Category Archives: Challenge

WFMW ~ Parenting Tip ~ August 1st

Deuteronomy 6: 5-7 (ESV)

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your houses, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise”

Some very simple tips to keep God in your conversation…

~ When your kids get up in the morning thank God out loud for the new day that He has given them.

~ When you sit down to your meal thank God out loud for providing another meal for you.

~ When your kids walk out the door remind them that God goes with them and they should honor Him and shine for Him.

~ When your kids lie down to sleep tell them that you love them and that God loves them.

If you go to Rocks in My Dryer you will see many more parenting tips today!

ht: Photo from Madame Blueberry Learns to be Thankful ~ Cindy Kenney,  Zonderkidz

In Other Words Tuesday ~ July 10th


 

This week’s quote is:

“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing yet had been done.” ~ C. S. Lewis 

This quote got me thinking that as a human being it is very easy to become self-reliant. It is easy to go through a whole day without thinking of my creator, my God. In order to realize my need for God I need to go to Him everday, empty myself and say whatever you would have me do today I’m willing to do it. Whatever it is you want me to do I’m sure you will provide the means and the capacity for it to get done. I am willing. Here I am. What do you have for me today? I might have failed yesterday but today is a new day and I’m here Lord and I know you are there, so forgive me and please use me today to accomplish whatever I can for You. Please give me your eyes to see the people you put in my path today. My husband, my children, the grocery checker, the driver in front of me, the mailman, the homeless beggar on the street, the mean kid at the park. Lead me to show them your love. I’m relying on You Lord to give me the strength and the desire and the love to accomplish small and large things for you. Today maybe it’s just a smile, a pat on the hand, a word of encouragement, a load of laundry. Tomorrow something different or maybe just the same. Lord help me never to forget to come before you, to worship you, to praise you, to honor you in word and deed, and to obey you. Help me to know I need to do this everyday, every hour of the day.

I’m adding this quote by our pastor in California that goes along with these thoughts.

Stop for a minute! Today God wants to supply his grace to you so that you will have the power to respond to the challenges and relationships of life in a way that brings honor and glory to God and joy to your heart” (c.) by Steve Larson ~ 90 Days to Change Your Life – (week 2) 

Well this is where this quote took me. I’m looking forward to see what others have to share.

Visit “Sting My Heart” to read her take
on the quote and to leave your link
along with the other participants.

I Finally Learned How to Post These Quizzes ~ Thanks Lana!

This might be bad news for some of you but I finally learned how to post these mundane, brainless, fun quizzes. I am taking baby steps in learning how to do things on the computer with this bloggy deal. Every little thing I learn makes me a little giddy. So here you are. Now I need to learn to do the Mr. Linky thing and some of those sidebar widget dealies. I’m so happy that you are a kind bunch of bloggity bloggers. Blessings on your heads!

You Are Italian Food

Comforting yet overwhelming.
People love you, but sometimes you’re just too much.

What Kind of Food Are You?

 

You Are a Plain Ole Cup of Joe

But don’t think plain – instead think, uncomplicated
You’re a low maintenance kind of girl… who can hang with the guys
Down to earth, easy going, and fun! Yup, that’s you: the friend everyone invites.
And your dependable too. Both for a laugh and a sympathetic ear.

What Kind of Coffee Girl Are You?

Now if you decide to play, let me know how you score…

Ht: Lux Venit for the Coffee Quiz and Above the Clouds for the Food Quiz

5 Random Questions Meme

Angie from The Toybox Blew Up tagged me for a question meme. The rules? Simple, she posed 5 random questions for 5 different bloggers who answer them and come up w/ 5  new random questions for 5 more lucky people….and so the cycle of the meme continues on and on! Thanks, Angie. I hope I can come up with 5 questions to pass along…

So here’s Angie’s 5 questions for Leslie, Linda, Ellen, Kim, and

1. You are given the chance to produce something that would help moms around the world… money and outlandishness not an issue… what would it be?    I would produce an extra set of hands for mom so she can keep more than 2 kids in tow and multitask.

2. You can star in anything you want (stage, radio, tv, etc…) what would your dream role be?   My dream role would be Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

3. What’s a *secret* talent that you have that would make you the life of the party?   I can dance up a storm when no one is watching.

4. What was one of your biggest successes? failures?   One of my biggest successes was finishing college and getting a teaching job. One of my biggest failures was not being good at submitting to authority.

5. Name something you despise doing, and what creative excuse/method do you use to get someone else to do the dreaded task.   I despise confrontation, especially face to face. I try to avoid these situations by pretending there isn’t a problem. I’ve tried writing letters in the past to deal with this but that is not the best solution. Face to face problem solving is the best method for resolution.

Now here are my 5 random questions:

1. God has decided to send you on a Mission trip, where are you going and why?

2. You have a free afternoon to read uninterrupted. Where would you choose to read?

3. You get to choose where your kids will go to college, money and grades are not an issue. Where would you want them to go and why? If you don’t have kids where would you have wanted to go to college if money and grades were not an issue?

