Five Minute Friday - Real

 

Around here we write for five minutes flat on Fridays.

We write because we want to, not because we have to. We write for fun, for joy, for discovery.

We just write without worrying if it’s just write or not.

Won’t you join us?


OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes on:




REAL

The Velveteen Rabbit

bostonchildrenstheatre.org

When I think of real, I remember the velveteen rabbit who wanted to be real.  I don't really remember the ins and outs of the story, but I know that at the end, the rabbit was real but it was a mess!  It didn't look pretty anymore.  The rabbit had been so loved on that an eye was missing and his fur had been rubbed off in some places.  He looked bedraggled.

I think that is how it is in real life, too.  We start out as cute little babies but in the process of becoming the man or woman that God intends for us to be, we have to have alterations.  Some rough edges need to be smoothed out.  Sharp prickly parts of our personality need to be softened.  Our innate selfishness needs to be coated over with love for others.

I think experiencing God's love and then learning to share that love with others makes us the "real-est" of all!

And when we make it Home, perhaps having used up all our talents and abilities, He will pronounce us Real - Real Good and Faithful Servants!

STOP


I'm linking up at the Gypsy Mama's blog.  Click here to read other definitions of "Real".
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Friday's Fave Five - 1st Week in February

TGIF!  Lovely Friday!  One great thing about Fridays is the chance to reflect on your week.  We can all find at least 5 favorites in each week.

1. Favorite post to write:  Cali-for-ni-ay, Here We Come: a fun post about recalling a family vacation that was not-so-fun at times.

2. Fave quote:

 

Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength... It is wisdom to take occasional furlough. In the long run, we shall do more by sometimes doing less.
C. H. Spurgeon 

This quote is a real challenge to me because I always want to fill rest time with some type of activity.  Help me. It's a sickness!


3. Fave photo:  We have a couple here at the church that keep our bulletin boards fresh and interesting.  They are so creative!  Here is their offering for February:

 

I was hoping the picture would show the promises on the candies:  they are things like "God will provide," "God daily bears my burdens" and "God will never forget me."  Sweet!


4. Fave Meal:  On Sunday, Liss and I went to my favorite restaurant, "O'Charley's."  We both ordered our favorite thing, the combo appetizer plate.  I just can't say no to their chicken tenders, load baked potato skins, and spicy fried jack cheese wedges.  The best part is that I could only eat half of it, so I had it all again on Monday!

Oh, let me sneak in another fave - I had Monday off because I had an extra day off coming because of my birthday.  I did have something to do Monday night, but I enjoyed  the day, calling it one of my "lazy Mondays."

5. Fave new blog to visit:  the Gypsy Mama blog.  I love to read her posts about faith and family and her desire to help women.  Go check her out!


I also wanted to mention that this post is actually #100 of the Friday's Fave Five posts that I have written.  I've said before, and I'll repeat it, the FFF group of bloggers is the most fun group to join.  Everyone is so friendly, upbeat and positive.  I learn a lot from them!


Would you like to link up?  Visit Susanne's blog, Living to Tell the Story.

Cali-for-ni-ay, Here We Come!

Sub-title:  "The World's Longest Road Trip"

1960 Corvair 700 sedan

corvaircorsa.com


When I was a kid back in the early sixties, my parents decided to take a road trip to California for vacation. Although enough years have passed that I can't remember a lot about the trip, there were some incidents that happened that became fodder for family folklore.

The first thing that is needful to know is this epic trip began in Elgin, Illinois, (a suburb of Chicago) and ended up in Lompoc, southern California, a distance of  approximately 1850 miles, one way. 

The players:  Dad, Mom, a 4 year old rambunctious but adorable boy, and a skinny, scraggly haired 7 year-old, me!

The vehicle for this trip:  a Corvair, almost exactly like the one pictured above. A side note:  my dad always named his cars (and later his livestock) but this time he allowed me to name the car.  I don't know why, but I chose to christen this vehicle "David."

My dad always preferred to start his road trips in the middle of the night.  So, one summer night, we loaded up David and headed for St. Louis, our first major stop.  We left behind Granny Violet, Uncle Juell and Gypsy the dog who all lived with us at the time.

At first, my little brother slept but it wasn't long before he woke up and asked where we were going.  Dad replied we were going to California to see Uncle Johnny. Little brother began to cry and said "I don't wanna see no California, I wanna go home and stay wif Granny and Unca Juell." Dad told him it was too late for that and "stop that crying or I'll give you something to cry about."

