Therapy

Writing this blog is that for me: therapy.  Reports from here and there tell me it serves the same purpose for them.  Good! There are probably some who receive this blog that think unkind thoughts but thankfully, they don't write me.  Some days I feel obsolete. I suppose all elderly people feel that way,  but since I don't hang around them I may be wrong about that.   I dropped my guard a few weeks ago and confessed that trying to please people has been a pesky battle that doesn't let up.  It all began when I was a kid on a farm... the youngest child by many years in my family.  Hard working farmers were occupied with barely surviving and had no time or energy for fluff. Emotional support? Are you kidding? Putting food on the table trumped everything else, while hoping to have a few dollars of profit to reduce the mortgage forced on them when the banks and loan companies slammed their doors. We always had food, because we grew it ourselves. In the cities miles of lines formed for a bowl of soup anywhere they could find it.  Many people committed suicide. I remember all too well that a farming neighbor couple shot themselves, leaving their children for someone else to raise. I even remember their names, after all these years.

I don't want God to have to knock us Americans off the map because we do not come to Him in repentant prayer for His mercy. Don't give up! I really don't want to write or even think about what could be ahead for my children and grandchildren;  nor do I want to talk about the absurd kindergarten behavior of some of the presidential candidates. Nearly all of the good guys bailed and who can blame them? I am still a cautious, recovering wife of a pastor who bailed from leadership that behaved like mud-slinging kids. ...but then, as my pragmatic daughter quipped the other day: "Oh, Mom, everybody's recovering from something!"  A few weeks ago their German Shepherd was dragged out of her doghouse by a big ol'  mountain lion and wounded so badly she had to be put down. ...and some months before that a bear came through a screened window of their kitchen, knocked the cookie jar off the counter and helped himself. At my house this week the bats awoke from their winter naps high in the rafters of my house and had a high flyin' good time before my cats and I chased them outside.  We are probably in for some more snows. After the last one I will have my summer bed moved out to the deck. Can mountain lions and bears climb that high? Probably,  but I am not going to be snookered out of sleeping under God's glorious night sky. Maybe the condors will not show up this summer and scare or eat my deer.  I love my deer. Because I am backed up to wilderness and have no resident dog, there are about thirty big bucks, their wives and babies that hang around here. ...plus an occasional elk or two. Yes, I had a bear in my garage early last summer who knocked over my freezer and helped himself to everything in it. ...but I haven't forgotten what it was like to live in a city where the helicopters flew over our house at night, and search lights probed all around our yard, looking for thieves and thugs, while two blocks away fire and police sirens screamed. ...and oh, yes, our home was burned by an arsonist, but that's a story for another time.  I vote for living on this mountain, critters and all,  until:
"I'll fly away, Oh Glory; I'll fly away. 
When I die, Hallelujah,  bye and bye; I'll fly away!" 

The Thursday girls and I are winding up Ephesians.  One of them is ready to teach and I am ready to sit by and listen as she dives into the spring of living water that never shall run dry. That's what discipleship is about: working ourselves out of a job.

I think I will study the Book of Jeremiah now. I don't want to meet Jerry in Heaven and feel compelled to confess that I never really dug into his book.  Everything I have studied so far is like turning on Fox News. Whatamess!  Only, now,  we are closer to the end. The men at the Mount warned the others not to "stand looking up" because "I will come back when God tells Me to"  (...or somethin' like that.)  For that reason, I don't think much about the Rapture. ...waste of time.

 It's almost summertime. I don't want to miss a minute of it!  I'm going to throw some singin' parties on my deck or up under the Family Tree above my house. ...and there will be company coming for overnights. Great!  If you haven't signed up, do it!

That's it, dear readers.

Oh, yes, a hymn....I guess "In the Good Ol' Summertime" doesn't qualify as a hymn, but oh, shoot, why not?

In the good ol' summertime; in the good ol' summertime.
Strollin' through the shady lane with my baby, mine.
You hold her hand and she holds yours and that's a very good sign.
She'll be your tootsie wootsie, in the Good Ol' Summertime.

Tootsie Wootsie?  Isn't that a hoot?

Love, Jo