4. If you were stuck in an elevator for over an hour what music would you want playing while you were stuck?

5. You have to travel from the west coast to the east coast of your country, what 5 cities would you want to spend time in?

I guess I’m going to tag Lana, Kathie, Sara, Bee, and Kim.  Ladies if for any reason you choose not to participate there are absolutely no worries… 🙂

If you do play make sure you send me your link so I can see your answers. Blessings…

Works For Me ~ Goodwill

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a bargain hunter. Goodwill in Washington (not California!) has been a very good shopping friend of mine. I have found countless treasures there. Today I’m sharing one of my daughters prom dresses that I purchased at Goodwill for $7.  She’s the one in the metallic grey dress. Now some kids probably wouldn’t do this but she bragged about the cost and where the dress came from to all her friends. The necklace and earrings that she purchased cost more than the dress! When I wanted to give up shopping at Goodwill for lent Katie exclaimed, “Now what good would that do?” So y’all shopping at Goodwill works for me, it might work for you, too.

 

Just yesterday my daughter and I went to Goodwill and I found all 7 of the Chronicles of Narnia books for $1.49 each. They are the Full-Color Collector’s Edition. So Goodwill works for me for clothes, books, housewares, purses, etc. etc.

Now go on over to Rocks in My Dryer to see more handy dandy tips!

Your Thoughts ~ Susannah Spurgeon ~ Romans 12: 1-2

Woman to Woman: “Share an important quote and what it means to you.”

 

A while back, Lana, at  Above the Clouds wrote about how Bible Study can be illustrated with these Matryoshka dolls. I’m paraphrasing but the idea is that there is always more to find, deeper to go. I’m going to use this illustration in how God has been going into my mind, revealing thoughts that need to be captured for Him. Thoughts within thoughts within thoughts. The quote I chose to segue off of is the following by Susannah Spurgeon:

“The God who can understand your thoughts ‘afar off’ has the power to restrain them; no, more than that; before they reach you, while they are yet distant and unexpressed, he will purify and cleanse them, so that they shall enter your heart as angel whispers, and pass your lips only as words of love and blessing.” ~ Susannah Spurgeon

A few years ago I started to memorize Romans 12:1-3. This proved to be a mind changing experience for me. God began working on me in regards to my mind. He showed me wrong (sinful) patterns of thought that I entertained in my mind. He started with obvious big bad thoughts “the big outer doll”, if you will. Then He opened up doll after doll to show me how the wickedness in my mind was infecting my heart.  These thought patterns, fantasies, scenarios, rebuttals, defenses, gave me bad attitudes toward loved ones and wrong justifications about my behaviour. I knew God wanted me to say no to them. He showed me with practice in obedience to say no each time the same patterns would force their way into my mind. I had to say no a lot before some would desist! This was revolutionary for me. Mind you, we still have many more dolls to work on. Just look at all of them in that photo! ) Sometimes I even try to put the same dolls back together. I am looking forward to the day that I’ll meet my Savior “face to face” by His grace with the last solid doll in my hand!

 

Romans 12: 1-2

I with Susannah want to be brave enough to pray, “Dear Master, I make your servant David’s prayer my own and say ‘Search me O God and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

If you’d like to read an insightful, well written post on “The Grace of a Clean Heart” go to Paul Tripp’s blog. He has a wonderful series of posts on Psalm 51.

Here are more passages to consider:  Colossians 3:2; Psalm 26:2; Is. 26:3; Mt. 22:37; Rom. 8:5-7; Phil. 2:5

Romans Image courtesy of Snapshots of Joy. Click here to see more images.

Now you can go to My Many Colored Days to read more Woman to Woman posts…

When People Are Big and God is Small ~ Review

When People Are Big and God is Small – Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man ~ by Edward T. Welch

I am going to list the chapter headings so you have a better idea of what Welch covers in this book.

Part One: How and Why We Fear Others
2. “People will see me”
3. “People will reject me”
4. “People will physically hurt me”
5. “The world wants me to fear people”
Part Two: Overcoming the Fear of Others
6.   Know the Fear of the Lord
7.   Grow in the Fear of the Lord
8.   Biblically Examine your felt needs
9.   Know your real needs
10. Delight in the God who fills us
11. Love your enemies and your neighbors
12. Love your brothers and sisters
13. “The Conclusion of the Matter: Fear God and Keep His Commandments”

I enjoyed reading part two over part one. At the end of each chapter he has “for further thought” sections that are very helpful. This is a book that we all can benefit from reading.

The Dallas Morning News says ~”Need people less. Love people more. That’s the author’s challenge…He’s talking about a tendency to hold other people in awe, to be controlled and mastered by them, to depend on them for what God alone can give… [Welch] proposed an antidote: the fear of God…the believer’s response to God’s power, majesty and not least his mercy.”

