count your blessings

I have a version of the old hymn Count Your Blessings on my ipod that I love but makes my husband wrinkle one side of his face when it plays. I've thought a lot about that song the last few months. When I was a child, my Mom would sing as she did housework, and that was one of the songs she often sang. In middle school, whenever I complained about things I didn't like or that made me unhappy, she would gently chide me to be thankful for the things that were good that I did have/experience. A few years ago I read Ann VosKamp's One Thousand Gifts, and it made me think of my Mom so much.

So today, in honor of my Mom and my many aunts who were almost always positive in their outlook, here's my thankful list:

• a family that loves me
• that God truly knows what is best, even if it's not what I like
• Dr. Pepper
• M&Ms
• the children in our church
• a husband who faithfully worked and saved for years
• that God gave me a husband whose philosophies and practices match mine
• the internet
• modern medicine
• freedom to criticize our government or its policies
• electricity
• clean, running water
• Facebook - it's SO easy to keep in touch with long distance family this way!
• rain
• the local hardware and agri-supply stores
• Target
• books
• the gift of laughter
• a church family that doesn't pretend to be perfect
• music
• fried chicken
• a washing machine...that's in my house!
• the US post office...prompt delivery and no snooping (we grumbly Americans don't realize how good we have it!)
• outside flowers
• fabric
• that a tool like the seam ripper actually exists
• elastic
• sunshine
• strawberry fields
• Bobby getting someone to till the garden for me
• a hot water heater
• quilt shops
• craft stores
• shoes that don't hurt my feet
• people who can cut hair
• cameras

May your Tuesday be filled with a few moments of thanksgiving!

fun yet sad

We've lost two hens already this year - one to a hawk (we think), and one to Buster. If the summer plays out like summers' past, as the young chicken hawks learn to soar, we'll lose a few more. And if the coyote that shows up some nights, driving the dog's (and me) crazy, gets more adventurous, we'll could experience a widespread slaughter. That has happened before. Those are the sad things.

But here are the good things:

The four larger ones against the back wall are the ones we got 2 weeks ago, so they're not quite 3 weeks old.

I was a little uncertain about getting so many, but Bobby reminded me they won't all make it through the summer. That is the part of raising hens I do NOT like. But I'm happy with the breed selection, and I'm looking forward to watching them grow!

new neighbors

Well, the picture usually posted on the tax portion of the county website has been deleted, so I only have the new picture. But the old version of this house was red brick, and very small. Our new neighbors (the daughter of the original owners) have upgraded it quite a bit, and moved in yesterday. Welcome to the 'hood Cindy and Earl!

changes

Someone asked me a while back about the house across the road from us. I had posted pictures as they were building, and the family has now been in it for several months. I finally got a shot of the completed house yesterday:

The builder is also renovating the farm house to the left of our house, and the change is outstanding. Hopefully I can find a before picture from tax records and then get a picture of it today.

And, in today's newspaper is an update on the school situation in Garner. It mentions that Bryan Road Elementary, like south Garner High, will house students of other schools the first two years so those campuses can be renovated. Seeing as Bryan Rd Elementary (which will be our next door neighbor) is schedule to house students in the fall of 2017, I imagine construction is going to start soon. So change is coming.  Maybe we'll get our road paved soon!

The solitude was nice while it lasted.

Tomorrow I'll try to get pictures of the progress they've made on South Garner High. They steel studs appear to be 90% in place on the academic building and in some places they've even started putting the outerwall up. The gym/cafeteria is looking more and more like a completed building as well.

And ten minutes down the road at the White Oak shopping center, Carbela's (sp?) is slated to open next week, with five new restaurants (FIVE GUYS!!! and a barbeque place...please let it be tomato based!), coming soon.

The joke that the only thing tobacco fields are growing these days is subdivisions isn't exactly true around here, but it's not far from the mark.

more info, please!

It's easy to go online (pinterest, facebook, google searches, even Youtube!) and find how to prepare soil, ideas for location (pots vs ground, etc), how to place the seeds, and even WHEN to plant your seeds when you want to garden. But what I seldom find, is how to know when the plant is ready to harvest.

I've planted some onions and even though it's a week, pushing two weeks late, I hope to plant some garlic. I've planted both of these items once before without any success. This time I actually have some shoots coming up out of the ground (okay, up out of the pot). Whoohooo!

But I don't know when to harvest it. Pull it up too soon, and you have a tiny, almost non-existent onion bulb on the bottom. Leave it too long, and it rots (or if the ground, a mole/vole eats most of it).  So what don't all these wonderful sites that teach you how to get started teach you how to finish?  I imagine that when harvest rolls around these people are too busy to blog or video, but it would be awfully nice to have some pictoral advice on when/how to finish a farming project you start. At times like this, I really wish I had lived closer to my grandparents growing up. I think I would have learned a lot more than I did with the sporadic visits (which I am grateful I had) I had.

