Just one for tonight

Just one picture for tonight. We didn't get home from State College until about 10:45 PM, so I'll just post this one sweet picture tonight. Sometime tomorrow I will post a whole lot more. We had an AWESOME day.

Austin, Grandma is coming!

All week long my goal has been to get everything done by Friday evening so we could go to State College today FINALLY to see Austin. And I did it! I was up last night until 1 AM, but I did it. I can hardly wait to see that precious, little guy. The last time we saw him at 1 1/2 weeks of age he still had his eyes closed most of the time. Now at 6 weeks he "talks" and smiles. I will definitely have some pictures to post tomorrow.

Saved by a mailbox and the Lord

As I was getting ready for school this morning I heard the sound of sleet on the bathroom skylight. It didn't last long, but I did have to scrape ice off the windshield of my car before I left. Dick assured me that the temp was well above freezing, so the roads shouldn't be any problem. He was right - they were just wet.

As I usually do on the way to school, I was talking to the Lord, and there were no problems with ice. UNTIL I stepped on the brake pedal as I approached a stop sign. Oh my word. I started sliding right toward the intersection, having absolutely no control over the car. I totally thought I was going to slide right into oncoming traffic. Instead I sideswiped a mailbox and came to a stop - just in time!

I knocked the side mirror on the passenger side of my car, and now it's just hanging on by the remote control cable. The mailbox had only been hanging onto its perch by a bungee cord, and my impact caused it to swing down around, still being held in place by the bungee cord, except now upside down.

I went to their door to tell them what had happened, and they actually laughed, saying it gets hit often, and that's why it had a bungee cord holding it onto the post.

So all's well that ends well, I guess. But wow, I was shaken. I kept imagining if I had not been able to stop.

Thank you, Lord, for your protection!

They're dropping like flies

My first contacts with students this morning were with my worship team for sharing and prayer, then 6th grade music class, followed by 7th grade music class. In each class there were a number of absentees, and half the students that were there looked like they were ready to fall over. One of the sixth grade boys told me his stomach didn't feel well. Right there and then, my stomach didn't feel well either, and it's been feeling funny every since. Throughout the day at least six middle school students were sent home. Oh, the joys of trying to teach anything at times like this!! One week I don't have a voice, the next week my schedule is screwed up because I went away, now half the kids are sick. There should certainly be some chance for normalcy in March. We have NO days off that entire long month, not until Easter break.

The musical that grades 3 - 5 is preparing for our Spring Program is called Survivor Babylon, about the time Shadrak, Meschak, and Abednego would not bow down to the statue of Nebuchadnezzar. Most of the songs are very upbeat and contemporary and even funny. But my favorite one of all is one called God Will Take Care of Me, obviously the testimony of the three Hebrew boys. It brought tears to my eyes the first time we listened to it, because it was so what I needed to hear. We were working on the choreography for that song today. At the end of the day a 3rd grade girl saw me and said, "That song 'God Will Take Care of Me' is just stuck in my head all day long." I said, "GOOD! That's the kind of stuff I want you to have stuck in your head."

On a completely other note, I've been amused at all the news coverage preparing us for the president's speech on the economy this evening. I keep hearing over and over how things really aren't any better, but he can't be too negative, because people who CAN spend money SHOULD spend money to get the economy going. So it's going to depend on the tone of his voice whether people feel hopeful enough to spend money or not. I keep thinking, "Do these news people think we're stupid, that we're not listening to them when they're saying these things?" No tone of voice will change the fact that a lot of people don't have money to spend. In fact, they already spent way too much they didn't have.

So the bottom line is - if any of you out there have money to spend, please spend it so my husband can get a job, ha, ha, ha!! Actually, he's really busy. Advance Auto Parts is giving him 20 -plus hours per week, and he is constantly working on people's cars on his own. Today he was working on a Jaquar!

An eye opener about women in Swaziland

About a year ago, I came across a blog named Radical Living in a Comfortable World by Seth Barnes, director of Adventures in Missions based in Georgia. I have probably read almost everything he has written since then and have begun to support his ministry. He broadens my horizons as he tells it like it is for people in poverty stricken countries. He gives me a different perspective from which to compare my hardships, often making me feel embarrassed that I ever complain about anything. Many times I have felt like I should share things he has written, but I never have, because I don't know if you want to read the stark things he writes about. But maybe some of you do, so today I am sharing what he posted this past weekend about Swaziland. It's not very up beat or cheerful, but it's about women. Real women.


