What's a mother to do?

Every so often I get out Henry Cloud's book and open it to the chapter on controlling moms, where I was so shocked to find myself years back. (name of book: The Mom Factor) This time I was trying to explain to one of my kids how I came to realize I was a controlling mom and I could not remember the part of the definition that opened my eyes, so I went back to the chapter to find it. more in a minute.

So thankful there is a cure chapter following the diagnosis chapter.

You have adult children. ADULT I said. You watch their decisions. Your experience tells you that perhaps theirs is not the best decision. You get it that the time for you to verbalize this is past. Well, of course you can pray. And you do know that it is God Who works inside people to grow them. Every day, new opportunities to put this conviction into action, by NOT ACTING (not lecturing, not trying to manipulate, not even saying what you think about things). They already know what you think about it. Some would argue with me about this..." once a mom, always a mom", "you never stop being a mother", "you always love them"right? My challenge is to define love. Is not God's design to grow the kids up to become mature self sustaining adults?

I slip up many times. I apologize for words that come out of my mouth that are in the lecture category. My sweet kids forgive me, and my sweet God, Who is in the business of Redemption, redeems again. We go on.

Car

Used car salesman. and saleswoman. What comes to your mind. Should I write this? Should I diss these guys that are 'just trying to earn a buck?' They have such ploys. And of course, some will try to tell you to buy a new car. Aresenio. i told him I am not in a hurry. But I AM, he said, thinking he was funny. Not going back there. Search all day on internet....get in and go to some dealerships during rush hour (so logical). Two were Christian. One may be able to get me one like mine at the auction next week. That'd be great. There is one with low mileage and low price but they did not answer their phone. Why does it have to be silver? D hugged me twice when i made jokes with him. I thought it was totally cultural for him and very unprofessional.....llike, you're so funny, I'm just going to fall on you and hug your neck. Go away please, I'm not your best friend. That's part of their training, act like best buds. Then whathisname and I talked about how great XM radio is and he raved about Howard Stern and I thought: I want to go home now. I don't want to buy a car from you. Good to have my son help me decide. I'm paying for my own car rental now. I think of how nice hondas and toyotas and some of the others are but I can't imagine them handling like my vw. I really want to replace that car, even if it has to be older. Then there was Earl with long fingernails and bloodshot eyes. Nice enough, the car I went to look at was already sold. But he did have a vw out there we looked at. And I even searched in DC and Indy in case I could go visit loved ones and drive a new car home cuz there are not many jetta wagons around and the passat is pricey. He gives and takes away. he gives and takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Then we have the girl, who was interested in painting, but my! She told me to come out there and then she had no vw's on the lot. She made me sit down at her desk and talk about what i wanted, which I had already told her on the phone. She was very slow and I heard her discussing unimportant things with her coworkers while I waited to go look at the maybe one car they actually had there. just annoying. don't want to deal with her either. And they have to go and talk to the manager. And the manager calls me into his office and gives me his out the door price. You gotta be kidding. I think you came down a whole dollar. thanks. patience, child, and trust.

Maine 09

A long drive. Up the Eastern Shore was very pleasant, NJ Turnpike tolls have gone up a lot. Overnight overpriced in Connecticut. Topsham at my sister's. Our kids are married to each other and we don't have a word for it in English, so we have decided on sister. We argue over her desire to be a wonderful hostess, which she is, and my desire not to make trouble for her. Brandy the sheltie is ever beautiful and sweet. Stuffed haddock. Heaven.

I commute to Owl's Head which provides me with 2 extra hours each day seeing Maine from Rt. 1. Second week I am at Lake Crawford, which is mostly hid from me via rain and fog. Cozy cabin of knotty pine that smells like my Grandma's house. My room is very dark at night and makes for great sleeping. An erie owl echoes over the unseen lake.

I never quite seemed to get organized in my car and of course I brought too much, but the second week I settle in better and I like my paintings.

A thumbnail is going into the demo book of my teacher. I am honored and blessed.

