Up the Sunbeam

-- Please bear with the length of this post--I promise you won't be sorry if you read to the end!! This is the TRUE story of God at work in ways I have never seen before even though I always knew He could! NEVER BE AFRAID TO TRUST GOD OR TO PRAY YOUR HEART OUT TO HIM!!! NEVER!!! After stuffing ourselves on the 4th of July feast Hero Husband made that featured both fried and BBQ chicken with all the fixin's, Drummer Boy, She So Sweet, and I headed over to our favorite spot to watch one of the many fireworks displays in our area. (Hero Husband loves Independence Day, but prefers to relax at home and let us have our firework fun.) We parked strategically to have an easy getaway afterward, gathered our chairs and my camera gear and had a pleasant walk to where we staked out our claim. Caution tape marked the line between the safe zone and the danger zone, and we set up our chairs about 40 yards deep in the safe zone. I tinkered awhile with camera settings, absent-min...

-- I love words. Words are gifts and God-full and made for beauty. But how is it that words can be so ugly? How is it that mouths that sing words of praise and speak words of loving God can, in the next breath, be making racial jokes? What in the world am I supposed to DO with that? I sit, open-mouthed, heart filling with fumes and toxic smoke, and everything in me wants to get up and call to task, or storm out in a showy and conspicuous exit . . . or unhear what I've heard. Have we made so little progress in my lifetime?  Have we moved so little from where we started?  In some ways I'm afraid we're further out than where began. It distresses me that racism is such a common theme that runs through secular places like schools (honestly in Christian schools too)--my children could tell you stories!  It infuriates me when people cry "RACISM" where there is none!  But racist talk breaks my heart when it comes from the mouths of people who are in positions of Ch...

First, let me say that I understand why you will think this should have been a Christmas post when you see that I'm writing about mistletoe.  However, this time, my thoughts about mistletoe actually have little to do with Christmas, and maybe when you've read it, you'll think of mistletoe at times other than Christmas too.  Let's see . . . I had never seen mistletoe growing until I moved to California when I was 18. I had only ever seen the stiff plastic Christmas decoration kind, or the overpriced, wilted, bedraggled bits of it tied with a crumpled red ribbon that they'd sell alongside live Christmas trees.  All I knew was that I found it both a little thrilling and a little terrifying to be at social events where there was a sprig of mistletoe hung somewhere strategic, plastic or otherwise. Well, nothing magical ever happened to me under the mistletoe, but I always liked the idea of the tradition anyway. As I said, never having seen how mistletoe grew, I was...