I choose to focus on Swaziland because no nation today is dying faster. What is particularly horrifying is that it dies because Swazi women aren't safe. As children, far too many are raped by relatives. As students, many of them have to sleep with teachers or bus drivers in order to get school fees. As adults, the majority die of AIDS before the age of 30. And none of this is talked about in a culture of secrets. There is no accountability for action - men get away with it because women are shamed and cannot share their hurts. They keep them secret.

Every woman has a secret, something terrible that they have to live with. An abuse, a slow, painful death they watched, a terrible choice they had to make. And now, pain upon pain, a generation of parents has died. The grandmothers, children and assorted survivors slog on. People make the best of the business of dying. The pain gets suppressed and the grieving never gets done.

When I first began traveling to Swaziland in 2004, God spoke to me about all of this. I felt that he said, "Only the Swazi women can save their country. The men have failed and are continuing to fail. Swazi women have all that they need to create hope and the possibility of life."

If women could learn ways to share their secrets with one another, men would be held accountable for their actions and would be forced to stop abusing women. I asked God about it and he said, "The real gift that any American has for a Swazi is the gift of vulnerability, because so many have never seen what it's like to share your deepest shame-producing secrets with other people."

So the challenge becomes, how do you create a safe context in which women can share their secrets with one another? All I could do as an American male was to share the dream with other women and hope they'd run with it. It has to be a Swazi-led thing. As a mission, we've taken a few stabs at it - we've done some retreats that gave me hope that the dream of setting women free could be realized. But I never saw the reality of what God shared with me until a little over a week ago.

We scheduled an afternoon for women to talk about their issues. We wanted to help them create an atmosphere of openness. It only took one courageous woman, a friend of mine named Debbie, to be completely vulnerable and honest with her story before the whole room wailed in anguish. God used Debbie in the way that he'd revealed to me was possible five years earlier.

Immediately following her testimony, a Gogo stood, cried, and shared that all her children have had to leave her home because her son will not stop coming to the house to beat them. She said she was scared for her life and the life of her kids. Many heart-rending stories followed.

Woman were set free on that day. They gathered around one another and cried out to the Lord on behalf of each lady. They laid hands on one another to heal hearts.They discovered that they are not alone and that it is okay to hurt.

So, building on what happened, this weekend we're sponsoring a women's retreat we're calling "Beauty from Ashes." As the Swazi women press into the pain we hope to encourage them to rally around one another. The dream is that they initiate a movement of Swazi women who discover the power of sharing their stories and begin to uncover generations of shame. Please be in prayer about it. I'll give you a report later.

A lighter heart

My heart feels about 100 pounds lighter this evening. There are many things I cannot say on such a public forum as this blog. But I will say that the situation at Destiny's mom's house in Reading has been deteriorating drastically over the past month or so. When I picked Destiny up on Friday I wondered how I could conscientiously return her to that situation at the end of the weekend. I've done a lot of praying and had our pastor pray over Destiny this morning after church.

This evening I found out that over the weekend Destiny's mom moved back to Lancaster to her parents' house. When I told Destiny that we would be taking her there instead of to Reading, she said with great relief in her voice, "It finally happened." I had a good talk with Destiny's mom and other grandma this evening. Destiny will be registered tomorrow at the elementary school that she attended the first half of first grade, right across the street from her other grandma's house. She loved that school and has always missed it.

The situation will still not be ideal. But Destiny is safe and happy, and I feel like a great burden has lifted from my heart.

Catching up at home

I had a very necessary day of catching up around home today, and now I'm too sleepy to write anything. So I guess you'll just have to be satisfied with pictures of my grandchildren that were posted today. To see more of Austin, go here, and for more pictures of Sophie's day at Disney go here.

Some honesty

My friend Kat passed along the Honest Scrap award to me today, supposedly for the brilliant content or design of my blog. That makes me laugh, considering that her blog is the most brilliant in content AND design, at least of the blogs I read. So thanks, Kat!

I'm supposed to list 10 honest facts about myself, so here goes:

1. I find it almost impossible to sleep more than 6 hours per night. On rare occasions I sleep 8.

2. I haven't bought any new clothes for months, so if my co-workers are tired of my clothes, they can buy me something new. Actually, please don't. I'm too picky.

3. My favorite cold beverage is ice water, and I love to chew on the ice after the water is all gone.

4. I wear contacts, driving glasses, reading glasses, sun glasses, and then regular glasses after I take my contacts out at night. When I travel I have to take them all!!!

5. I am still using the same cookware I bought from a door-to-door salesman the summer after I graduated from high school in 1969. And it's still in great shape.

6. I grew up in a one-bathroom house and shared it with seven siblings and my parents. Now Dick and I live in a two-bathroom house, one for him and one for me. I like it that way.