He said such nice things about my work, beyond my understanding, as I am pretty uneducated in art history, but I take it as a gift and I want to share it, not hoard it.

There is too much to write & I must move on. What comes to my mind, all those grays and how to make them luminous. Fish every day. Nice people in the class. David gives and gives and gives the entire time, but I wish he would find me every day and comment and help me with my paintings. He said at the end I just get better and better every year and that I should try to enter something in the National Academy. I will.

See Good, Speak Good, Hear Good

What’s on your mind? asks Facebook. But there is not room there for it all, so I come to blog. Blog. blogger.

John said he wrote so that our joy/ his joy? may be complete, they had some joy and it could always grow until it is full up, pressed down, shaken together and running over. plenty! John emphasized that he heard, saw, touched Jesus, implying those gnostics, those gnasty gnostics, are wrong to teach spirit is good and physical is bad. If so then Jesus would have been bad. They somehow could not accept that Jesus came in the flesh, cuz they were men and they knew themselves and they therefore had first hand evidence that all men are dogs, (sorry guys, I love ya anyway, but it's true) ...so they tried to get their mind around this and couldn’t so they concluded that therefore since Jesus is good, he must not be physical, cuz HE was sinless, as in not a dog, not like other men.

One thing they got, He was not like the rest of us. But John brought us back to reality and said, yes, he is, that’s just it, isn’t it amazing and you gotta get this in order for your joy to be complete and in order for us to have fellowship. if them gnasty gnostics wanna make up stuff like Jesus didn’t have an actual physical body then what was it I SAW and HEARD and TOUCHED with my own two grubby little hands? LOGIC. man! Use your brains. They were using their brains and came up with a fancy idea that was unfortunately plenty fancy and zero true.

Go, John, thank you for writing this down in a letter so that we can still benefit from is all these years later.

To Finish a Painting

To finish a painting is the hardest part.

I am good at getting an idea.

I am good at sketching out the shapes and getting a great feel onto the paper.

Then I work on adjusting the colors & detail.

I am trying to finish "Boats Docked in Maine".

I am noticing a pattern.

It needs SOMETHING, but can't figure out what.

I like it and I don't want to ruin it.  Artists, you know this sentiment!

I am at what I call the pushmepullyou stage, (word borrowed from Rudyard Kipling).  I am adding color, taking away darks, emphasizing shadows, erasing mistakes.  OK, sometimes I'm fudging.

Here's what I am seeing:  The right side of the painting is compelling.  It works.  And I am trying to make the left side work in the same way, but there are no interesting shapes or colors in the photo to make that happen, so I am trying to invent them.  It is not working.  My strongest inclination is to crop the left side somewhere close to the mast.  I can see that if I keep fudging, it is not going to work, and if I keep trying I will work the left side to death.  Now why would I want to kill a nice work like this?

Time to crop, sign and start a new painting.

By the Oaks of Mamre

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

From Calm my Anxious Heart homework, chapter on FAITH. 

Each week we write:  What did I learn about God this week?

He sometimes uses spooky seeming things to make His point with us).  He sent 3 men to Abraham and he recognized them as messengers from God even though they are not called angels. He treated them as such.  Weird, it comes across to me.  Now that I have had my own weird experience, I should not see this as spooky, but I do.

It comes across as a oneironaut, a waking dream.  It was in the heat of the day--no breeze, all still save the cicadas in the trees around the oasis, resting in the door of his tent, shade and breeze best there.   Wavy images over the sand.  Is this a heat dream, as compared to heat lightening?

Looking at the context:  Abraham, and all his men, had they been circumcised.  It comes immediately after in the text, though that is not proof that it happened right then. That just means, this is the next story that is written down.  But I am curious.  

Are they reeling from pain?  Were they on Canaan aspirin to numb the pain?  drunk?  That could produce some weird dreams. 

