FAMILY DAY

          

I got up this morning and went to Family Day down at West End Baptist Church. I am ashamed to say that I have not been in over 6 months. I can offer the excuse, that by Sunday mornings I am so tired from working the long hours at the BBQ, that I just can’t make it…

but then I think about my boss…

She works so much harder and longer than I, yet manages to not only go to church, but to go to Sunday School, watch the little children there and also play the piano during church services.

So, you see, I know my excuse is not good enough..not even for me to believe.

I had went to bed last night undetermined if I would go to church this morning. When I woke up and put my feet on the floor in my bedroom, I was as dizzy as I could be. I was hanging on to the chair and the desk just to steady myself. (My Blood pressure was up)

But devil....Today was the day....God was calling...and though you tried to stop me, you failed.

It was so good to see everyone there. The preacher first talked about how church is your family and that is so true. I sat in the pew with my niece Charity, saw and talked to so many there that I love just like family and I got to hear a young man sing that has been friends with my son since school days.

Preacher Robinson based his sermon on 1 Corinthians 13,  the very verse I had engraved on Danny's grave stone, because it reminded me so much of him. A perfect description of the man who chose me to be his wife.

“ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

Coincidence?

I choose to think it wasn't.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL

When Bad Things Happen

          

Growing up, my mama took me to the little church in Penfield Ga. every Sunday and let me sit on the piano bench while she played (by ear) the old hymns such as, “Love Lifted Me”, “Softly and Tenderly, Jesus is Calling”, and “The Old Rugged Cross”. It was there that I was taught to believe in God. To believe that GOD IS GOOD. That God is a loving God.

That “Jesus Loves Me”.

I was also taught in early childhood to say my prayers before I went to sleep. Who doesn’t know the old childhood prayer..“Now I lay me to down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep..If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take.” I would say this every night as a child and then ask God to bless an ever growing list of family and friends! I did this faithfully, every night.

I was still saying it after I had grown up, gotten married and left home.

It was probably when I was in my mid-twenties that little seeds of doubt started creeping into my mind about God.  Those seeds of doubt continued to grow and plague me to the point that I was beginning to doubt what I believed in...

The very existence of God.

I love little children. If you want to get on my bad side, just be mean to a little child in front of me. Well, back in my younger days,  it seemed like every time you turned the TV on, there would be someone begging for donations and showing a picture of a little starving child in Africa…usually crying pitifully with flies buzzing around them. Then, the news would be about a little child being hurt or abused, and that would bother me so bad. Eventually my mind began questioning how, if God was indeed a GOOD AND LOVING GOD, and a MERCIFUL GOD…How could HE let a child starve to death or let one be harmed or even killed??

Why, even I, a mere mortal, and huge sinner, would never let a child go hungry or be harmed. This bothered me to no end. Instead of repeating my childhood bedtime prayer,  I began praying and begging God to just tell me, let me know why HE would let these things go on.

And then it happened .

It was after one such night of praying, that when I finally did go to sleep, I dreamed I was outside a sort of palace or Temple, walking down through a stone walk way lined with huge tall columns to the left of me. To the right of me was Jesus and He was answering all my questions! After listening to Him, it was like a huge jigsaw puzzle had finally came together in my mind. It all made perfect sense, and I had never felt such peace in my life. When He finished explaining everything to me, we stopped walking and I woke up.

For the life of me, I couldn’t recall what Jesus had told me. I did, however, remember parts of the dream. I also remembered that somehow life here on earth was all like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle that had all it’s pieces scattered on the floor, and until all the pieces fit back together, you couldn’t know what the whole picture was.

Now, this may have been just a dream, but I was left with a feeling of peace deep within my heart from knowing, even though I can’t remember exactly what it is that I know!

Crazy huh?

Oh, I still shake my head and cry right along with everyone else anytime there is a tragedy. or something sad comes up. 

The Bible tells us we can’t understand everything, “ because our minds are not like God’s mind”

 “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12

Remember the old gospel song, “Farther Along”?