So if anyone runs across harvesting information, please let me know!

the last day of Easter fabric

I had planned to post this yesterday, but due to both expected and unexpected life events, that didn't happen.

I think I was in high school before I had ever heard a sermon or emphasis placed on the linen cloth Jesus was wrapped in (both as a baby and in the tomb), specifically from John's account of the resurrection.

"The two were running together; and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter and came to the tomb first; 5 and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings lying there; but he did not go in. 6 And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself." ~ John 20:4-7 (NASB)

I remember my younger sister and I discussing this passage, and pondering whether or not the wrappings from the body were left in a heap and just the "face-cloth" or handkerchief was neatly rolled (the New King James says it was "folded"; other versions say "rolled").

I've heard and read a lot of neat stories about the symbolism behind the rolled or folded head-burial cloth. It seems most of the early church leaders used this point to emphasize that Christ was truly risen and not a victim of corpse-stealing, as a thief would not take the time to remove the burial wraps, much less neatly roll or fold the wrappings on the head (which was used supposedly to keep the mouth closed). And for the most part I agree with them. There's a small part of my brain that wants to argue back with them. A few years ago my niece's house was robbed during the day while she and her husband were at work. She knew someone had been in the house when she walked in the living room...because the thief straightened a picture on the mantle that she had knocked off and hadn't made the time to correctly reposition. Once she saw that, she looked around the room and began noticing items missing. Had the thief not been so neat, it might have been several days before they realized they had been robbed (the thief only took a gaming console, games, and guns...stuff they wouldn't normally use during the week). So neatness in and of itself doesn't necessarily prove that a thief was/was not there.

Regardless, it's one of the few details that have always amazed me, a detail that no other author records. Granted they all mention the wrappings being left in the grave, but John is the only author that talks about the face wrappings being apart from the body wrappings. I've often wondered if the angels unwrapped Him, or if He tore the wrappings off Himself. And while you'd have to pull the body wrappings off to have use of your hands, if you were wrapped up in something, the first thing you'd strive to remove would be something over your face. You'd want to breathe, I would think, before you wanted to walk around.

 I know we'll have a new body and a renewed mind when we arrive in Heaven. I don't know if that means we'll have the answers to all of these questions then, or if it simply won't matter. But if we don't know and still remember some of what we think here, I long to ask Jesus this one day, to hear His resurrection story and the glory of that moment, when the horrors of Friday and Saturday (as we know it) were finally over for Him. And that moment is what radically transformed life.

"12 Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. 15 Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; 17 and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless;you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied." ~ I Corinthians 15: 12-19

fabrics of Easter, day 4

27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole Roman cohort around Him. 28 They stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. 29 And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand; and they knelt down before Him and mocked Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 30 They spat on Him, and took the reed and began to beat Him on the head. 31 After they had mocked Him, they took the scarlet robe off Him and put His own garments back on Him, and led Him away to crucify Him. ~ Matthew 27:27-31

Somewhere between sixth and eighth grade, I read Corrie Ten Boom's autobiography The Hiding Place. In the chapter where she and her sister were forced to strip with the other prisoners as they entered the Nazi concentration camp, she talks about the embarrassment she felt, and how mortified she was to be marching her old naked body in front of a group of uniformed men. She was reeling with the indignity of it all, and wondering how her sister Betsy, who like her had never married, was faring, when her sister leaned forward and commented that she had never before fully appreciated what Christ had endured.  As much as I like to think I would be like Betsy when faced with such torment, the reality is, I would probably be more angry and horrified like Corrie.

We know that whenever a person is arrested, they are required to strip and given prison uniforms to wear, at least, in most places. Sometimes even the body cavities are searched. Those two things alone would be mortifying to me. But Christ was placed in the center of jeering guards when stripped, who then threw a robe on him. Luke's Gospel says the placement of the robe and the beating actually happened at Herod's place, and he was sent back to Pilate's place still wearing the robe. John agrees with Matthew that the beating and the placement of the robe happened at Pilate's place. John also states Jesus was paraded in front of the Jewish leaders who had him arrested with the robe and crown, and after his scourging (flogging) before Pilate made a final decision.

We will never know all the minute details of what happened when and where and why. I will never understand why people in authority, like policemen and guards and soldiers, feel compelled to humiliate their captives. But like Betsy Ten Boom, I can honestly say that my Savior has suffered all the indignities that mankind could think of. He truly understands what I face. He knows the fear. He gets the shame. He comprehends the hurt, the loneliness, the anger...every emotion that we might possible face. He's felt it and more.

I can't comprehend the insult and the irony of stripping a prisoner, and then forcing him to semi-cover himself with royal garments. I wonder who the robe belonged to. Was it Pilate's,  Herod's, something from a costume party one of the soldiers had attended? Did it belong to Pilate's wife or Herod's wife? We will never know. But the cruelty of humiliating someone with a strip, and then forcing props on them for the sole purpose of mockery is something Christ endured, simply so I could exit the sacrifice system. That's mighty amazing love.