academically smart and creative kid) more than half done with his 4 years, looking forward to graduation and his big future, still single but possibly dating with the intent of getting married (waiting purposely on that until some time after graduation), a job, a starter house to bring her home to, and only needing me to send love, blessings, those anticipated care packages and a little monetary support. Nice dreams mom, but that's not our world. I don't know if it was ever in his future for things to turn out this way, but one thing I am sure of, is that it wasn't in his future, at least not in God's perfect will for him, to turn out the way it has.

You see, my son, yeah, that smart kid, had a mental breakdown at 15 1/2 that lasted 2 1/2 years, rebelled against authority like never before, left home for short stints without us knowing, lost his short-term memory and sense of direction, lost some of his academic abilities, and thought he had gone so far that God couldn't forgive him or use him for anything. This was a few things among many that he and we suffered through those years. Poor kid. What now?

My job, at this point, was supposed to be Mom the Life Coach, the supporter who came alongside, the prayer warrior for the adult child out on his own, etc., not the mom who needed God to show her that she wasn't going to have some sort of breakdown herself when all of this hit. No, things don't always go quite the way we planned, expected, or think that we and our children deserve. But, whose world is this anyway? And is EVERYTHING not filtered through the hands of God? Am I any better than anyone else? Why should I think I DESERVE better and be disappointed about the fact that mine was a less than perfect world? What world did I think I was living in anyway? I got answers to ALL of these questions. I got clarity on the ones I already knew the answers to. I got closer to the Lord. I had a new job to do, and I needed to be a new kind of parent.

Grown kids can have anything from the greatest situations happen to them in life where we are just so extremely proud of them, we can't wait to tell everybody, or they can have situations where we're so ashamed of their behavior, that we don't want to tell anybody, except maybe our closest, prayer-warring friends. I chose to be the parent that learned how to parent an almost adult child, and one that had issues to boot. I chose to be what I needed in my friends and family--a prayer warrior and not a worrier. 

My son is better now, but his statement still comes to mind often. He needs me still, in some kind of way, even when he was rebelling and didn't realize he needed me. They need us. We're not done parenting, whether they've done well or made mistakes. This parenting thing is a life-long commitment, whether they live with you or live five states over. Their every conversation with you says that "I trust you to love me, support me, tell me the truth, pray for me, correct me, advise me, and be there for my children, if God chooses this for me."

My son has come back and not only apologized, but has verbally proved to us that he understands the need for a parent and that he doesn't want to live this life without one (until God calls us home). He doesn't want his son to miss out on the blessings of a loving grandparent.  Now this is where I smile again, but this time, I can let him see me. I want him to know that this makes a parent happy. This isn't a smile of pride that thinks, "Yeah, I knew you'd come back and tell me that. I knew you'd see the light one day boy! I knew I was right."  It's a knowing smile that God is good, and He is good all of the time, through good and bad. It's a smile that says He is in control, even when we think that He has abandoned us or briefly forgotten about us and our situation. It is a smile that says that He is still in the miracle working business, although a God that speaks the earth into existence didn't work a miracle. That would only be in our eyes. He just does what THE GOD of the universe does. He IS GOD! Creating things is easy for Him. I smiled that day because I realized that I didn't have to have a prodigal son who returned home, and if he didn't, I knew that I still needed to be okay with that. And you know what? I had already gotten that way, before he came back. 

God had promised good to me, and He wanted me to know that His good and my good may look different, but that He was still truly GOOD!  He can't be otherwise.  My son is not the same he was before his breakdown, but he is so much better than he was. I don't have any idea why God chose not to restore him completely or back to his former self, but I know it's part of His perfect plan for the rest of my son's life. I gave this son, in my heart and mind, back to the one who created and designed him. What better parent than God can he have? I don't come close. Our Abba Father is my son's loving parent. And God has used me as His earthly vessel to do His parenting through. So I can't afford to be prideful. I must be humble. For he still needs me...

Be Still Sundays

I love the "Be Still Sunday" button. I used this on my last blog. It's my Sunday post. I would use it in place of writing on Sunday. It was my reminder to myself and my readers to just take the time to slow down today and be still; let God minister to us and hear His voice. It's also a time to reflect on what you learned today at church or wherever you worshipped.

I really only slow down and am still for part of the day. I do AWANA (http://www.awana.org/) on Sunday evenings. It gives me a chance to minister to children, specifically the girls grades 3-6. I love what God is allowing me to do with them, and I love them.

Anyway, I usually won't post on Sundays. When you visit me here on Sundays, you will see the above button. I hope you take the time today, at some point if not the whole day, to be still.

What's Up With The Latest Outbursts?!!

Can somebody help me with the latest embarrasing outbursts we've been seeing for the last few months?  Is this lack of self-control, decency, and protocol becoming the norm?  But then, I guess when you have the start of this phenomena start with Jessie Jackson saying something negative about the President before he could even get in office good, and the whole world being privy to it, what can you expect?  I think that started the ball rolling and gave everybody license (including the person who is supposed to be the biggest "example setter"-the President himself) to do the same thing.

After Jessie (who is lower than the bottom on my "like list") spilled his cup of hater-ade, we turn to our Chief Commanding Officer admitting that he didn't have all the facts on the case of a police officer arresting his friend Henry Gates, yet publicly he said the officer acted "stupidly." Next up, we get Rep. Wilson who quite audibly and pointedly told the Pres he lied during one of the CCO's speeches/addresses. Move on to Serena Williams, whom everyone respected in the game of tennis, who loses so much control that she threatens to shove a tennis ball down the throat of a line ref, AND, as if that wasn't enough, we get Kanye "master at losing control-no tact" West who just completely embarrases and robs another singer of her earned moment in the spotlight.  I can top that one still, because we end these charades by having the President (yes, our leader again) overheard calling Kanye what he (Kanye) was truly acting like...a jack***!!!  What twittering or tweeting can do for you or against you!!  Be careful what you say folks!  Someone may be listening!

Yeah, I hear ya--"Everyone makes mistakes, no one should have leaked what the Pres said, everyone gets angry and out of control sometimes, we're all human, yadda, yadda, yadda."  Okay if that's the case, what do YOU have to say about all of this?  Comment or give me your OUTBURST!