They had obeyed God.  Every male was  circumcised.  Then God visited them with the specific promise about SARAH, not Hagar, that their son would become a multitudinous nation.  After some time they tried to fulfill that promise by surrogate mother Hagar.  Then God said circumcise and they obeyed and then God clarified His intent:  Sarah is to be the mom.  

God still used Sarah even though she laughed in disbelief when she first heard of His plan and then LIED: "I didn’t laugh"....not looking too Godly at that point.  But by the next year she gave birth in old age.  She had grown in faith.  I'm thinking Sarah is blown away by God’s faithfulness.

God has a sense of humor, yes, but he reprimanded Sarah for her lack of belief, her lack of taking God’s word from His messengers seriously.   Can you blame her? Yet God blamed her. But He did not punish her, nor did He change His plan. 

Companion question: What did you learn about yourself this week?

As with Sarah, God is with me, come as you are, imperfect, as is, scratch and dent.  I used to pray "I believe, help Thou mine unbelief."  I did not believe whole heartedly.  And He helped my unbelief.  He took my mustard seed faith and made it grow.  It is growing into a big ole tree that birds can build nests in.  Lord, may my little birdies nest in my tree, which is rooted in You.  And I thank You for this.   You made me, You redeemed me, You gave me my family, You graduated Rick to heaven and You  became my husband. You sent men to help me do things men do best.  You made my son Andrew to step up, You made him faithful like his dad.  You blessed me with grand babies.  You coached me;  you sent me Ron Marsh (Christian life coach:  purposefilledlife.com.) You gave me a life purpose.  Hallelluiah.  You gave me my ability to see beauty and the eye-hand coordination to but my interpretation of that beauty on paper.  You did this. 

And how does it make sense that I still worry about money?  (This is the inheritance that my physical father gave me: you need to have plenty of money--- though at age 97 it is about family.)

Given all that has transpired

Question from study of Joseph:  Given all that has transpired in Joseph's life, what do you learn about the process of reconciling broken relationships?

 thoughts.....

1. If God is at work, "something beautiful, something good, all my confusion, He understood.  All I had to offer him was brokenness and strife, but HE made something beautiful of my life."  (Bill Gaither song, one of my theme songs.)  In Joseph's case, he didn't screw up his own life, his brothers did.   (Although the author of the study suggested Joseph might have been a spoiled tattle tale making him partly culpable for what happened?   I don't assume Joseph was perfect; neither am I convinced  he was a brat.)  In my case, I blamed myself for my broken relationship, although it does take two to tango, and two to reconcile.  No, wait, I went back and forth between blaming me and blaming the other party.  I could really write a saga here.

Back to Joseph study...

2.  If God's plan is reconciliation for my family, friend or mate,  it will happen and it will happen when HE wants it to.  Year by year, Joseph must have had a growing question in his mind as to whether his dad was still alive.    And how is Benjamin?  Is he married?  Does he have children?  Has he become Dad's favorite as I used to be?  Do the brothers hate him? Will they do him wrong, too?  Is he safe?

3.  It's not over till it's over.

4.  The bond of family is almost? perhaps? surely? unbreakable.

5.  If there is any rift in a family, one will always yearn for it to be made right.  One will always feel it no matter what, even if one is comforted with new family, one will always long for the original one.  I would love for my new friend, also named Joseph, to talk about this one.

6.  Part of the reconciling process is that the TRUTH HAS TO BE TOLD OUT LOUD with REAL WORDS THAT THE other party understands, such as, "I am Joseph."

  

6a.  Another part of reconciling is a plan of action to make things better.

7.  Both sides need to be ready to reconcile.  So far, it is all Joseph's open arms and offer to reconcile.  The brothers have realized the truth with a mixture of joy and fear, but they have yet to prove they have repented.

8.   God humbled Joseph's brothers and brought them to a place where they began to realize God was bigger than they were and they  regretted their sin....."this is what we get for selling Joseph into slavery.  Remember how he begged us not to?"  

