Dave & I are in the process of finding another church...after raising our kids in one on the other side of the county. It has not been an easy decision for me because it's more like God is nudging Dave to go a different direction than my habits have formed.
I wonder what Sarai said to Abram when he came home & said,
"Honey, we are moving."
"Where are we moving to?"
"I don't know exactly; just come with me......................."
And Sarai would be thinking about the details of packing all their worldly possessions and meals for all the servants and what is going to happen next while Abram is thinking about the promised land or something. I have no insight into his mind. I can easily imagine hers, though!
So, in the now, I am trusting God & calling my husband 'Boss' and not being frightened by any fear. This is not a politically correct attitude~but it comes right out of the New Testament in a book called 1 Peter in the third chapter. I have been laughed at for respecting my husband's authority in our marriage but I think I can trust God to be right on this one.
Dave and I have had deeper conversations and an increasing love & respect for each other as we wander around our wilderness following God. I'm excited about the future, and the part of the Body that we will be planted in next.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Every green plant for food
In Genesis 1:30, God says He has given every green plant for food to all the life that He made. I had to go look it up; I just brought home another huge bag of green stuff from the crop share I joined for the first time this year.
I had not previously thought that my diet was all that limited because I eat more types of vegetables than the rest of my family. But this has stretched my boundaries considerably! I have discovered that I don't know much at all about 'all the green plants' God has given for food. And some of them look suspiciously like the weeds in my yard. Some smell like a stink bug...googling has resulted in my theory that those particular leaves are cilantro and I don't know if I can bring myself to use them.
As I sorted through my piles of harvest, it occurred to me that I do this a lot with people....pile 'em up in heaps of familiarity or strangeness and put the unfamiliar ones in a holding pattern to deal with later....often later means 'didn't happen' and I end up discarding a slime pile or waving at a neighbor for years without actually connecting. (Maybe I should walk across the road with a bag of lettuce.)
It occurred to me also that I disregard the vast majority of what God has blessed me with, simply because I would have to trust Him to give me wisdom to deal with it.
I had not previously thought that my diet was all that limited because I eat more types of vegetables than the rest of my family. But this has stretched my boundaries considerably! I have discovered that I don't know much at all about 'all the green plants' God has given for food. And some of them look suspiciously like the weeds in my yard. Some smell like a stink bug...googling has resulted in my theory that those particular leaves are cilantro and I don't know if I can bring myself to use them.
As I sorted through my piles of harvest, it occurred to me that I do this a lot with people....pile 'em up in heaps of familiarity or strangeness and put the unfamiliar ones in a holding pattern to deal with later....often later means 'didn't happen' and I end up discarding a slime pile or waving at a neighbor for years without actually connecting. (Maybe I should walk across the road with a bag of lettuce.)
It occurred to me also that I disregard the vast majority of what God has blessed me with, simply because I would have to trust Him to give me wisdom to deal with it.
Monday, June 6, 2011
I'm baaaaaack....
I have been busy lately; I worked full-time for a while, got laid off, went on unemployment, started an Etsy shop (http://www.etsy.com/shop/13thBasket) to force myself to learn computerese.......
My husband keeps saying, "Did you make any money yet?" and, "You could do that blog thing" with no actual sense of how steep the learning curve is. He knows it is steep because all he does on a computer is look at Craigslist & sloooowly surf & play Spider solitaire. He's getting better at Facebook because our oldest son is stationed in Guam & deployed to Turkey so that's how we get updates.
He has never had to "market" himself because his customers come to him. His family have been woodworkers in this county for generations and we live in the house he grew up in so people come to the door & say, "Is this the Jacoby that does cabinetry?" God keeps providing just enough work without showing the long-range schedule.
It reminds me of the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness. It can be so easy to complain about the insecurity of following the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night! It is much easier to trust God to lead my husband than it is to step out in faith and do new things myself, despite the fact Dave has been encouraging me to do it.
A huge factor of self-employment is being a self-starter. Make that a CONSISTENT self-starter. Much of my life I have been a responder-to-the-current-problem; homemaking & homeschooling tend to run like that, and my jobs are generally the call center type. Dave is a great self-starter and I am slowly learning from his example. It's an attitude change that requires not only researching how to blog & run an Etsy shop but doing it.
My husband keeps saying, "Did you make any money yet?" and, "You could do that blog thing" with no actual sense of how steep the learning curve is. He knows it is steep because all he does on a computer is look at Craigslist & sloooowly surf & play Spider solitaire. He's getting better at Facebook because our oldest son is stationed in Guam & deployed to Turkey so that's how we get updates.
He has never had to "market" himself because his customers come to him. His family have been woodworkers in this county for generations and we live in the house he grew up in so people come to the door & say, "Is this the Jacoby that does cabinetry?" God keeps providing just enough work without showing the long-range schedule.
It reminds me of the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness. It can be so easy to complain about the insecurity of following the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night! It is much easier to trust God to lead my husband than it is to step out in faith and do new things myself, despite the fact Dave has been encouraging me to do it.
A huge factor of self-employment is being a self-starter. Make that a CONSISTENT self-starter. Much of my life I have been a responder-to-the-current-problem; homemaking & homeschooling tend to run like that, and my jobs are generally the call center type. Dave is a great self-starter and I am slowly learning from his example. It's an attitude change that requires not only researching how to blog & run an Etsy shop but doing it.
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