Total Contentment

Happy Saturday Everyone!

I am prayerful that all that read this are happy, thankful and as content as I am this morning.  I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Did you have any food mishaps? I did but they ended up being unimportant because everything is being gobbled up.  I love to cook.  I love to see satisfied happy faces when they eat my food.  I had my favorite Thanksgiving ever.  We decided to stay to ourselves.  I cooked happily all day Wednesday.  I feel so relaxed when I am cooking.  Do you ever feel that way?  We had Will's Mom over and enjoyed the visit. I think we have found a new Thanksgiving tradition.  This is the first Thanksgiving that I have ever stayed home and I loved it.  I made all of my desserts sugar free with the use of Stevia and Splenda.  They were yummy.  I will always do that as I love that I do not feel gross and sugar-loaded after indulging. 

I believe perspective about my life is so important to my being content.  Counting all the things that I feel blessed to experience and have is so much more productive than worrying about the things that are not in my life.  Everything is given to me by God and He knows all things.  Who am I to want more when I have all that He intends for me to have?

Perspective.......blessed or wanting, it really is a choice.  I recently hired the sweetest Philippine woman to work at the store.  She was telling me yesterday while we worked that conditions in her country are deplorable.  She said that there are not any jobs and that she sends what she earns back there to help her family.  She came here four months ago as a mail order bride.  She is 49 and her husband is probably 70 or 80.  She is so happy to be able to be working.  She had her first Thanksgiving Thursday.  She said, "I eat Turkey for first time, it good.  My husband say 'No Philippine food', but I have to have my rice and my fruit salad.  She said she is blessed that her husband is kind to her and his children are kind to her.  We all love her so much.  She is a sweet Christian.  She takes nothing for granted.  She LOVES Christmas.  She has had her Christmas tree and Christmas lights up for weeks.  She has been singing Christmas carols for a month or more.  She said that she has not ever seen snow except on television and that she is so excited to see it snow. I remember when I came for Christmas one year here to Oklahoma and I had not ever had snow at Christmas.  The weather man had predicted snow on Christmas Eve.  I was so excited.  I got up in the morning and came into the living room and looked out the window.  NO SNOW! Boo! I told my Mom that the weather man was on crack and came back into the bedroom to get dressed.  Ten minutes later Mom said, "Trace.....come see", I walked into the living room and outside giant fluffy snowflakes were floating down.  It was so beautiful.  We decided that we would have a day of watching the snow.  I built a huge fire in the fireplace, we turned the chairs around to sit and watch the snow.  She made a pot of beans. We stayed in our pajamas all day and watched old movies and gloried at the snow.

My Mom had a flower shop in the store.  I sadly am not talented at arranging flowers and so I have not been doing very much with the flower shop.  Yesterday, she asked me if she could decorate the store for Christmas using the things in the flower shop.  She said artistic people would be so thankful for all of the ribbon, baskets, flowers, etc., that are in the flower shop.  I told her she can play learning arranging and making gift baskets.  I told her that I will bring a stereo and Christmas music so that it can be playing in the store all month.  It is funny how someone's childlike joy can inspire me to be thankful and excited about Christmas.

I hope you have a wonderful Saturday.  Enjoy and remember no matter what you are blessed.  Focus on what is great in your life and you will be amazed at how much God loves you.

Blessings

Tracy 

Tired Tuesday

Good Evening

Today is a short posting because I was with 12 two and three year old children this morning and my brain is foggy.  I wanted to update on the adventures of Will and I before I forget what we did.

He LOVES his new position at work.  I love that he is not stressed.  Daulton loves that he only has to work 8 hours per day.  I cannot express my gratitude and thankfulness that God worked out his situation perfectly and in God's time. I really had confidence a year ago when we started praying for Will to be able to get out of his old position but like most people I did lose focus a couple times during the year as a result of impatience or frustration.  I rejoice in the way that God worked it all out though. 

At bible study we are studying Genesis and this week we were studying Genesis 18 where the three visitors come to Abraham's tent.  God tells Abraham that Sarah, Abraham's wife, will have a son when He returns the same time next year.  Sarah was eavesdropping inside the tent and laughed and thought to herself how impossible that was since she was worn out and Abraham was so old.  I was trying to think of a way to explain to 2 and 3 year old children that waiting on God's time and patience are good things.  I really believe that I failed.  I must admit that I am not the most patient person, or have not been in the past.  I am beginning to mature enough to know that anything that I want that is outside of God's will for my life comes at too high a price.  I did not make my point though to the babies.  I am thankful that Genesis will have several more lessons that involve waiting on God and so I will pray for wisdom and maybe I will be more successful next time.