9.  Wow.  What a cool story.  Thank You for writing it down, Lord.  I can't wait to study the end, even though I know what happens.

The Un-Dog

I pined for my dog who is now in doggie heaven, if there were such a place, in which she would be either not biting people, or biting them and having it make them laugh with glee, since heaven is a place where God fixes things up, right?  No, I don't believe either of those things.

So I searched and tried out a new dog, and yet it is not time to commit, due to more important decisions that need to be made first.

Excuse me, Feelings, I have a surprise for you:  being dogless is on the same page as being productive.  Feelings said:  if I had a dog again, it would ease my discomfort and unhappiness and that that would motivate me to do more and better work.  When the yipping and whining subsides, the Truth quietly reveals that doing the work reduces the felt need for that warm, waggy-tailed loyal buddy. 

 

So the work (painting/marketing) comes first, and satisfaction is there.  A new dog will be icing on the cake.

I still look at Petfinder.  I peek into animal shelters if I'm not too rushed.  But it is not time.  

It is time to paint.

YOU DESERVE

Weary of this phrase in advertising.  Effective way to get selfish humans to buy more STUFF.

Every time I hear it or read it, I have to ask, how do you know someone deserves something.  What did they do to merit a reward? And I looked up deserve and it is about both a reward and a PUNISHMENT.  Hey, you deserve to get an F on your homework.  You deserve to be in jail.  You deserve to get divorced.  You deserved to crash your car.  Would you hear those words with the same glee?  Where did this entitlement mentality come from and how can I make it go away?

To me it seems quite normal to want personal peace and comfort for self, family, and friends, countrymen, and then the world.  But to throw around YOU DESERVE this and that......

Life is a gift.  I am grateful.  I do not say it is wrong to have a treat or buy something you don't NEED.  But people who fall into this I DESERVE thought pattern are in a trap of greed, love of money (sin) and insatiable desire.

I think if someone in a third world country heard an advertisement saying You DESERVE this, they would look at you with befuddlement!

Homework

Assignment:  Write a paragraph outlining how you will Search your heart, or cut the ropes, or Submit to plastic surgery, or Share Your Wealth.  --page 228, #7. of Calm My Anxious Heart, by Linda Dillow (Women's Bible study I am in at church)  I chose

I.  Submit to plastic surgery.

A.  I do not have credit card debt, but I am living above my means, using up my retirement savings and my kids' inheritance.  I have been a hippie-cricket, judging people who live with credit card debt, while I myself have refused to do the math and live within my means.  I am not totally wicked and out to lunch, in that I tried to buy a condo that was within my means, I sought counsel, looked far and wide, prayed.  But my assumption that I would reach a certain income within a few years without working hard enough to do so and the correlating assumption that I would not use up my savings too fast was inaccurate to say the least.  So I bought.  Then the economy went South and carried my investments with it.

So just as one who hits bottom, and realizes he or she needs to cut up her credit cards and pay off her debts, I have made a SMART goal on how I might reverse my life style from living outside my means to living inside my means.

My goal is to either 

1.  sell my condo and/or

2.   do these 4 things:

a.   get a roommate and

b.   refinance

c.    get a part time job

d.    ramp up painting and marketing;  i.e.  WORK HARDER

(I.)  This most important part of the goal needs to be made into a SMART goal of it's own!  I do have a couple of action steps from this already but it needs more work on Specific and Time sensitive.

Most of all self-coaching has helped me tremendously to sort this goal out.  However I am very aware of me need for PEOPLE and accountability to reach this goal.  That is one reason why I'm writing this assignment right out there in cyberspace.  Comments welcome.  

May the fog clear as I go forward, one baby step at a time.

  

yet another silly poem

Once upon a time there was

a blog of minor note because

unfocused blog it often was;

so let's talk company of  Trust.

We want Trust company out, I said it.

That's the truth and you just read it

So the lawyer works upon it

and he maketh progress on it.

I read about the lawyer's call;

it made me happy, that is all.