This is a biblical, helpful, convicting, and encouraging read…

I’ll leave you with one more quote from the book, pg. 113 ~ Grow in the Fear of the Lord ~

The problem is clear: People are too big in our lives and God is too small. The answer is straightforward: We must learn to know that our God is more loving and more powerful than we ever imagined. Yet this task is not easy. Even if we worked at the most spectacular of national parks, or the bush in our backyard started burning without being consumed, or Jesus appeared and wrestled a few rounds with us, we would not be guaranteed a persistent reverence of God. Too often our mountain-top experiences are quickly over-taken by the clamor of the world, and God once again is diminished in our minds. The goal is to establish a daily tradition of growing in the knowledge of God.

That challenges me to ask: What is my daily tradition of growing in the knowledge of God?

Spring Reading Challenge Wrap Up

 

  • What was the best book you read this spring? Fiction: Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers , Non-Fiction: Seeing and Savoring Christ by John Piper
  • What book could you have done without? I didn’t have a long enough book list to have to have an answer to this one. They were all worth reading.
  • Did you try out a new author this spring? If so, which one, and will you be reading that author again? Yes, the new author I tried was Dorothy L. Sayers and I will definitely read her again.
  • If there were books you didn’t finish, tell us why. Did you run out of time? Realize those books weren’t worth it? I never got around to Harry Potter #6. I’ve read it before and wanted to read it before #7 came out…
  • Did you come across a book or two on other participants’ lists that you’re planning to add to your own to-be-read pile? Which ones?  Yes, Stepping Heavenward by Prentiss. I bought it and am reading it.
  • What did you learn — about anything — through this challenge? Maybe you learned something about yourself or your reading style, maybe you learned not to pick so many nonfiction books for a challenge, maybe you learned something from a book you read. Whatever it is, share! I learned that I can read a lot more than I have in the past. There is time to read. I’m a multi-book reader (more than one at a time). I’ve learned I’ll enjoy and digest non-fiction more if I only read a chapter at a time. I have a stack of 4-6 books on my nightstand and I try to read a little out of each in the evening instead of watching TV.
  • What was the best part of the Spring Reading Thing? Meeting other readers and seeing the hundreds of books I’ve never read.
  • Any other thoughts, impressions, or comments. I like to take reading a step further by recording any sections of the book that stand out to me.
  • I will definitely participate in a fall reading challenge!
  • I’ll be posting a review of  When People Are Big and God is Small soon. 🙂

Thanks so much to Katrina at Callapidder days for hosting this event so magnificently and unselfishly…

Blogging 101 Carnival ~ Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Chili a.k.a. Chilihead is sponsoring a blogging carnival and I’m diving in…

1.  How did you start blogging?

I used to send weekly emails to my family and friends of quotes, prayers, encouragements, etc. My brother Steve started a blog and there were several blogs I’d visit daily. Steve kept telling me that I needed to start a blog because basically what I was doing via email was a blog. One day when we were together he pulled out his computer and said “We’re starting a blog for you right now.” He set me up with wordpress helped me through some glitches that I have with technology and the rest is history. Here’s a picture I took of my brother setting up my blog back in March of ’07.

2. Did you intend to be a blog w/a following? If so, how did you go about it?

It wasn’t my intention to have “a following”. I still wanted to search and find encouraging things to post. I wanted some way to also catalog my new life away from my adult children and best friends in Seattle. This vehicle has given me that. I believe I have the gift of encouragement and it comes very naturally to me. I’ve always been a card and letter sender. I am a commenter because that’s what I like to do. Through some of my comments I have made blogging buddies that check my blog.

3. What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog? Have you been successful? If not, do you have a plan to achieve those goals?

I want to continue to post things that are encouraging. I would like to continue growing in my walk with Christ. I want to learn more and share what is the “truth” and is honoring to my King.

I hope to keep my brain working hard. I want any motivation to be a continued learner. Blogging is accountability for me in this aspect of my life desire.

4. Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?

The thing that has changed for me is that as I find more blogs I enjoy, I participate in some of the weekly blogging events.

5. What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started?

To have a shorter http:, I get tired of typing https://happywonderer.wordpress.com/ into the blogger sites. WordPress and typepad and some others store my info…that’s really nice for avid commenters. Some sites seem to punish you for not being one of their own! 🙂

6. Do you make money with your blog?

No, I do not make money with my blog but I save a lot of money because I’m not out shopping as much as I used to be…

7. Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why?

Yes. Some do, some don’t. For some it’s hard to keep up with my daily postings. Some like to keep up with what I’m doing in Southern California now that I’m not living full-time in Seattle. Some read it but they don’t leave comments.

A few of my immediate and extended family have blogs. The more serious bloggers are my sister Lana at Above the Clouds and my brother Steve at The Temple. My son and daughter have a blog but their posts are few and far between…

8. What two pieces of advice would you give to a new blogger?

Check out a variety of hosting sites before you choose one.

Consider whether some controversies that won’t be settled on this earth should become the focus of your blog. You might get more than you bargained for…

You can go to Don’t Try This at Home and see what other bloggers are saying…

My updated suggestion is that you do not store your photos at Photobucket. They are now holding all my photos hostage as of July 2017.