“ Farther along, we’ll know all about it…Farther along, we’ll understand why…Cheer up my brothers and live in the sunshine…we’ll understand it all by and by.”

Though we may not be able to understand all that happens in this old world, I am sure that God is still with us.

He never leaves us.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

SUNDAY MUSINGS

               

                                   My cherry tree

I have spent this day doing relatively nothing…and it was a good feeling!

I did walk the pups every time I could, when it wasn’t raining. Oh, and I did write out checks for the monthly bills. It is a chore that I hate to do, and yet I am so grateful that I have enough money to at least pay my monthly bills. I praise God for that and give HIM all the glory.

It rained all night here…heavy down pouring rain. I kept praying that my trees (that are right here beside the house) would stay firmly rooted to the ground!  Other than that, I love hearing the rain hit this old tin roof on my little house. Thank God I didn’t discover any new leaks today. More rain is suppose to be on the way, but the sun came out for a while this afternoon and it sure was nice. Funny thing is, I dreamed Friday night that Danny kept trying to get me in a little john boat at the river. It was one of those dreams that seem to last all night long and I was trying to tell him during the whole dream that I didn’t want to, but he kept on and on about it! HA! Maybe he was trying to warn me like God warned Noah before the flood!

I burned my hand this week from grabbing the lawn mower muffler and it blistered up pretty bad. (It also hurt like the blue dickens!) Today, I looked at it and all the blisters have dried up. Now if they will just go ahead and disappear, it will be okay.

You know, I fully believe that God forgives us of our sins when we are saved…but I have the worst time forgiving myself when I do wrong or make mistakes. I think I could lay out all the mistakes I ever did in this life of mine, and not forget a one of them…and everyone of them still are a pain in my heart. I have tried to learn from most of them though. Maybe that is why we try our best to give advice (needed or not) to our children and loved ones, because we have all walked down the wrong path a few times in our lives and can’t bare to see them do the same, because we know the hurt that it will cause them in the long run.

You know I have got to put some pictures of my grandbabies up here…

                 

My little Willie was swinging with me the other day! He looks so much like his Pawpaw Danny when he was a little boy!

                 

Wyatt and my pup Hallie. (You can ask Hallie if she has a headache and she will rub her little head!!!) You know, as much as little Willie looks like his Pawpaw Danny, Wyatt acts just like him!

                  

My little Kenzie! Can’t wait to see what kind of personality this child has!!!

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

Cravings

                  

                                        My cherry tree 2013

Have you ever craved a food? Wanted it so bad that it seems that you can taste it and even smell it?

I got up this morning craving something I haven't had in a long, long time.

Miss Daisy's rolls.

Now  there are a few requirements before you can know what I am talking about here...

a. You would have to be a child from the sixties...as in 1960's.

b. Or you would have to have a mama, daddy, aunt or uncle, etc.  from the 60's.

c. And one of the above would have to have gone to school (or worked) at the school in Greene County, Georgia in the 1960's and eaten in the lunch room.

When I think about those rolls, I can smell them and even see Miss Daisy dipping that old brush in melted butter and slathering it in  the middle of that hot steaming roll before placing it on my lunch tray.

I know now that Miss Daisy's rolls were the best rolls I have ever eaten in my life. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this way back then. Like most innocent children, I figured things in my little world would never change...

That there would always be Miss Daisy rolls in my life.

Miss daisy is long gone to her Heavenly home and as far as I know, there is no way to get the recipe for her wonderful rolls, nor her delicious homemade soup that was always served with your choice of a pineapple or peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I guess I will have to make do with just the memories.

Sadly, things do change and we lose some of those delicious foods (and also a lot of important stuff) that we take for granted.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

GOD GIVE ME STRENGTH

It all started last week.

All the bad and crazy luck that is….

Because I have spent so much time with Amanda while she was pregnant, Dan was feeling sort of left out, so I spent all day last Wednesday in Athens, just letting him run around stores looking. He doesn’t get to go anywhere unless I take him, so usually at least once a week I am taking him to a Wal-Mart and I hadn’t been able to do that often lately.  I think he just likes getting out and about, because he usually just looks and seldom buys anything, except bottled water or diet sodas. Sometimes, if we are in Athens, we will go to the Academy Sports store, the Dollar Tree store and end up eating lunch at the Chinese Restaurant. Which is what we did last Wednesday.