This past weekend we worked very hard.  A water line in the big barn had been broken and so we worked helping to repair that.  We then went down to the little fishing lake on this property to begin the clean-up after the damage caused by the swamp monster.  We had to carry trees, limbs, brush and make piles to burn.  We cleared brush, fished trees out of the water and raked the shoreline to beautify it and make it much more useful for camping.  We made a decent dent in the process but we still have a long way to go.  Will was so sore that he hurt every step, every sit and every stand.  I did not work as hard as he did so I was not as sore.  He probably lost more weight than I did though, bummer for me.

Damage before. We carried all of these trees, twigs and brush and made burn piles.

 

 

 

 

 

 Boston is the dear little dog in the foreground.  Tonight, I could not find my horse, Flicka.  She usually comes running when I whistle but did not tonight.  I asked Will if he would take me to hunt for her on the 4-wheeler.  We thought we were taking an evening ride to find Flicka and then go deer spotting.  We got on the 4-wheeler just as Flicka crested a hill at a trot coming home.  She is my horse-dog.  After that we were going deer spotting.  We love to ride around on the 4-wheeler and spot beautiful deer crossing out of the timber to come to the lake and drink.  Tonight Boston was running beside the 4-wheeler and across our back pasture, we saw a gorgeous large buck and a doe.  We did not think Boston saw them at first but then he bolted.  He ran so fast that we could not catch him.  He chased the deer into the timber/forest and disappeared.  Oh my!!!! We were terrified.  We were yelling and whistling for him but did not find him for what seemed an eternity, about 10 minutes.  I felt like a parent who says when they find a missing child that they do not know whether to hug or scold and always end up hugging. 

All is well now, Flicka is home, Boston is safe and I am going to bed early.  Thank you Lord for protecting us all.


















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5 Secrets to a ‘No-work’ Garden | Eartheasy Blog

5 Secrets to a ‘No-work’ Garden | Eartheasy Blog

New job

Hello Everyone

I have been checking my stats and have found that I have readers from several different countries so I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for reading my blog and welcome you.  I wish some of you would follow my blog so that I can meet you.

I have not posted a blog in November so far.  I had written the blog about the swamp monster several weeks ago but had not posted it.  Much has been happening in the lives of Will and I and I have fallen behind.

Firstly, Will has been going to school to get his CDL, Commercial Drivers License.  He wanted it to qualify him for a better position at his company.  God has richly blessed us in the most amazing ways during this process.  He studied hard and passed his written tests a couple months ago and then has been going to school to be trained and to be able to pass the gigantic tests to obtain the actual license.  The blessings come from all kinds of directions.  He was allowed to take a leave of absence from work to be able to attend the school.  His company does not usually permit anyone to do that for any reason, yet they allowed Will.  He has been wanting a job in shipping at his company for as long as I have known him.  His department is the most difficult department in the entire company and he has been there 11 years.  He was ready for a change and Daulton and I are ready for him to have a change. Last Friday, he called the Human Resources department of the company to ask for another week of leave.  The head of the department told Will that there is an opening in shipping and wanted to know if Will wanted it.  Praise the Lord!!!!! There was not an application or interview just the dream job for Will plunked in his lap.  That morning I had been thinking that it was going to be so difficult for Will to return to his department after being gone to the school.  I stood in my kitchen looking out the window with a feeling of dread and sorrow for Will but said a heartfelt prayer to the Lord that another position would present itself and the Lord answered immediately, he had the position offered that afternoon and secured by Monday morning.  God is so great.  Will said this is the best thing that has ever happened to him outside of accepting the Lord as his savior and meeting me of course!

Secondly, Will was feeling like he needed practice with the components of the test.  He called two men last weekend to ask if he could practice these parts of the test on their trucks and both men were so gracious and wonderful to Will.  We spent the afternoon with me quizzing him on the air break test and on the pre-trip inspection.  I know the parts of the truck now too!! Anyhow today, he was tested on all of the components that we studied last weekend and he passed all of them.  He now only has the driving which he will pass and needs some more practice backing and he is ready to start his new job! Halleluiah!  He has been so nervous but I took our fears and emotions to God in prayer also and asked that He would have total recall and a peace and calm and that was answered immediately also.  There is no detail of our lives that is unimportant to our Lord.  I am always humbled when I think of how huge, mighty and powerful that God is and yet the prayers of Will and Tracy are important to Him.

Galatians 5:22-26 ERV
²² But the fruit that the Spirit produces in a person’s life is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these kinds of things. ²⁴ Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their sinful self. They have given up their old selfish feelings and the evil things they wanted to do. ²⁵ We get our new life from the Spirit, so we should follow the Spirit. ²⁶ We must not feel proud and boast about ourselves. We must not cause trouble for each other or be jealous of each other. 

We are in love with the Lord.  Have a wonderful day.

