Grandma's Touch

This morning I sat out on the front porch, wrapped in a blanket because of the early chill. As I sat there I got to thinking about Rodney's grandmother. We now have her patio furniture, from their back porch, on our front porch. The frames were yellow, which is not us, so I painted them a hammered pewter. This has seemed to help make the flowered cushions seem more modern. No way, right now, that we can afford to replace all the cushions. But maybe I don't really want to. We would lose some of Grandma if we did, because as much as Grandpa loved his tools, Grandma loved flowers.

She loved them so much she even worked at a florist. I am not sure how many weddings from the family she worked on, but I know she made the bouquet for mine and Rodney's wedding. Her front yard was beautiful with wonderful flower beds and her porch was decorated with pots filled with gorgeous combinations of flowers.

She even had a flowered couch in her living room. Beautiful flowers were just her thing. Grandma was just like her flowers. A beautiful woman, inside and out. Sweet natured, gentle with the touch, seemed filled with wisdom and everyone loved her. I think I was really drawn to Rodney's grandmother because she was so much like mine. Grandma Inez was beautiful inside and out too. She loved to grow things, she was as gentle as she was beautiful and I can't think of anyone who didn't just love her to pieces. 

My grandmother loved my twin sister and myself more than I can even say. She was even willing to raise us from age two till seven. She almost had a nervous break down when my Dad remarried and we moved out. I have to say that all I remember from my grandmother is softness, gentleness, love and teaching. She was always trying to get us to learn to be self sufficient.  

Whenever I am doing all the girly grooming things and a bit of pain becomes involved, such as a tangle in my hair, I can just hear her say, "Beauty is painful Sweetheart, but worth it". Makes me smile every time. My Dad was a wise, wise man and I learned so many things from him (that's for another blog), but Grandma just had a way of nurturing two little girls that made everything she taught us stay with us forever. One of my favorite things that has stuck is remembering how she could make everything better with her wonderful back rubs. I know my men like that I have learned this.

Both of these women loved their God. It showed in every area of their lives. Rodney says he remembers getting little notes from his grandma concerning scriptures she had been reading that she thought would be beneficial to him. My grandma was a prayer warrior from way back. She was the one who taught me that prayer can change anything.

These two were truly women who lived up to these verses.....

   
Ecclesiastes 8:1

Who is wise? And who knows the meaning of anything? A person’s wisdom brightens the expression; it changes the hardness of someone’s face.

James 3:13

If you are wise, live a life of steady goodness so that only good deeds will pour forth. And if you don’t brag about them, then you will be truly wise!

As I grow more and more into maturity I truly hope that I can be, if only by half, as humble and wise as they were!

Maybe we all should be wishing for the same thing.

Blessings!!!!!

Are We Limping?

As you all know I have recently had a knee replacement surgery. The surgery was the easy part. The therapy after, has been the hard part. I did get lucky though and got to have only in home therapy. 

The therapist has been coming every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the last 3 1/2 weeks. During this time she takes my vitals and gives me exercises to do, but the main thing she comes for is to measure how far I can bend my knee back and how straight I can make the leg go. That is the main thing that the doctor who preformed the surgery is concerned about. He measures the success of the knee by these measurements.

Yesterday the therapist told me that I was ready to graduate from needing her to come. I am bending and straightening as far as I need to according to the time frame of the weeks since surgery. I still have about 3 more weeks of babying the knee and healing and exercising to go before the doctor may release me from his care, but for now I am on my own.

Since she is not coming to check on me and my progress does that mean I should just be lazy and not do the exercises? Of course not. The only thing that would do would be to take me backwards and I would not be able to walk without a bad limp from now on. It would only hurt me.

That is the way it is when we hold grudges and stay angry at people. As the anger festers inside of us we cannot grow as a Christian. We limp farther and farther away from a close relationship with our Heavenly Father. Did you know this anger only hurts us. No one else. Not even the person we are holding hard feelings for.

When we pray the Lord's prayer and ask God to forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, do we really mean that?

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your Kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us. 
Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom,
the power and the glory are yours.
Now and for ever.

Amen.

Matthew 6:9-13

What if God forgave the way we tend to? What if He never forgets what we did and is more than willing to bring up the disgrace when ever we do anything else that bothers Him. Would we really feel forgiven? 

Of course not.

But that is what we humans do. We say we forgive but boy do we pounce on any chance to remind the other person about how big we were to do this considering how far, in our eyes, they failed. Or we just plain choose that we can never forgive and avoid the person all together or go out of our way to make sure they feel humbled whenever we are around.

Happiness and contentment can never be found when this is going on in our lives because we can never have the relationship with anyone to achieve these things. We can never be close to God feeling this way. How sad!

I know I have had to work on this in my life. How about you? Maybe this week is the time to let go and let God help you forget as you forgive those who have sinned against you!

Maybe this week is a time not to limp backwards, but with our God's help we can move forward with healing, contentment and peace. 

Blessings! 

Crazy bugs!

Today Riley and I needed to run an errand that took us into New Castle. It was raining slightly as we drove in and still we had a few bugs hit the windshield. I thought that was a little weird but realizing that the corn is tasseling I figured there are a bunch of bugs eating on that and we were driving between two fields of tall corn stalks. So even in the rain the bugs were out there. 

On the way back home the rain had let up. Which we thought was a good thing until we came up to the corn again. First there were a couple of bugs that hit the windshield and then all of a sudden there were hundreds. It got to where I was getting worried that I wouldn't be able to see out and I was afraid to run the wipers for fear that I would smear the bug innards far worse than they were already. 

I could see a little fear in Riley's eyes and I have to admit that it felt like a horror movie to me as well.  I have never seen anything like that. Yes I have driven through bugs before, but these were some crazy bugs. Abundance can be good, but this was not one of those times!

Made me think of the plague in Egypt when the locusts came and then made me even more grateful that this will never happen again according to the scriptures.....

Exodus 10:14

Common English Bible (CEB)

14 The locusts swarmed over the whole land of Egypt and settled on the whole country. Such a huge swarming of locusts had never happened before and would never happen ever again.

I have to admit I said a little prayer that we would get home safe and when I pulled into the garage, and took a breath, I noticed that the area right where I look out, as I drive, was not nearly as covered as the rest of the windshield. 

God is good all the time, even in the midst of crazy, crazy bugs!

Blessings!