I hear he's moving wisely forward

Better that than hearing no word

So I rest me in the thought

The Lord is trusted for He's got

all this trust stuff in His power,

And now it is the bedtime hour.

Bird Dog

 Urgent!  one year old black lab needs home.

 People inquire and I shoot myself in the foot by being honest: she bit me & I don't trust her around babies. Plus she "leaks"and has signs of hip dysplasia.  I don't want to waste time with those who will change their mind after they learn these things.

 A couple people with dog experience can see beyond the problems ... labs are still a great pets.

So I took her to Florida and posted her down there on craigslist.

Dog Angel wanted to try her out so I drove 2 hours to drop her off.  

Here come three dogs down the lane to meet us.

There are 2 horses, 3 cats,  and a goose.

Zoie tucks tail while the 3 dogs follow her around sniffing her rear end.  Two of them are black labs and one looks just like her. 

There is a commotion behind the barn followed by too much quiet.  Dog Angel goes off to investigate and I see Zoie running away from her and, oh no, did I see something in her mouth?  Oh, please no, Zoie.  She will not come to Dog Angel, so I call out:  ZOIE!  come!  She comes to me and drops the shiny black chicken at my feet and looks up at me with a feather hanging off her lip.....Did I do good, Mommy?

That is one very dead chicken, I said.

I say Zoie, no, but I am not very insistent about it.  God made her to kill birds and she has not yet been trained.  It's too late anyway.

She takes off after the goose.  Dog Angel has walked up and she's going NO NOT THAT ONE!  I'm after Zoie yelling NO NO NO. She almost had the goose, but she did not get him and it hissed at her and she backed off.  Dog Angel says the goose will go after her.  Whew!  That was close.

Dog Angel picks up the chicken and it's dead neck is hanging from her hand while she says to me, "She's 'a bird dog."  

I apologize.  I feel awful and I think I've driven out here for nothing.

But Dog Angel says she'd still like to try her for a couple days and  that her dogs have done this, too.  I used to cry, she said, but they are just yard ornaments.  She really loves the dogs.

So I call in 2 days.  This is a very sweet dog, she says, and she slept at the foot of my bed. and I love her, but she killed the neighbor's cat.

OH NO!  I am so sorry......

I will come get her, unless you know someone who would like her? 

So she thought about it all day.  

When I call back, she carefully presents the shock collar idea.  I sense she is afraid that I will get angry...that I will consider it cruel.  

But she would like to try working with Zoie.   She calls the collar 'letting God talk to her'.   I am very ok with it.  Zoie is responsive and it will not take much.

So in spite of Zoie's best efforts to make a bad impression, she has a new forever family.  And what could be better for a dog? --life on a farm with a pack of dogs, horses, cats and geese.   And a human who will take care of her every need.  May they all live happily ever after.

Zoie, a Corny Poem

Zoie had a bath today.

I took her in the tub. 

It's warm.  She tolerates it well.

The water drains, glub glub.

She shakes and wiggles, soaks three towels,

and runs about the place.

She's clean and soft and smells so good

So I just kiss her face.

Wishing she were not a lemon

Wanting to adopt her, but

She bit me once and that's enough.

Adoption door is shut.

Here's a myth that needs dispelling:

Certain dogs will NEVER bite.

ANY dog, if scared enough,

By instinct prove that that's not right.

Each dog has a bite threshold

add up those things that frighten.

Push those buttons all at once,

I guarantee that dog's a-bitin'.

For Zoie it was fire works

new place, new people, all at night.

I plop down next to her to cuddle.

She fears sore hips I'll touch, so bite!

Suddenly with hole in forehead,

What just happened? we all said.

Sudden movement to shift over,

final straw to bite has led.

This dog has some pain in hips

Toddlers wouldn't respect this,

So we cannot mix the two.

Could Zo's new human be YOU?

We are down to one more day!

Traveling to see my Dad.

Must give this sweet dog away.

Makes me just a little sad.