1850 miles is a long way when you are a little boy and your favorite things to do are play ball or run your Hot Wheels cars through the dirt! My brother spent his time hanging on the back of the seat (this was before car seats or the seat belt law was in effect), laying in the cubby hole behind the back seat of the Corvair, or sleeping with his head on mom's lap.  When he would wake up, there would be big wet circles on her skirt where he had sweated while sleeping. Back in the sixties, moms wore dresses all the time, or at least, ours did.  Pedal pushers were worn to clean out the garage!

Periodically, he would want to know if we were there yet.  When told no, he would again cry and beg to go home and stay with Granny.

I entertained myself by reading, making up stories or singing.  I had a little songbook that had such diverse tunes in it, such as "See the USA in Your Chevrolet"  (perhaps the book came with the Corvair!) "The Daring Young Man in the Flying Trapeze" and "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain When She Comes." When the other occupants of the car got tired of hearing me sing these classics, I would hum.  Very quietly.  But not so quietly that little brother could not hear and complain, "She's humming - make her stop!"

Ah yes, good times!

Dad had been a truck driver a big part of his life, so his goal whenever starting a trip was to travel as quickly as possible with as few stops as possible, which made for a cranky family when traveling with him.  One evening, he decided to cheer us up by stopping at a diner and letting us order anything we wanted off the menu.  "Really, daddy? I can have anything I want?" my little brother asked, his eyes wide open with excitement. The more excited he got, the louder he talked, until it seemed the whole restaurant was waiting to hear what his choice was.  "This is what I want then, Daddy.  A NICE BIG ...(dramatic pause) BOWL OF RAISIN BRAN!"  Mom, Dad and the waitress all broke out into laughter.  I rolled my eyes, disgusted that he passed up a steak for Raisin Bran. Ick.

The next day, we were traveling through some of the most boring desert-like scenery  I could imagine.  Little brother began his "I wanna go home" speech.  Dad said "just wait, you gotta see California. None of your friends have been to California - you can tell them what it's like."

Finally, finally, we got to Needles, CA, and saw the state line!

Historic Monuments of Needle, California

traveltips.usatoday.com

Ironically, my little brother had fallen asleep.  Dad roused him awake and said, "See, we made it.  We're in California!" My brother looked around.  Unimpressed, he said, "I seen California.  Let's go home and see Granny and Uncle Juell."

I don't remember a lot of what we did in California.  I do know that we went to Knott's Berry Farm and obviously bought some jams and jellies, because for years we had around the house glass jars with the Knott's Berry Farm labels on them.

We also visited an elderly couple who were friends of Granny. Factoid about Granny Violet:  she knew someone (or their relative) everywhere she went.  It didn't matter if it was California, Florida or any point in between; within minutes of meeting someone, she would strike up a conversation that was designed to let her find out if the person she was talking to was related - or a neighbor - to someone she knew. I personally think the cradle of civilization was in Granny's hometown since everyone she met had ties to that location.

This actually turned out to be the highlight of the trip for me because the elderly friend, "Orie," gave me a piece of pumice rock to take back home for a souvenir. This became my standard "go-to" item to take on "Show and Tell" day.  That pumice rock would float in water to the amazement of my classmates.

The time came to climb back in to the Corvair and return home.  To make it interesting, my aunt decided to travel back to Illinois with us along with her 7 month-old baby.  Now there was 6, count them 6, people in that little Corvair traveling 1850 miles back home. I just can't stand to think about it.


However, I do have one vivid reminder of the trip home.  My aunt was one of the first persons to use those new-fangled things:  the disposable diaper.  Rather than wait until one of my dad's infrequent pit stops, she would just toss the diaper out the window on the side of the road!

My dad was so angry!  He said, "Here we're leaving a trail of smelly diapers from Lompoc to St. Louis. It's embarrassing."  Well, that's not really what he said but I'm not allowed to type those words...

I'm linking up with Mama Kat at her World Famous Writer's Workshop.  I'm writing in response to prompt #1: Last week we covered your Top 10 Life Stories…this week choose one and share all the details. Actually I shared all the details about my Top 10 Life Stories last week.  So my post about our California trip can be considered another Life Story ... I told you I had a million of them!

Tea Talk - Thursday, February 2, 2012

It's Thursday, and time to join Ruth at Celebrate Friendship for tea and a light uplifting chat:

1. I'm having...Irish Breakfast Tea ... sorry, guys, I know I am in a rut.  Does it count that I'm having peanut butter and honey sandwiches with it?

2. I'm feeling....confident and cared for by my heavenly Father.

3. On my mind.... how satan tried to discourage me this week, and I almost fell for it! Discouragement is just fear that things will not work out for good.  An old writer said "All discouragement is from the devil."  It's not God who gives you discouragement!

4. I'll share another quotation to encourage:

If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.