7. I am 57 years old and I have two zits on my forehead this week. What is up with that??

8. I have a hard time throwing music away, so my shelves at home, my piano benches at home and at school, my filing cabinets and cupboards at school are all overflowing with music.

9. As a school music teacher and a church worship leader I have never worked with an administrator or a pastor that I did not like and get along with.

10. I enjoy washing windows.

If you would like to list ten honest facts about yourself, consider yourself tagged!

One more picture!!

Okay, you know how we women are about getting our pictures taken, right? Especially if we know the picture is going to appear on a blog or something.

I seem to have the knack for taking pictures of Lisa when she's not dressed up and made up, but then I forget to take a picture of her when she is. So yesterday when I wanted to take a picture of her on top of the ladder, she said, "Come on, you're not going to take a picture of me like this, are you?" But I did anyway.

So this evening when she sent me the pictures I had taken with her camera, I decided to be kind to her and chop off her butt (see the cropped picture a couple of posts below.)

Lo and behold, she comments that she can't believe I chopped off her butt! Besides, she said, the full picture shows some of the lovely white panels she was hanging. So I called her to make sure. She said she thought the close-up view of her hair looked worse than her butt. Oh my word. She had me cracking up so bad, I got a coughing fit and almost choked.

So here is the FULL BODY VIEW, complete with lovely white panels, ha, ha, ha!! Now go to her blog to read about her lovely day.

A few more pictures

I posted many pictures of my weekend trip in chronological order below. Here are a few more I just got from Lisa. On Tuesday Sophie and I played and played. Here she was trying to draw with her toes!

We each made a picture of our hands. I decorated my finger nails, but she decorated her entire hand!

No, Austin was not in Florida with us. But we checked out the latest pictures of him on his website. Here he is dressed in "big boy" clothes at 4 weeks!

While Sophie and I played, Lisa was totally impressing me with her mechanical skills, which she most certainly did not inherit from me. Yes, she's on top of a ladder, using a power drill to install the rods for her curtains. I'm just so disappointed that I did not take a picture after she had all those lovely white panels hung at every window and sliding door.

George had to work on Tuesday, part of the day in his spacious home office, and part of the day making his rounds.

This is one view of the L-shaped screened-in patio. It has sliding glass doors which open into George's office (at the far end), the family room (foreground), and then behind me into the dining room and the master bedroom.

Pictures from my trip to Florida

Here at last are pictures of my trip to Florida. As I said in a previous post, I forgot my camera (!!), so I had to borrow Jeremy's and Lisa's cameras. So I did the best I could with equipment I wasn't used to using.

Here's Sophie outside of church on Sunday morning.

Their church is starting a marriage series based on the movie Fireproof. As they usually do, they went all out with the fireproof theme, including a firetruck outside the church!

After church George and Lisa took me to Jeremy's house. Here's a random shot of Jeremy, Sophie, and Lisa.

Lisa's friend Terra was visiting from Arizona. Sophie was crazy over her!

Here Jeremy and I are - 29 years after the day I gave birth to him!

I spent the afternoon and evening with Jeremy and three of his friends at the Florida State Fair. Here are pictures of "Crackertown", an exhibit of historical Florida.

A grapefruit tree.

Farm animals.

Horticulture.

There were also displays of all kinds of hand crafts and wood work, but I guess I didn't think of snapping any pictures of them.

There was music for every taste. In Crackertown there was Bluegrass. The couple below was having a great time kicking up their heels to the music of dueling pianos. At other places there were traditional Spanish music and a Salsa dancing competition, also an R & B tent, and as we were leaving they announced that Southern Gospel music would soon be starting in the prayer tent.

On Monday morning Jeremy and I drove back to Lisa and George's place. I was glad to see the house by daylight. Here's the front entrance.

As you walk toward the front door, this little walled-in patio is on the right.

This is one of the views when you enter the front door. Actually, the dining room table is just left of this photo, but I didn't get a picture of it.

Look at that! The house comes complete with a butler, ready to serve you, ha, ha!!

The spacious kitchen.

The breakfast nook looks out onto the screened-in patio.

The family room is right next to the kitchen (actually, it's all one "great" room.) I'm sure Lisa would like me to remind you that they just moved last week and she does not have the decorating details finished.)

A peek into Sophie's bedroom.

There's no question - Jeremy is the #2 man in Sophie's heart.

Here's Dexter in one of his favorite spots. (A more favorite spot would be right next to a warm human body.)

Sophie and I played "doctor". Since George had an ear infection (he really, truly did!) she put a bandage on his ear!

She showed me how she plays Hop-Scotch on the big, long patio.