Then we went to two Goodwill stores and to Walmart.

WE WERE IN ATHENS ALL DAY.

From 8am until about 8pm.

So, I told him that we wouldn’t be going nowhere the next week ( this week), because I was going to save my gas money and also rest.

HA!

Thursday I got up and got ready to go to work and something told me to lift the car hood up and check the water. I am so glad that I listened to that little voice, because there was not one drop of water in the reservoir! Why I don’t know. The heat hand is always zooming up and then zooming down constantly every minute, so I have gotten to where I don’t pay it any attention. So I poured some water in it, said a little prayer and went on to work.

Easter Sunday I dropped my cell phone on  the floor. My cell phone is an ancient flip style phone and the top had gotten loose, so when I dropped it, the top just flipped on off! Needless to say, it died. So I called the phone ins company and they said they would send me one Tuesday if I gave them @ 50.00…which I did. 

You know, it was funny…I didn’t miss my phone as bad as I thought I would, but I missed my camera like crazy!

Monday; Dan told me I needed to call “the TV place” ( aka CHARTER) because his cartoons hadn’t been on in over two days. We have a few cartoon channels, but Dan loves Boomerang. It has the old time cartoons like The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Tom and Jerry, etc.. The last time I called Charter, the serviceman told me to wait a while after it rained, because sometimes rain would wet the thing in in the wire on the pole making us lose channels. So I had waited a couple of days and Dan could wait no more.

So I called Charter.

The person at Charter told me that they would send someone Tuesday to check it out.

Okay..so now I have two things going on Tuesday…the phone and the TV.

Charter also told me that the service man would be at my house between 10am and noon. They asked that I check the channel to make sure it was still off before he came by.

So I did. I started at a little before 8am.

I checked and sure enough the cartoons were still not showing up. So smart little old me decided to check the rest of the channels and see if they were all showing their programs…so I was scrolling down the channels with the remote and they were all playing properly….

And then I hit channel 951.

I nearly fainted and actually reeled backwards when it finally hit me what the heck I was seeing….I think I was in shock actually…

IT WAS PORN.

I quickly flipped the guide on and it showed INNPPV  which means pay per view. I flipped  down to the next channel and it showed where you could pay to see another PORN movie…but no movie was showing, thank goodness.

I checked again at 10am and the porn was still on  and going from movie to movie… The service rep came to my house a little later and I caught him outside (so Dan wouldn’t hear) and told him what I had found on my TV. He said, “well usually someone has to order that”…and I told him that I sure as heck didn’t and Dan doesn’t even know how to work the remote right, much less order a porn movie! Heck, all he was wanting to watch was Tom and Jerry…the cat and the mouse.

So…..

The service rep came in the house and tried his best to fix the cartoon channel. He redid the wires, he reset the boxes, he went outside and redid all those wires and still no Boomerang cartoon channel…so he called his manager. Then he called the district manager..still no Boomerang. So,  he said they would call me back tomorrow and let me know something….and then he went into my bedroom (so Dan couldn’t see) and turned the TV to 951…and it was still playing porn movies. He switched the channel to 952 and now it was playing PORN movies too!!

Oh man, I was soooooo embarrassed.

He made a note on my work order about it and told me to call customer service and make sure they knew that I didn’t order them…Gosh, someone would have to be a maniac to order EVERY movie on those channels. The guide showed how much they cost and it is  12.99 and up to see just one!! And they were steadily streaming into my TV…

Movie after movie.

So, I had to call Charter again and explain what was showing on my TV. Luckily I got a lady who sounded to be about my age. She somehow got the movies stopped an then showed me how to put  a block on those channels in case they should start up again, so we wouldn’t have to see them because Lord, I  am sooooo glad little William and Wyatt was here.