Triumph - The Swamp Monster is Trapped

Good Day!

Will and I have been trying for a while to trap the swamp monster down at my fishing lake.  The lake is at the bottom of some hills on my property with timber all the way around it.  It did have more timber around it but now after living there a year, the swamp monster has felled many many trees.

The view before the swamp monster and the drought

The view before the swamp monster moved in

Several weekends ago, Will went on a reconnaissance mission.  He took Daulton down there with a gun and Daulton sat and waited to see if he could get a shot at the swamp monster but Daulton never saw it.  Will tracked around the banks to see if he could see where it was living.  Last weekend, we went and bought a trap and put it down in the water where the swamp monster seemed to be going in and out.  Will showed me how he could tell which hole was actively used.  There were new claw marks from the critter and hairs.  The bank had several holes up and down it but Will thought that he had found the current hole.  We set the trap and anchored it to the bank with rebar and limbs. If the swamp monster had burrowed into the banks of the dam we would have been in terrible trouble but he was burrowing into the sides of the lake.  He has also built part of a dam across the lake that we will need to remove so that we can fish up into the inlets. Several nights this week, we went down to check the trap but nothing was in it, boo.

Part of the damage done to the trees

Where trees once were

A few nights after we set the trap, we went down to check the trap and I was thinking it was empty.  Will went down the bank before me and exclaimed, "We got him!" I was so excited and so we hustled to the trap and there it was. A BEAVER! Shudder  It weighed 42.5 pounds.

He eats trees no more!!!

I am sure that there are those of you that might read this and think we have been cruel but the trees this beaver has been eating is home and food to deer, squirrels, birds, insects, moths, butterflies, raccoons and possums.  The lake that is there is the main source of water to wildlife for miles because it is spring fed and does not dry up while the other ponds on most of the farms around are dry due to the drought.  If we had left him alive the habitat would have been destroyed. 

Snapshots of the Journey Back 2 - The Miracle of Boundaries

Good Wednesday Morning to Everyone.  Wednesdays are the day where I always feel exhausted.  We have a cold front coming in today so I am watching out the open windows. The grey clouds are floating in and sticking together. The wind is still out of the South but we are promised that it will turn around and be blustery from the North.  I love cold rainy days.  I am the director of a new children's bible study and have leader's meeting on Mondays and class on Tuesdays.  Yesterday, I led most of the day for the 2 and 3 year old children.  They are adorable and funny.  We had a great day. It really is amazing to see God's Holy Word take root in these very young children.  I am always exhausted on Wednesdays though.  The other leaders say that they feel the same way.  I always enjoy the peace and quiet on Wednesdays to refocus on the next lesson and take inventory of my chores for the remainder of the week. 

 
I am continuing my series of the Snapshots from the Journey Back.  It is the chronicle of the miracle of emotional healing that God brought about in me after a lifetime of damage being acquired by my own sin and the sin of others.  God brought me through with the use His Word, a Christian Counselor, a Church family and amazing resources to read and study.  The first leg of the journey began with the book Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend.

I was the adult survivor of mental, emotional, physical abuse, spousal emotional and physical abuse and was the survivor of growing up in the home of an alcoholic.  I had survived some major life traumas. My family dynamic was marred with generational abuse, conditional love, triangulation, mental manipulation and addiction.  I have discovered though that the people that I was raised by and married to did love me the best that they knew how, they were damaged themselves and thus the generational damage resulted. I was created by God to be "soft=hearted and weak" as my family deemed me.  I was even termed "spineless" by my father.  The combination of all of these things stirred around and muddled together caused me to emerge as a person who desperately needed approval, acceptance and love and would do ANYTHING to get it.  I could not ask for help.  I felt extreme hurt when I asked for help and did not receive it.  I was terrified to ask for my needs to be met.  I had a very dysfunctional character trait where I would do and do for people to get them to approve of me to the point of making them dependent on me so that I could feel approved and accepted. I was over committed, over worked, empty and hopeless. 

My fruit of these things was a life void of any appropriate boundaries.  My Christian Counselor noticed this immediately because of the fact that I was afraid to do anything for myself, afraid to recognize that I had needs and had been pleasing people so long that I didn't even know how to choose a favorite color.  He recommended the book Boundaries.  I recall being shocked when I read about what a boundary was and how God's Word calls us to "Love our neighbor as ourselves".  I also recall that I could see a slim chance that something important and miraculous could be hidden in the concept of boundaries.  The book explained the verse in a way that was foreign to me.  I was very good at loving my neighbor in dysfunctional  ways because I did not have an ounce of love for myself.  In fact I only had self-loathing for myself.  Having a need was weak in my eyes.  Saying no to someone was wrong in my eyes.  I had to start with this verse which God includes in His Holy Word 9 times.  God commands us: 

Leviticus 19:18
Never get revenge. Never hold a grudge against any of your people. Instead, love your neighbor as you love yourself. I am the Lord.

