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Out of the Muck

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  My husband sees himself as a bit of a farmer, so when the opportunity arose to get chickens, he jumped at it. I, however, am not a farm girl. When I was young, I grew up helping my grandparents with gardens and farm-like, country things. As an adult, I gladly left the farm life behind. My husband happily pulled me back into farm things. Enter chickens. We put together a coop and became chicken people, again. I say again because we have done this a few times in our marriage. The issue with raising chickens is the poo. Chickens are quite messy. Unfortunately, the never-ending rain has not helped the situation. After a month of rain almost every day, we were practically tossing a coin over who had to wade through four inches of muck and crawling into the laying house to get the eggs. It was disgusting. We were so excited when we found a chicken tractor that allowed us to always keep our chickens on clean grass while accessing the eggs outside the chicken  house. This is when w...
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A Father's Love

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  This weekend was very monumental for us. On Father's Day weekend, we watched one of our daughter's marry her high school sweetheart. It was a beautiful wedding all throughout the day, but one moment brought tears to my eyes. I watched the father/daughter dance. It was a very emotional moment of seeing the love and pride in her father's eyes and the joy on her face. It brought to my mind our relationship with God. Zephaniah 3:17 NIV  The Lord your God is with you,   the Mighty Warrior who saves.  He will take great delight in you;   in his love he will no longer rebuke you,    but will rejoice over you with singing.”   Some translations say, " He will dance over you with singing. " I picture that moment with my husband and dau ghter. God's love for you is so great that He, your Heavenly Father, delights in you. He is not a God who is uninvolved or only planning wrath for you. He loves you so much that He rejoices when you spend time with Him, ...
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What's Behind That Door? When God Says No.

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When my children were little, I never had a chance to use the restroom without one of my toddlers wandering in to visit me. After they grew up, I falsely thought I would finally have quiet time to myself in the bathroom. Now, my kids' dogs have taken up where my children left off. They love following me into the bathroom. If I'm taking a shower, they try to drink water that leaks between the shower door and the water guard. One Saturday, as I was cleaning the shower with a caustic cleaner, I worried that the dogs would try to drink the chemicals in the shower, so I shut the door. Everytime I attempted to go in the bathroom, my daughter's dog tried to sneak in beyond the cracked door. No matter how many times I warned him, he still wanted to go to an unsafe place. Isn't that like us at times? God warns us not to do something, yet we still press to do it anyway. God sees beyond the door to the danger our choices can bring us- broken relationships, addictions, or damage ...
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Broken People

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 As I sat in my house tonight, I heard my daughter yelling from my front yard, "Mom!" After a few screams and I still hadn't appeared, she progressed to calling my cell phone. As she quickly beckoned me outside, I found her standing over something moving in the beam of her cell phone light. As I approached, I saw that it was a fairly large bat with a broken wing. We were arguing over how to tell if it was alive while keeping my cat from feasting on it. I had the brilliant idea to scoot it with a dustpan from my broom. As I slowly lowered the dustpan under the bat, it began to flop towards my daughter and me. My husband drove up to both of us flapping our arms and squealing like the slugs from Flushed Away . We left my son and husband to handle the hurt bat and gladly took refuge in the house. Have you ever heard the phrase, "hurt people, hurt people?" In ministry, I've found that broken people tend to strike out at those trying to help them, much like the b...
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Flirting With Danger

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  As I walked my dog at the back of our property, I noticed a plant growing in the corner- a Yucca plant. This plant takes me back to my childhood. My mother has never been a big gardener. I definitely inherited that trait from her. I think plants probably weep when they enter my home, knowing their fate. Because my mother struggled with growing things, she chose hardy plants that could survive almost anything with little attention. She created what I called, "the garden of death." Inside this round garden in the middle of her lawn was a set of rose bushes, several cactus plants, and two really large Yucca plants, all among a bed of decorative rocks. Although everything was beautiful and flowering, it was also thorny and sharp. My preteen brother had the wonderful idea to play daredevil and ride his Huffy bike and the circle of death. He started slow and began to pick up speed with each revolution.  When he reached maximal speed, he lost control and crashed directly in the p...
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Do You Need a Cranky Pill?

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 My husband and I have learned something as I get older and begin the journey through perimenopause. Hormones are crazy! Some days they are up and other days they are nonexistent, so I found a little secret. I take an herbal supplement with black pepper extract, and for the most part, the hormonal crazies are tamed. Let me tell you, I can a difference when I forget to take it. So can my husband. He calls it my "cranky pill." This morning, I forgot to take it. As I began to feel irritation at too much noise and a feeling of being overwhelmed, I reminded myself that all things are under God's control, including my hormones. As I prayed I felt the stress and anxiety lessen. Later, as my husband and I were shopping, he snapped at me out of hanger (hungry/anger). He immediately apologized and said he was sorry. He forgot to take his cranky pill. I replied, "You're sausage biscuit cranky pill?" We all have moments of crankiness and stress. The question is, ...
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Loads and Loads of Argggh!

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  My quiver is full and so are my closets. After several years of only having one or two of my adult children living in my home at different times, things are getting ready to change. All of my adult children will be living in my house, at same time! One of my daughters had been living in the mobile home of my late mother-in-law while my two sons were dwelling in the mobile home of my late father-in-law. After much thought and rising lot fees, we bought eleven beautiful acres in the country for both mobile homes. I had no idea how much went into moving mobile homes. The whole process will take at least a month of drilling a well, putting in a sewer, and preparing foundations. During the next month or so, all of my children will move back into our home until their homes are ready.  The side effect of all the packing is that laundry was piling up for my sons. I volunteered to catch the boys laundry up, so their move could have a literal clean start. After the ninth load, I reme...
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