So after all that….my phone arrived by UPS…and the whole time Dan is still fussing about not being able to see his cartoons…and I had to call Verizon to program it. After being on the phone with them about an hour or more  trying to get it programed and my contacts to download and the stupid phone telling me to call customer service because my account wasn’t recognized and I was on the phone with customer service at the time…

I just told the Verizon lady to never mind;  I would just re-enter my contacts myself and not ever download any dang thing on this stupid phone…Because she was wanting me to send the phone back.

After the day that I had already had???   

I don’t think so.

Please Lord, just give me strength.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

OUR FIRST HOME

My last post got me worrying.

Whoever bought the old Mary Leila Cotton Mill may get the notion to tear down the little old mill house which was mine and Danny’s first home.

                  

So I drove by there and took a picture of it.

It is a little three room shotgun house. Just three little rooms. Lilies use to grow right there to the right of the front steps you see in the picture. I loved those lilies. I thought they were the only thing that added color to the house. Danny hated them and set his Pawpaw's push mower on fire once trying to cut them down.

The first room was the living room. We couldn’t afford a couch, but we did have a little iron twin bed and one chair that we bought. The next room was the bedroom. I can still see our old iron double bed sitting catty cornered with the string that led to the light bulb tied to  the head of it. ( An easy way to find the string if you needed to get up in the dark.)

                    

In the bedroom was our one and only tiny clothes closet right next to the fireplace mantle. All our clothes that had to be hung fit into that closet too. Sort of tells you something doesn’t it??  My mama and daddy let us borrow one of their old ( and I mean OLD) wooden dressers and that was our bedroom suit!

In the last room of our little three room house was the kitchen. When I close my eyes I can still see the second hand stove we bought. I LOVED that stove and would love to have one like it now. It was push button and had two side by side ovens! One small oven just right for corn bread or dressing or such and another one that was big.

On top, it had three electric burners and also a deep-well to cook your beans or such in. We had one of those little refrigerators that had a rounded top with one door. When you opened the door, there was a teeny little ice box at the top inside that would only hold two ice trays! It had to be defrosted by hand regularly….by me. I had the kind of kitchen table that had chrome around the edges and chairs to match. Over in the corner was the wringer washer our Big Mama helped us get. That thing could sure wash clothes good. 

To the left of the kitchen was a door that lead to our bathroom. It only had a toilet and a shower in it, but it worked!

My mama gave me an ironing board and iron when I got married. I loved to iron and would iron EVERYTHING! I would iron our mill cloth sheets that Big Mama made for us and iron our towels, anything…..Danny made me stop ironing his tee shirts and underwear though. When permanent press came out, my ironing pretty much stopped. I have an iron now, but very seldom do I use it anymore.

Every morning, before Danny walked across the street to the Mill to go to work, I would fix his breakfast. We would have bacon (or sausage or fat back) , eggs, grits and toast. Sometimes we would just have oatmeal and biscuit toast. I would always perk us some coffee in the little tin coffee pot mama gave us too. It would be so good. I remember that I used Lousianne coffee. Do people even perk coffee anymore?

We didn’t have a car back in those days. We only had to walk under the underhead pass to town to buy our groceries and having little money for extras, we didn’t have to go anywhere else. Our parents,grandparents, aunts, all our family, lived right around the block if we wanted to go see them, so it all worked out okay.

We had a lot of good times in our first little house. We didn’t have kids yet, so it was just the two of us. We played rummy, or checkers, or just sat on the front porch talking.

It was there that little Dan came to be…I remember waking up like I did every morning before Danny and walking into the kitchen to make breakfast for him. I remember well that I had sausage to fry that morning and as soon as it started frying, I got sick as a dog to my stomach and had to take it off the burner and run to the bathroom.

There were no pregnancy tests back then but Lord, I didn’t need one…I hadn't ever felt that kind of sickness before! I knew I was pregnant! 

You know…there are a lot of things that are worth much more than money could buy.

If someone offered me a billion dollars or the chance to walk back in time into that little Mill House again and find my Danny waiting there for me…

Well, I would take that walk back in time in a heartbeat.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.