Jesus confirms it in these verses:

Matthew 19:19
Honor your father and mother. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Matthew 22:39
The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’

Mark 12:31
The second most important commandment is this: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

Mark 12:33
To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself is more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

Luke 10:27
He answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.’ And ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ ”

The same is confirmed in these verses:

Romans 13:9
The commandments, “Never commit adultery; never murder; never steal; never have wrong desires,” and every other commandment are summed up in this statement: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Galatians 5:14
All of Moses’ Teachings are summarized in a single statement, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

James 2:8
You are doing right if you obey this law from the highest authority: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

If you study these verses and think about yourself and about your family and friends you will see that people that have been damaged can be convicted by these verses in different ways and usually tend to gravitate towards each other in relationship.  There are people that are very good at loving themselves but not their neighbors and are termed controllers, abusers, selfish, self-absorbed and many others terms.  There are also people that are very good at loving their neighbors but not themselves and they are termed abuse victims, compliants, selfless, weak, scattered, flaky and lots of other terms.  I believe that God sent a miracle to me by revealing through His Holy Spirit that I must keep both sides of this commandment. The Ten Commandments can be summed up into these 2 commandments.  God revealed to me how out of balance my life was.  I was very much in love with God and still am.  It is easy for me to love God with all my heart, mind, soul and strength.  It has been easy for me to love my family and friends.  It is still difficult to love myself.  I have developed and love myself more today and accept and approve of myself more today than ever in my life.  I am still a work in progress though. 

If anyone that is reading this feels any kind of identification with what I am describing, I highly recommend the book "Boundaries" or any of the "Boundary" resources.  I also recommend "New Life Live" that is on the radio and on cable TV.  My Church in Bakersfield offered small groups that explored Boundaries and emotional healing, I recommend those too.  I will provide more about this part of the journey in my next post in the series but for now we should all reflect on these verses and see if there is any work that might be done to be obedient to these two commandments.

Have a glorious Wednesday.  I can feel the temperature dropping and I am so excited about the rain that is promised.  I want to wear a sweatshirt!

Snapshots of the Journey Back

Good Morning Everyone!

Today is the day for me to continue the Hell and Back series but now the name has changed to Snapshots of the Journey Back because once I went to Robert's office and my ex-husband gone, the Hell was behind me and God had my feet planted firmly on the path.  I was finally moving in the direction of having the wonderful life that I am living now.  I was very damaged though and a thorough emotional mess.  It is bizarre to ask God to take my recollections back now to who I was then.  I have changed so much, glory be to God.  I am new wine now and cannot be put into the old wine skin.

Matthew 9:17
Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Matthew 9:16-18

Old Wine Skin

 
In this blog post I am going to explore the humorous.  I had not been allowed to do so very many things for the 12 years that I had lived in my ex-husband's house.  I was seeing Robert and he was encouraging me to find myself.  It had been so long since that I had forgotten who "myself" was.  I decided to embark on an adventure of trying things to see what appealed to me. 

I remember being so very nervous to call the telephone company to put in a telephone line and an internet line (remember the old dial-up connections?). I was so nervous that I called Robert and asked for an appointment.  I went into his office and before I sat down, I said "Robert, I think I have done a very bad thing." His eyes got big and he asked what I had done.  I said "I ordered a home phone and internet." He simply said, "Tracy, most people have home phones."  I am cracking up laughing now as I type this for several reasons. One is what must he have been thinking the "really bad thing" I had done was before I said so and Two, how sweet he was not to laugh at me for being so backwards.  I really was terrified that I was going to get in trouble for having a phone.  It felt incredible to have a phone and internet.  It is really a miracle that God has brought me so far from who I was then that I can laugh at it now.  Praise God for Robert's good heart and kind spirit. 

Along with the telephone in that first few months, I had 3 ways to brew coffee, 13 rugs in a 900 sq ft hut, cable television and a gas grill.  I was a WILD WOMAN! ha ha.  I felt very naughty having any of these things.  They were contraband.  I took golf lessons, I bought a camping RV and learned to tow it and set it up, I played tennis, I went snow skiing, I bought my horse, I sailed the Mediterranean and the Aegean to the Greek Isles and the Amalfi Coast, I went out to dinner after dark, I visited friends, I made new friends, I became a children's leader at an evening bible study (that occurred after the sun went down).  I am sure there are more things that I did but these are what comes to mind today. These adventures were so far outside my comfort zone. I am giddy to think how free and amazing my life is today.  Peaceful, serene, free, exciting, loving.