Erma Bombeck

Everything's better with humor!

God-Incidence: When God Says No

I'm a big believer in prayer.  No matter how you look at it, there are really only three answers to prayer:  yes, no, or wait.

At various times, I have had all three of those answers.  Today, I want to talk about a time when God said no.

First, let me give you a little background to my story.  Auto insurance providers do not love my family.  Let's just say we've had more than our share of fender benders ... okay, totaled cars.  At one time, we had three children plus my hubby and I on our policy.  Believe me, we were paying the big bucks!

One day, during the time after our flood, we had stayed late working on the house.  Afterwards, my hubby was on his way to my aunt's home where we were living at the time, when he hit a deer.

We all prayed that the insurance company would not total out his van because we needed it so badly with all the remodeling we were doing.  Sure enough, the insurance company did NOT total the van.

Fast forward a few months later.  I was coming home from a board meeting one night when a deer came out of nowhere and connected with the bumper of my van.  I was just sick!  I love my van!  I mean, I really love it.  I do not want to try to find some comparable van.  I want this one.

I asked all my friends and family to please pray that God would keep the insurance company from totaling it.  I put it on the prayer list at church.  I prayed daily, no, more like hourly that God would grant my request.

And yet, God said no.  My van was considered a total loss by the insurance company. I thought, "This is no fair, we prayed for Jim's van to be not totaled and it wasn't.  Why is mine totaled?"

The man who does our body work was sure he could fix it, so we ended up buying our own van back from the insurance company. (Does that make sense to anybody?) We took the money that the insurance company settled with us and had the van fixed.  When all was said and done, we had almost $1,000 profit!

God knew something we didn't know!  Later on, we needed some work done on both our vehicles and the profit from fixing the van paid for it.

This is just another thing that proves what I already know:  don't worry, God's got it all under control.

"For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him" 2 Chronicles 16:9

It's like He is looking for someone to bless. 

I'm jumping up and down, saying, "Pick me!  Pick Me!"


Would you like to read more stories of God showing up in someone's life?  Then go to Jennifer's blog, Getting Down With Jesus to read "God Bumps and  God-Incidences."

Continue!

Jesus came on a mission.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Luke 4:18-19

He came to do His Father's work and His goal was to pass the work along on to His followers.

"As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." John 17:18

In fact, He will empower us to do everything He has done - and to do it even greater!

"Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.  Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.  And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son." John 14:11-13

God has not called a stop to the mission.  Both He and Jesus are still working.
"... Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” John 5:17

Now Jesus work is at the right hand of God, interceding for the saints.

"...Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us." Romans 8:34

It's time for us to take up His mission.  Now is the acceptable year of the Lord.  Now, in 2012.  God wants to continue His ministry through us.

At the church where I work, the custodian (who is Finnish) will sometimes stop to talk.  After a little bit, he will say, "Well, I must continue."  Off he will go down the hall muttering to himself, "Yes I must continue the work."

I thought of this Sunday when Pastor Terry talked about 2012 being the acceptable year of the Lord.  This is the acceptable time to continue the work.  We must be about the Father's business:  preaching, healing, delivering, and setting the captives free.

We must continue.

I'm linking up at Michelle's blog, Graceful

Daybook - January 29, 2012

FOR TODAY, the last Monday in January

 
Outside my window... brilliant sunshine and 54 degrees ... we have not had much of a winter this year!

I am thinking...that January is almost over and I'm still focusing on my "word of the year" - joy!

I am thankful...that my employer gives me a day off for my birthday.  I chose today, so it's another "lazy Monday" for me.  I do love me some 3-day weekends!

In the kitchen...homemade chicken pot pie and salad tonight.

I am wearing...my favorite faded jeans, a comfy paisley top, and thick black socks.  No makeup today!

I am creating...blog posts. I'm linking up with a new group of bloggers this week.

I am going...to our church annual business meeting tonight.

I am wondering...what God has in store for our church this year.

I am reading... "Rebel With A Cause" by Franklin Graham ... still.  I haven't had much reading time lately.

I am hoping...our youngest daughter does well at her new job that she starts today.

I am looking forward to...my next day off!

I am learning joy in the midst of unanswered prayer.

Around the house... peace and quiet ...

I am pondering... my next bible lesson.

A favorite quote for today..."Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." Thomas A. Edison

One of my favorite things...sweet tea with lemon.

A few plans for the rest of the week: blogging and more blogging, finishing up re-doing files at work and catching up on my bible reading program.

A peek into my day...

My Day Planner keeps me straight!



The Daybook is a concept created by Peggy Hostetler.  You can link up at her blog, The Simple Woman's Daybook.