Food For Thought

Recently, I actually bought a REAL book--one I could hold in my hand and flip from page to page, fold the ears down, circle words and paragraphs and scribble my own little notes in the margins. The book is called "Created to be His Help Meet." Here are several teasers from it you can mull over as food for thought:

>A woman trying to function like a man is as ridiculous as a man trying to be like a woman. A unisex society is a senseless society--a society dangerously out of order.

>If God created a special woman, perfectly suited to be your husband's helper, would you be that woman?

>It is not a question of whether or not you can do a better job than he, it's a matter of doing what you were "designed" to do. It is far better that the job [leading the family] be done poorly by your husband than to be done well by you.

>Who and what you are is reflected in your face. Does your husband see you as a happy thankful woman?

>Discontentment is not a product of circumstances; it is the state of the soul.

>There are basically three types of men: Mr. Command, Mr. Visionary, and Mr. Steady.

>Chapter 10: Reactions Define You

>A man cannot cherish a strong woman who expresses her displeasure of him. ... Do you want your husband to be forced to seek supernatural power just to find a way to love you?

>A man will allow his woman many, many, many faults as long as he knows that she thinks he is great.

>A wise woman patterns her life after her husband's. His working, playing, eating, and sleeping habits become hers.

>Her ambition was personal, spiritual fulfillment, which is the most selfish drive that can possess a person and the easiest to justify, humanly speaking.

>Women who seek higher spirituality end up feeling and acting spiritually superior to their husbands...and it is a death knell to a healthy marriage relationship. Spend that "desired" spiritual time with your husband, where real growth and maturity with God will be found.

>God says a woman who lacks discretion is like a jewel in a pig's nose.

>It will not be enough for you to just force yourself into silence and start surrendering your will. It is time for you to start practicing reverence toward your husband.

>We want the Bible to be strictly our guide, but there is always a danger of reading something into it to suit our personal sense of propriety.

>When a woman resists or tries to change a man, she makes him more stubborn, and her own heart will be filled with bitterness.

>A woman's greatest power is in obeying God through obeying and honoring her husband.

>You cannot become his conscience or his accuser, expecting that pressure is going to push him into repentance.

>Don't confuse sympathy with encouragement. If you feel sorry for his hurt feelings and sympathize with him, you will only add fuel to his emotional fire.

>Get off the phone, lay down romance novels, turn off the TV, stay off the web, reduce outside visits or women's classes, and focus on putting your time into what your husband is doing.

>He only needs his woman to pour her life into his, for him to pour his soul back into hers.

>Three things that can break a man's spirit and cripple a marriage: 1) A wife who is spiritually critical, 2) A discontented wife, and 3) A wife who is not fulfilling...Titus 2:3-5.

I've done it again....

...left you all hanging for a while. I think it's pretty obvious by now that I'm a lousy blogger. Guess you'll just have to take what you can get from me. :)

So, what's been going on?....Because of my neglect, now I have to sift through my short term memory (which often fails me) to give a boring list-style summation of what's been going on.

Not that the only thing worth posting about is Harley, but as of recently, it always seems the most eventful thing. But, since the last post was completely devoted to him, I'll let a picture and a few brief words be his only part in this post:

Growing like a weed. New nicknames: "Little Ewok" and "Charlie"...though he doesn't respond to either. Potty training is going well. He must really like the treats he's getting. ;-)

Moving on....

I've got this "audio books" app on my phone--things have become so convenience-oriented--where I downloaded this book called "Think and Grow Rich." From the title of the book and from chapter one, I was fooled into thinking I found a treasure here, but somewhere in chapter 2, I quit and UN-downloaded it. Here are a few things I took from chapter 1:

>Opportunity comes most often in the form of misfortune.

>One of the most common reasons for failure is the habit of quitting.

>If you would have held on a moment longer, you would have succeeded.

>Success comes to those who are success-conscious. Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become failure-conscious.

>Thought habits: What you habitually think about is what you are.

>"I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul" (Henley). You have the power to control your
thoughts.

>Our brains become magnetized with the dominating thoughts we hold.

To my disappointment, however, the following chapter talked about how you must be obsessed with money in order to obtain it. Phooey. I took the title "Think and Grow Rich" to be talking about growing rich in thought, and therefore in character, but it turns out, it's really talking about material wealth. Nothing wrong with material wealth, but to make it an obsession is fruitless and is a misdirected goal. I could have overlooked Chapter 2, and given it another chance with Chapter 3 but the disappointment was too great. And so, the book is gone, and has since been replaced with a biography on Lincoln.

Did I mention that Sam has started school? Well he has! He's taking a class on sales management. After High School, he went straight into the workforce and has excelled tremendously without the college experience. But he's excited that he's been given the opportunity, and he seems to be enjoying it!

Sam's first day of school.

 

On to the weather: it's been cold, rainy, warm, chilly, windy, calm, sunny, icy, and then rainy again...did I leave anything out? 

 

We're looking forward to having a garden this year--last year was our land rest. We don't really have a convenient location for a garden--the year before proved that--but we'll try again anyways. The only produce we got were the habaneros that I had mistaken for regular bell peppers--quite the surprise--but I was able to make some jars of salsa with them, so it wasn't a total loss. This year, with a year of experience under our belt, we'll make a few adjustments, including some pots on the back porch for our tomatoes. They need more sun than our shady little spot-of-a-garden. Previously, the tomatoes have been snitched by some squirly creatures in our forested back yard, so I'm still not sure what we'll do about them, but Sam will think of something. *wink*

And here's a new houseplant I potted just last week to go along with our lonely money tree.

I know I said only the one picture and mention of Harley, but I just had to post this picture from today. Harley and I have been walking up and down our road where he usually finds treasures to sneak into the house (of course, since Mama is sneakier than him, he can never remember where he put his treasures), and today, his delicious find was a plain old stick that he carried for our entire walk!

 

 

That's it's for now. I'll make an effort to improve my bloggery....